USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 19
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* For a report of all the facts touching this election and of Gen. Jackson's speech, see Clarke's Book of Congressional Contested elections-p. p. 47-68. Among the curious things contained in this report is the number of voters in each county. According to the statement furnished to the Committee on Elec- tions by Gen Jackson, the poll, if all the returns had been received and had been proper , would have been just 551 votes in the whole district: Chatham county 259 Liberty 69. Effingham 107, Glynn 27, Camden $9. At that time there were in the whole State but eleven counties, and according to the census of 1790, the population was as follows :
Freee Whites.
Slaves
Total.
Camden
2344
70
304
Glynn.
193
215
408
Liberty
1.303
4.025
5,328
Chatham
2,456
8,201
10,657
Effingham.
1.674
750
2,424
Richmond.
7,162
4,116
11,278
Barke.
7,064
2 392
9,456
Washington
3,856
694
4,550
Wilkes
24.052
7,268
31.320
Franklin
885
156
1.041
Greene
.
4,020
1,377
5,397
53,797
29.164
82,163
Columbia county was created out of Richmond by an Act of 10th of Decem- ber, 1790, but was not organized when the census was taken. Wilkes had then undergone no subdivision, but still retained all her vast pre-revolutionary ter- ritory-which accounts for the numerousness of her population.
Mr. Gibbons. in his advanced years, following a fashion formerly not un- common among Savannah families rich enough to afford it, had a Northern summer residence which was at Elizabethtown. in New Jersey. This circum- stance led to a very noted. if not the most noted, thing in his life-a thing which caused his name to become notorious and familiar all over the United States both in conversation and in print. Disbelieving in the constitutionality of the law of New York conferring on a chartered company and its assignees the exclusive right of navigating the waters of that Stair by steam vessels, -he commenced running in Ists a line of steamboats of his own between Eliza- bethtown Point and New York City in violation of the exclusive chartered right. AF was foreseen. Ogden, the company's assignee for that route, resorted at once to law to stop Gibbons boats. He filed a bill before Chancellor Kent for a present and perpetual injunction against Gibbons, which the Chancellor granted, holding the New York law constitutional. Gibbons carried the case
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
The Congress to which Gen. Wayne was returned as- sembled on the 24th of October, 1791. At the end of a week from that date we find him in his seat as a member, where he had been but a fortnight when he was disturbed by Gen. Jackson appeariug and contesting his right to that seat. The contest lasted several months, Gen. Wayne re- maining in his seat and exercising full Representative func- tions all the while. The investigations were thorough and brought out abundant proof that the General's election was illegal but none whatever implicating the General himself' in any of the illegal means by which it had been effected. Nor was there ever any imputation against him personally in connection with the election. It was the not uncommon case of a candidate's partizans without his participation or
up to the highest tribunal in New York, the Court of Errors, where the deci- sion rendered against him in the Court of Chancery was sustained and affirmed. Whereupon an appeal was taken by him to the Supreme Court of the United States which upon full argument and consideration reversed the New York decision and pronounced the New York law unconstitutional, thereby throwing open all the waters of the United States to free navigation by steam. The case through- out its long pendency was regarded as one of immense public, political and commercial importance, and excited, consequently, a strong and unusual in- terest, and Mr. Gibbons himself, came to be everywhere viewed as the cham- pion of free trade between the States, and indeed somewhat in the light of a great public benefactor by having taken upon himself the burden of this mag. nificent, costly and finally victorious litigation. In 1824, not long after Mr. Gibbons' triumph in the Supreme Court of the United States, I heard Judge Berrien say in conversing with some gentlemen about it, that Mr. Gibbon .. whilst the case was yet pending, made his will and appropriated $40,000 10 carrying on the suit in case it should not be ended before his death. Upon some one present expressing surprise, Judge Berrien remarked that Mr. Gibbons was a very able lawyer and felt great pride in having his opinion on the con. stitutional question sustained. Mr. Spalding, in his letter from which I have already quoted, mentions that he was a law student of Mr. Gibbons, and speaks of him as a great lawyer and a man of most determined character. Cornelius Vanderbilt, more familiarly known as Commodore Vanderbilt. now renowned among the men of New York, great by being rich. was one of Mr. Gibbons' steamboat captains, and was in the course of the litigation actually brought before Chancellor Kent once, charged with a contempt in disobeying the mjune. tion against Gibbons' boats.
