USA > Georgia > Miscellanies of Georgia, historical, biographical, descriptive, etc > Part 5
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GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
of them as should choose to cut loose from her, and by their own strength and daring occupy the fair regions of which she had allowed herself to be so unconstitutionally stripped and disseized in favor of her savage enemies.
It was these views strongly entertained that, added to the pressure of the peculiar and untoward circumstances in which he found himself suddenly placed, turned the scale with General Clark, and determined him to a conduct he had not previously contemplated, namely, that of raising provisionally and temporarily the standard of private, mili- tary adventure, for the conquest of the Creek lands as prize of war to himself and followers; flattering himself that the Government, State and Federal, having been seemingly supine in regard to his part in the Genet operations, would continue supine still, and that his fellow citizens, of whose general sympathy he had no doubt, would not only not take part against him but would rally to him in sufficient force of men and means to insure his success.
But he was doomed to utter disappointment. He had erred egregiously as to the manner in which his enterprise would be regarded and treated. Both as to the supineness of Government and the support of the people he had calcu- lated amiss, and awoke to the discovery that war even against savages was a royal game sacred to sovereigns and their subalterns, and that the people, ever jealous of their rights of property at least, and ravenous of broad, rich acres, will not tamely permit lands they have been wont to con- sider as their own and their children's forever, to be ravish- ed away by the sword of any adventurer, however beloved and honored he may have been. The consequence was that Gen. Clark was speedily overwhelmed by heavy public cen- sure and total discomfiture. The national and State admin- istrations acted in concert against him and soon put him down. Washington, wisely holding back, as was his wont, the heavy Federal arm wherever the authorities of the States were faithful and adequate to the suppression of dis- orders within their own bounds, acted only as the prompter
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of Gov. Matthews in this matter, who, with his Revolutionary laurels still green, soon to be tarnished, however, by the Yazoo infamy, was now honorably filling his second term in the Executive Chair. The Governor thundered out upon the ob- noxious General, in a proclamation of the 28th of July, 1794, in which he denounces him under the name of Elijah Clark, Esquire, as a violator of the laws and of the Indian terri- tory. Judge Walton also came out strongly against him, though in language of marked consideration and respect, in his charges to grand juries .* But fulminations of this kind turned out to be inadequate to the case, though they had a good conservative effect on the public mind. The next step was decisive. The citizen soldiery were called out, and to General Clark's surprise, and utter extinguishment of his hopes, (for he had flattered himself that they could not be gotten to march against him) they promptly obeyed the order. As the storm thickened around him and his pros- pects darkened, there were none that came to his succor. Even his host of friends in Georgia, devoted to him as they were personally, stood aloof and quietly witnessed his fall, sad and sanctioning. What an impressive proof that the great body of our people were even in that early, fron- tier state of society, a truly orderly, loyal, law abiding peo- ple. They might, indeed, have been too ready perhaps to seize upon the Creek lands with little or no tenderness for Indian rights, provided only it was done under regular . governmental authority, and with assurance that the lands would be made to enure to the enrichment of them and their children and to the public good. But they were resolutely averse to any scheme of acquisition not strictly as a public measure by public means and on public account, and the more were they opposed to the proceeding attempted in this instance, because it was in the very teeth of a treaty made by Washington himself with the Indians, and which how muchsoever disliked and regretted by the State, she, in her sovereign capacity was, nevertheless, treating with a wise
·American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. 1, p. 197, 498, 499,
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and patriotic, though reluctant obedience and respect, and consequently could not and would not countenance indi- viduals even the most exalted in violating it.
It redounds to Gen. Clark's honor and atoues not a little for whatever was wrong in his conduct, that no sooner was he aware in what a great error he had become entangled, and how impracticable a thing he had undertaken, than he abandoned it ere he had done any appreciable mischief or shed a drop of even Indian blood. Hence his movement turned out to be a shortlived affair of a few months only. It is, indeed, beyond doubt that he never for a moment har- bored the thought of raising his hand against any but the already hostile Indians and their Spanish abettors, whom he might chance to encounter. This explains the ready, absolute submission, with which, on being assured that he and his men would be allowed to go unmolested, he at length struck his colors, disbanded his followers, and returned chagrined to his home in Wilkes county, on the approach of Generals Twiggs and Irwin, under the Governor's orders, with a body of the State militia against him. His proud, courageous, magisterial nature, that ever exulted in facing danger and grappling with it, refused not now to calm down and humble itself at the bidding and in the presence of his beloved Georgia in arms,-choosing rather to succumb to her than fight his countrymen, from whom he had expected sympathy and support, not opposition and resistance. His several posts were abandoned. The torch soon followed* and its traces were long to be seen. But now, I ween, there is a many a dweller along the storied Oconee who never even heard of Fort Advance or Fort Defiance, and the other less noted warlike coverts that of yore for one whole summer and far into the first autumnal month, scowled on the impassive, race-dividing stream, and frowned trebly from its western bank on Georgia, the Indians and the general Government.
*American State Papers. Indian Affairs, Vol. 1st, page 499; Stecens' History of Georgia, Vol. 2, p. 404.
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SECTION IV.
But rising above all other considerations in estimating the bearing of this matter on Gen. Clark's fame, comes the cru- cial question, what was his mind and intention, what the real, ulterior object he had in view ? Was it, at bottom, good or bad, patriotic or unpatriotic? There is, I believe, nothing on record, or coming down to us by tradition, that furnishes an answer in terms to these questions. But there is enough in the known facts of the case, and in the whole of Gen. Clark's character and career, from which a satisfactory answer may be educed.
In order then to a right answer, it must be remem- bered that Gen. Clark was not only a superior military man and a most ardent patriot, but also that he had in him no little of the statesman and political strategist, such particu- larly as was suited to the circumstances and times and the theatre in which he had to act :- A fact evinced by the lead- ing part he took from and after the Revolutionary war at Augusta, Galphinton, Shoulderbone and elsewhere, in and about councils, negotiations and treaties touching Indian affairs, (which were then by far the greatest, most difficult and trying branch of our political affairs,) in all of which he showed himself hardly less apt and efficient than in com- manding armed men, fighting battles and conducting cam- paigns. To him it was painfully clear that Georgia, with the Oconee river as a permanent guaranteed boundary be- tween herself and the Indians, could never attain to much prosperity and importance, but must always continue feeble and poor, with but little rank in the sisterhood of States in which she was embraced, and still less security against the formidable Indian hordes by which she was surrounded on every side, except along the Atlantic and the Savannah river. He had an intense conviction that the paramount point in her policy to which her attention should be directed, was her enlargement towards the West, over those fine ro- gions forming at this time the heart of what is called Mid- dle Georgia, and which, on being settled and becoming
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populous and powerful, would form barriers deterring Indian hostilities and incursions, instead of being tempting fields for them, as long, feeble lines of frontier, always were.
This strong conviction was, beyond doubt, an influential element in impelling him in the spring of 1794, to seize the opportunity which then courted him, of making himself master of the trans-Oconee country by means of the French resources and preparations to which he had fallen heir. Fully believing that no considerations of patriotism forbade, on the contrary, that they warranted him in such a step, he hesitated not to make avail of his French means, and his unpleasant predicament on Indian soil, to create an Indian crisis that would either force a cession or end in a conquest. The government which for this purpose he extemporised and which he could, surely, not have intended for a permanency, pretended to only such faculties as might enable it to succeed in attracting by its promises and protecting by its arms and arrangements, the adventurers and settlers who were indis- pensable to his plans, and to whom the great inducement to join his standard was to be, as in old feudal times, liberal allotments of land,-the most effective device ever yet tried of inflaming to the utmost the rage of conquest. Such is a broad outline of the vision which all the circumstances indi- cate as having floated in Gen. Clark's mind, terminating in his thoughts in the eventual re-absorption of himself and his followers back again into the bosom of Georgia, with all their fair lands and brave acquisitions. That somewhat of this nature was the upshot, the aim and end he contempla- ted is, in the highest degree, probable. His character and all that throws any light upon his intentions, point that way. Indeed what other course could there have finally been for him? None, certainly, unless we can suppose he intended to reproduce, under circumstances most unfavora- ble, that recent abortion, the State of Franklin, with whose throes of ill success and ultimate total failure, he was too well acquainted to be in any danger of being tempted to engage in any similar experiment.