In the matter of Vanderbilt, 4 Johnson's Chan. R. 57. Ogden vs Gibbons. Ib. 150. Gibbons vs. Ogden, 17 Johnson's R. 455. Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9. Wheaton's R. 1.
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
privity doing wrong things and going criminal lengths for him from which he himself would have revolted. No final action was reached by the House till late in March when a decision was pronounced setting aside both the contestants, declaring a vacancy and calling for a new election, at which Mr. Milledge was chosen, neither Gen. Wayne or Gen. Jackson entering the lists as a candidate, and so both these very eminent and meritorious men were sent into re- tirement.
But their exile was short and more than compensated by their being each soon called to a more exalted and import- ant sphere of public employment. Gen. Wayne, than whom no truer son of Mars ever intensified the splendor of the American arms, being solicited by Washington, almost im- mediately resumed the sword and went at once to that inveterate theatre of Indian hostilities and British tamper- ings on the Lake frontier where our armies had for years been so unlucky, and there in August, 1794, at the great battle of the Miami of the Lakes, the greatest and most memo- rable in all our annals of Indian warfare, repaired the dis- asters of Harmar and St. Clair and by a bloody arbitra- ment opened the way to that permanent Indian peace in the North-West which Washington was, as we have seen here- tofore,* successful, by peaceful, diplomatie means in bringing about in the South and South-West. This signal and price- less triumph of Wayne's generalship shone the more brilliantly under the dark contrast of the defeat of his pred- ecessors and it may be regarded, too, somewhat as a death- halo settling on his brow, as it was the last fighting exploit of a life that was not to last much longer. For he survived but two years more, dying in the service and at his post on the Indian frontier, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United States. So it is inscribed on the monument erected to him at his birthplace in Chester, Pennsylvania, by his brethren of the Society of the Cincinnati.
And he died also still a citizen and a cherished adopted
* In the article on the Oconee War, Part I.
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
son of Georgia. For in passing from her service into that of the United States, he passed not from her embrace nor lost his domicil, at once tribute of gratitude and memorial of honor, on her soil. He thoroughly won her devotion when as second in command to Gen. Greene* in the South, he had wrought out the full deliverance of the State from the enemy towards the close of the Revolution. And in fact the successes of Greene and Wayne in the extreme South had nearly as much to do in bringing the war to a close as the more impressive and celebrated triumph of Washington over Cornwallis in Virginia. As a consequence of these great Southern services, Wayne as well as Greene was remem- bered by Georgia when peace came, and she acknowledged her heavy debt to him by bestowing on him a fine estate near Savannah on the soil he had rescued. And hence like Gen. Greene he was led to make Georgia his home. The precise time of his coming I have no means of fixing, but it was certainly later than the year 1787, for we find him in the last months of that year still a citizen of Pennsylva- nia, and serving as a delegate in her Convention called to ratify the new Federal Constitution. That he should have become Gen. Jackson's opponent for Congress was un- doubtedly a circumstance of a nature to inspire regret at the time of its occurrence, and for a long while afterwards. For it was just one of those contests in which our grief over the party that should be defeated was incapable of compensa- tion by any joy that we could feel at the success of his rival. That grief too was in this case not a little exasperated and tinctured with resentment on account of the reprehensible means by which success had been achieved. But here again we take comfort, for that General Wayne was personally untouched by the foul arts employed in his behalf and stands clear of reproach alike from the public and his own con- science and his wronged and irritated competitor. And now at this remote day looking back on the whole affair and see- ing how it proved eventually harmless alike to the two
* See his speech on Mrs. Greene's Claims, I. Vol. Benton's Abr. 335-6.
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
Generals and the country, it cannot be otherwise than that the present generation of the people of Georgia, filially av- aricious of every ray of honor that can be counted to her brow, must feel pride at such a spectacle in her history as Anthony Wayne attracted by her generous love and grati- tude to become one of her citizens, and as such sning for her suffrages as a candidate for Congress and actually serving her for nearly five months as a Representative in Congress, blameless himself in being there, however great the blame of others for the means used to put him there.
He was born early in the year 1745, which made him old- er than Gen. Jackson by more than a dozen years. Like Jackson he was of good ancestry, of superior soldierly stock particularly, his grandfather having fought with reputation as the commander of a squadron under King William III at the Battle of the Boyne, in 1690, and his father having been distinguished as well in expeditions against the In- dians as in civil affairs in Pennsylvania in the Colonial times. And that he inherited the martial temper and bravery and the strong military bent of his race was mani- fest not only by all his actions and career, but is strik- ingly visible in his very looks and lineaments, heroic and spirited in the highest degree, as they have come down to us on canvass. His early advantages were of a high order and were so well improved that we may set him down as having had an education ample for the purposes of a life of activity and distinction either in peace or war. It is not surprising that these advantages aided by family and con- nexion, by superior endowments of mind and person, by the winning power of a promising, aspiring young manhood and by his noble ardor and forwardness from the very first in the cause of the uprising colonies, should have obtained for him at the beginning of the war a position which the youthful and orphan Jackson with all his merits did not succeed in reaching till near its end,-that of a Colonelcy. In this grade, however, though so honorable to a man of only thirty-one years, Wayne did not linger long. Febru-
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
ary, 1777, saw him a Brigadier-General, in which rank it was that he made his name resplendent and immortal, cover- ing it with a Revolutionary glory second only to what was earned by Washington himself and by Gen. Greene. He became a Major-General not until 1792, when Washington sent him, as we have just seen, at the head of the army to conquer a peace and which, in the very teeth of British in- trusion and instigation, he did most triumphantly succeed in conquering not from one, two or three Indian Nations only, but from all the North-Western tribes combined.
Whilst Gen. Wayne was thus reaping for himself and his country an overflowing recompense for the loss of his seat in the House of Representatives, Gen. Jackson also soon saw himself made more than whole by a proud amends. The very next Legislature after his exclusion from the Lower House conferred upon him a seat in the Senate of the Uni- ted States for a full term commencing on the 4th of March, 1793. When he had been in that elevation but two years, he heeded the cry of the people calling upon him to disrobe himself and come down at once to their help against the Ya- zoo Fraud. His ready obedience gave the country example of a resignation the noblest on record, and inculcated a les- son which noble natures only will be ever quick to feel and imbibe, that there are some occasions discernible by such natures which render humility a sublime practical virtue, and make it more glorious to descend with a magnanimous alacrity to the lowlier posts of public service than to cling with tenacious pride and self-love to the higher and more shining ones. What he had to do in the matter for which he resigned and how he acquitted himself there- in, we have already sufficiently seen, and seen also how after finishing that task, he otherwise faithfully and ably served Georgia at home until the time came when she sent him once more to represent her in the National Senate contemporane- ously with Mr. Jefferson's accession to the Presidency. Death found him in that position and at his post on the 19th of March, 1806. All that was mortal of him is still inhumed
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
at the Federal capital, and the citizen of Georgia who would look upon his grave and the simple stone that marks it can to this day only do so by a pilgrimage to the Congressional burying ground at Washington City. By no monument, statue or even portrait has Georgia ever done homage to the man who from his dawn of youth to his death served her with so much devotion and brought her so much honor and benefit, and whose name on the whole sheds more lustre on her history than any other on its page-a lustre which is destined to brighten under the test of time and contemplation- a man, too, who loved her so intensely as to cause him to exclaim that if, when he died, his heart should be open- ed and examined, her name would be found imprinted there .* Yet happily his likeness remains to us and those who yearn to know what manner of man he was to the eye, need but to turn to the American Portrait Gallery in order to gaze upon the noble, intellectual, spirituelle countenance and the thinking, high-bred, cultured looks and expression that belonged to him.