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On the whole then, we rest in the conclusion that nothing could be more wrong than to treat this Oconee error as a misdemeanor against patriotism, or as detracting seriously from a great public deserver's claims to be cherished and honored by his countrymen. . Indeed, it was an error founded no little in Gen. Clark's extreme love of Georgia, and his resentment of what he deemed a great injury to her, although its main cause undoubtedly was the very difficult, embarrassing situation, in which he was involved, and to which we have so fully adverted. No thought of rebellion, no sentiment of disloyalty ever entered his breast. Although throwing himself decidedly, as he did, in collision at once with the United States and Georgia, yet his eventual action showed that his design was nothing more nor worse than to exert a right undeniable to every citizen, whilst certainly it is one only to be exercised upon great consideration and with a deep conscientious sense of responsibility,-the right, namely, of disregarding and taking issue upon and bring- ing to the test any unconstitutional law or treaty,-especially when having a tendency so formidable as that of planting permanently on the chartered soil of the State a powerful savage nation under the pupilage and protection of the gen- eral Government. Such was the principle on which Gen. Clark acted, fully acknowledging at the same time his amenability to the tribunals of the land and to the interdic- tion of the public will. Hence, no sooner did Governor Mathews issue his proclamation against him, than he reap- peared in Wilkes county and surrendered himself to the judicial authorities for trial upon the Governor's charges .* Being pronounced guiltless of any offence, and no grounds be- ing found for his further detention, he recrossed the Oconee to his posts and preparations. No other prosecution was ever started, no other judicial action of any kind was ever taken or attempted against him. He consequently felt warranted by the people and State in what he was doing, and at liber- ty to proceed in it,-although condemned by the Governor
* American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. 1, p. 195, 6, 7, 8, 9. 500.
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and Judge Walton. When, however, upon the militia being called out, he was awakened, by their obedience and alacrity, to a knowledge of his mistake and of the popular aversion to his enterprise, he made upon the spot the best amends in his power by bowing to the now unquestionable public will and desisting from his ill starred work, ere it had culminated in aught of calamity.
To a Georgian there are no sadder pages in those huge folios, the American State Papers, than those containing the imperfect, disjointed, scattered details, concerning General Clark's conduct in the two matters we have now so fully sifted; sad, less because they tell of what was wrong in his conduct, than because they tell it (to borrow a phrase from the elder law books) without more, without completeness, without con- nection, without all the facts that throw light upon it, -- without the explanations and mitigations that belong to it, and which make in his favor, and which are now conse- quently become less obvious and known, than the things which make against him. Few will ever be at the pains of such investigation as justice to him requires. Already has the professional historian failed in that duty and done him great wrong which there is danger will be copied and re- copied without scrutiny, as is too much the wont among book-makers, until at last the error will become ineradicable in history and go down to posterity as undoubted truth. It concerns the people of Georgia that such wrong to General Clark should be rectified. His character and career, his deeds and services, his fightings and sufferings, his wounds and sacrifices, are part of the treasured pride and glory of the State ; of the divine pabulum derived to her from a suf- fering heroic past, whereon, to the end that her children may never become recreant, they should feed now and through all time, and grow strong in undegenerate patriotism and manhood, and in all the sturdy virtues of their strong- principled, strong-charactered ancestors, -like them ever prompt at the call of duty and honor, to discard ease and court danger and hardships. His character was a mixed
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one, it is true, as strong, commanding characters often are. But we cannot submit, because he had faults and fell into errors, that his merits should be unduly shaded and almost shut out from view, and his character transmitted to the future aspersed with epithets of obloquy and disparagement. He deserves better than that his name should suffer by care- less or prejudiced historic handling. He died ranking to his last hours among Georgia's most cherished heroes and benefactors, and Georgians cannot but recoil from whatever has the look of lowering him from that proud pedestal on which he had placed himself with hard, and hard-working hands, and by life-long patriotic devotion and self-imperil- ing. Our fathers, before we were born, had grown to him in a close, living embrace of love, gratitude and honor. His services to Georgia were such as it happens to but few men ever to have the combined opportunity and ability ofrender- ing to their country. He was emphatically the Ajax Tala- mon of the State in her days of greatest trial. The British, the Indians and the Tories, were ever swarming around him or fleeing from him, or plotting, working, fighting against him. For seven long years his warlike tramp was almost everywhere heard, especially from Augusta to our Northern and Western border, and frequently also across the Savan- nah ; wherever, indeed, danger was the greatest or the ene- my strongest. He was made acquainted, too, with agonies, such as the body knows not. Whilst with that boy son, the future Governor of Georgia, at his side, he was in the field fighting and often bleeding, his British and Tory foes fear- ing to meet him, yet seeking to paralize him there, plun- dered and burnt his house, drove away his wife and younger children, and ordered them out of the State. No wonder that with such a man such treatment had the reverse of the effect intended. No wonder that fromn thenceforth he breathed and spread a more rapid falling vengeance than ever, if that were possible. No wonder that he lost no chance to strike a blow, and that in every blow, he made good McDuff's terrible prayer :
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"Gentle Heavens!