In estimating Gen. Jackson and awarding him the pre- eminence among the proud names which are the especial growth of Georgia, regard should be had to him as a whole. We must study him in all his elements, qualities and rela- tions, in all his actions and situations. In some particulars there may be named those whom he cannot he said to sur- pass or even equal. But then there is to be seen belonging to him a signal felicity in which he stands alone, -a felicity consisting in his tout ensemble of virtues, talents and merits, moral and intellectual, martial and political, heroic,-civic, chivalrous,-conferring on him a glory composite alike of peace and war, and which rises to the beautiful and sublime in both, though in what it derives from peace it is more for- tunate even than in what it owes to war, in that its peace- ful part furnishes an impressive, ever-speaking example and lessou to his countrymen, exhorting to purity, rectitude and true wisdom in public affairs, and urging relentlessly to the
· White's Statistics. Title-Jackson County.
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
undoing, crushing and preventing of all public turpitude and profligacy. Even now in Georgia that example and lesson start up to view and challenge a thoughtful remem- brance, warning our people that if they would protect the coffers of the State from legalized robbery, their Legislators from the contaminating approaches of a bribery and corrup- tion outstripping the Yazoo infamy and themselves and their posterity from an iniquitous taxation at once disgrace- ful, oppressive and blighting,-a taxation to carry out, sanc- tion and reward the villanies of Bullock and his crew, they must pursue the course and act on the principles of Gen. Jackson and his compatriots, and erect an insurmountable constitutional barrier against the payment of Bullock's fraudulent bonds, just as Jackson and his co-workers in the convention of 1798, not leaving such a matter as another possible Yazoo enormity within the Legislative competency, erected an insuperable constitutional barrier against any more sales whatever of Indian lands by the Legislature ex- cept to the Government of the United States, and thereby made forever impossible any more Yazoo frauds in Georgia.
Gen. Jackson was not the only one of his blood and name that crossed the ocean to cast his lot in Georgia. Long af- ter him and when he had attained to great eminence, subse- quently to the Revolutionary war, a gifted younger brother came, still in his boyhood, who under his fraternal care and guidance grew up to be an admirable, meritorions, accom- plished man, useful and honored in his day, though moving in a more confined and unambitous sphere than that illus- trated by the General himself. All who are familiar with the history of Franklin College during its slow re- naissance and hard struggle for a new life after the war of 1812, will know at once that Dr. Henry Jackson, Professor of Natural Philosophy in that Institution fifty-odd years ago, is the person to whom I am now alluding. Among the felicities incidental to my Law studentship in Athens, under Judge Clayton, in 1821, I have always felt it a chief one that by means of it I came to see and know Dr.
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
Jackson and Dr. Waddell, the then President of the Col- lege,-Dr. Jackson having, however, at that time resigned his professorship and gone into retirement, though still con- tinuing to reside in Athens. But quite a number of the brilliant and noble-minded young men who had sat under his instructions were still in the college or otherwise resi- dent in Athens, and I became socially almost as one of themselves. I was struck by the manner in which they in- variably spoke of Dr. Jackson. Their conversation about him literally glowed with admiration. They exulted at his talents, character and acquirements and his faculty of winning the interested attention of the young and inspiring their minds. More fortunate than most of the learned men whose destiny it is to fill the chairs of colleges, he was more than a mere man of books and of the closet. He had also seen the world and been a man of the world in the highest, best and most enlarging sense, and the advantages he had enjoyed as such had been to him as seed sown on good ground. It was, according to the published records of the College, as far back as 1811, that he was first called to the Professorship. But he had hardly filled it a twelvemonth when the collapse of the college caused by the war, opened his way, without a resig- nation, to another and to him a most attractive career. In 1813 he was invited by that great man, William H. Craw- ford, then just appointed Minister to France, to accompany him in the capacity of Secretary of Legation. He remained in Europe several years, continuing there for some time af- ter Mr. Crawford's return, a studious, enlightened observer of the mighty and tangled mass of events that had in that quarter of the globe been for many years drifting fearfully through seas of blood to a conclusion now in full view-the universal calm of a despotism joyful after the long, convul- sive storms through which it had passed. All the while too he was profiting diligently by the splendid opportunities that lay around him for enlarged scientific acquisitions and varied mental culture and enrichment. The result was that he returned home a man of rare and manifold accom-
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
plishments and was justly entitled to the extraordinary es- timation in which he was immediately held.
But though anxiously expected, as I remember to have read in a Life of President Finley published many years ago and not now within my reach, he did not get back to his Professorial post in time to co-operate, in setting the College anew on its feet, with that greatly-beloved and deeply-lamented gentleman ;- who coming from New Jer- sey a stranger among us, but bringing with him to the headship of the College great advantages of character and prestige, was received with general delight and was success- ful by his opening labors and exertions in making a most happy impression throughout the State. Public expecta- tion in regard to him rose to a very high pitch, soon to be dashed however, by his premature death in the fall of 1817, filling all Georgia with grief ere the first year of his Presi- dency had expired. His successor was Dr. Moses Waddell, the father of classical education in our up-country, the school- master of Crawford, Calhoun, McDuffie, Pettigrew, Longstreet, and many others whose after lives and distinction reflected honor on his name. Dr. Jackson returned soon enough to give his valuable aid to this grand, solid, beneficent veteran in finally rehabilitating the college and launching it upon that long career of prosperity which it maintains to this day.
Why, when he saw the college once more securely under way and free from danger of relapse and himself, too, at once an idol and an ornament there, he so soon withdrew from his connection with it and went into absolute retire- ment, I have never known or heard. I have not, however, been able to help divining somewhat of the cause : - For that conversant during his years of absence with the most distinguished social, scientific and political circles of the world and accustomed, consequently, to high and stimu- lating intellectual habits, he found himself averse probably after his return, to drudging in a perpetual round of things in science and philosophy familiar and rudimental to him, al- though ever so new, fresh and interesting to his successive
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
new classes of pupils. His retirement bordered on that of a recluse. Rarely seen abroad, a glimpse of him was sometimes to be had in the cool of a summer evening prom- enading meditatively the grounds within his own curtilige, conscious of the pure clime that environed him,-the soft, aerial summit of the far off Currihee just not sunken from his view and the fair earth and fairer Heavens serene and sympathetic above and around him.
Note to page 4, from WHITE'S HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF GEORGIA, page 634. Hon Thomas Spalding was born at Frederica. on the Island of St. Simon's, Glynn county, on the 26th March, 1774, and was of Scottish descent. He was the son of James Spalding, Esq , who married the eldest daughter of Colonel William MeIntosh, the latter being the same person who, when a lad, with his younger brother, Lachlan, (afterwards General NicIntosh, of the Revolutionary War.) followed their father, John More McIntosh, a Highland chieftain, when, with a band of intrepid Highlanders, he accompanied General Oglethorpe to the wilds of Georgia, in 1736, and from whom sprang many of that name, who periled their all for the independence of their country during our Revolution- ary contest.
Mr. Spalding's father was a gentleman of fine abilities, and a great reader of men and of books. the advantages of which he seemed to have early and indelibly impressed upon the mind of his son, who read everything, and whose surprisingly tenacious memory, retaining all that he read, made him as a living book and depositary of literary treasures, especially those of historic interest.
For those gentle and benevolent traits which he so liberally practiced in mature manhood, he was indebted to the influence and example of his excellent and venerated mother, of whom he ever spoke with the most filial tenderness. He was their only child. At the time of his father's decease he was a student of law, in the office of Thomas Gibbons. Esq., of Savannah. whose practice was extensive and profitable ; and had circumstances at this period permitted Mr. Spalding to pursue the profession of his choice. he doubtless would have been eminent in it ; but his fortune being ample, and requiring his persona! attention, he declined to proceed in the practice. He married the daughter and only child of Richard Leake, Esq., which union auded much to his already comfortable estate.
About this time, though very young, he was elected to the Legislature. and shortly after, with his family, visited Europe. and took up his residence im London, where he remained two years a regular attendant on, and observer of, the proceedings of Parliament, and in the enjoyment of that society to which his pecuniary means and position among his countrymen abroad entitled him in the British metropolis.
The lady whom he married was of rare accomplishments. good sense. and of singular beauty ; yet she alone seemed unconscious of those irresistible fasci- nations which secured her the respect. admiration and love of all. They had
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GENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
born to thein many children, five ouly of whom survived their parents and are still living. Mr. Spalding had the misfortune to lose his oldest son, James, while a member of the Legislature from McIntosh county. during its session in 1820-an amiable young man, of superior talent, and of great proniise. The Legislature erected a monument to bis memory in the capital of the State.
On his return from England. Mr. Spalding was elected to Congress, and served two sessions, and was for many years afterwards a prominent and lead. ing member of the Senate of his native State, and until he retired trom public life, to superintend his extensive private affairs, and to enjoy the repose and comforts of his attractive home, surrounded by his books, and friends, and strangers visiting our country. to whom he was ever attentive.
For the various measures which he advocated during a long political career,. through anxious and perplexing periods of our history, he acted always from a conscientious conviction of being right, and for the. interest of his country. There never was a more ardent or a purer patriot. At the close of the war of 1812, in compliance with a commission from the General Government, he pro- ceeded to Bermuda, and negotiated relative to the slaves and other property taken from the South by the British forces.
In 1826, he was appointed Commissioner ou the part of the State to meet the Commissioner of the United States, Governor Randolph, of Virginia, to deter- mine on the boundary between Georgia and the Territory of Florida, but which was not conclusively settled, the Commissioners disagreeing as to what should. be considered the true source of the St. Marys-the Georgia Commissioner insisting on the Southern and most distant of the two lakes from the mouth of the river discharging its waters into the Atlantic, which lake has since been called after him.
The limit assigned for biographical sketches in this work admits of nothing more than a mere outline of the life of Mr. Spalding. He was a fluent, ener- getic speaker, and a fine writer. Ease of style and originality characterize the productions of his pen. He was the author of the Life of Oglethorpe, and of many other sketches; and furnished much useful matter for various agricultural journals of the country, was among the earliest cotton planters of the State and introduced the cane, its successful culture, and the manufacture of sugar into Georgia. He was the last surviving member of the Convention that revised the Constitution of the State in 1798.
In personal appearance he was agreeable, of middling stature, of easy, unas- suming manners, courteous and affable. His hospitality was boundless. and accessible to all ; and it may be truly and emphatically said of him, that he was the friend of the distressed. Kind in all the relations of life, his slaves, of whom he had a large number, felt neither irksome toil or disquiet under his mild and indulgent government.
He felt intensely interested in the Compromise measures of Congress, and, though in delicate health, declared his wish to go as a delegate to the Conven- tion in Milledgeville, even it he should die in the effort. He reached that city in a very feeble state, was elected President of the Convention, and commenced his duties by a neat and appropriate address. remarking in the conclusion, that
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ENERALS JACKSON AND WAYNE.
'as it would be the last, so it would also be a graceful termination of his public, labors,' After the adjournment, he passed on homeward through Savannah, greatly debilitated, and reached his son's residence, near Darien, where he ex- pired in the midst of his children. calmly relying on his God for a happy futu - rity, January 4th 1851. in the 77th year of his age, and in sight of that island home in which it is hoped no spoiler will ever be suffered to trespass, but long to remain a sacred memorial of his taste for the sublime beauties of nature. His residence was a massive mansion. of rather unique style. in the midst of a primeval forest of lofty, out-branching oaks, of many centuries, arrayed in the soft and gracefully-flowing drapery of the Southern moss. waving in noiseless unison with the ceaseless surges of the ocean, which break upon the strand of this beautiful and enchanting spot.
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