Cut short all intermission ; front to front. Bring thou these fiends of Georgia and myself ; Within my sword's length set them; if they scape; Heaven forgive them too!"
When weighing such a man, such a doer and sufferer for his country as this, indictments that might crush meaner personages, are but as dust in the balance against the rich, ponderous golden ore of his services and merits, and we hasten to shed a tear on whatever may tend to soil his men- ory and to pronounce it washed out forever.
His active career closed with the termination of the two un- toward passages in it, which I have narrated, nor did his life last much longer. He died in 1799, at his home in Wilkes county, where he had settled in 1774, and was with his laborious hands among those, who struck the first blow in reclaiming from the forest that garden spot of the world, that earliest installment of Middle Georgia, which stretched out in rich- ness and beauty from the Savannah river to the Ogeechee. He was the gift to Georgia of our good elder sister, North Carolina. Many, very many, have been her precious gifts to us both of men and women from the colonial times down to the present day. Many, very many priceless human gifts has Georgia been likewise ever receiving from other older quar- ters of our own country and from the old world-gifts which she has taken to her bosom and generously cherished along with her dear, home born children. But never has it fallen to her to have a son, native or adopted, whom she could more proudly boast and justly honor, or who has more deeply imprinted himself on her heart and memory than Eli- jah Clark.
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COL. HAWKINS.
CHAPTER V.
COLONEL HAWKINS ..
One morning in the month of June, 1816, during the summer vacation of Mt. Zion Academy, being on a visit to my venerated grandfather, I was sitting listless and musing alone with him in his front porch, gazing through the syca- mores that surrounded the house across the broad, clean- ly cultivated fields of cotton and corn that sloped away to the south; their long, gentle slant termi- nated by the "verdrous wall" of towering primeval trees that had been left to stand, gorgeously fring- ing all that side of the plantation for a mile or more up and down Fort creek. The sun was nearing the meridian. It was the day, and a little after the hour, for the mail rider to pass on his weekly trip from Milledgeville to Greensboro, and my grandfather having already sent and gotten his newspaper from the tree box on the roadside, was engaged in reading it,-the great old Georgia Journal, founded by the Grantland brothers, which he enjoyed the more because they were Virginians, from Richmond to boot, editorial eleves of the renowned Thos. Ritchie. He had not read long before he suddenly stopped, and, letting down the paper from his eyes said, "Col. Hawkins is dead." The tone was not as if the words were meant for me or for anybody. They sounded rather like the unconscious, involuntary utter- ance of the soul to the conscious heavens and earth. All nature seemed to lend her voice to his words and to speak out in unison : "Col. Hawkins is dead." Letting his news- paper drop to his lap and resting his elbow on the arm of his chair, he bowed his head upon his half open palm and
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COLONEL HAWKINS.
sat in silence, neither reading any more then nor speaking another word. I had all my life been hearing of Col. Hawkins, and had become familiar with his name as impor- tant in some way in connection with the Indians, but in what way I had never well understood. But it was now evident to me that he who was then resting in his fresh grave in the midst of the Indian wilderness on that little knoll by Flint river, was a greater and more valuable man than I had dreamed ; that my grandfather certainly thought greatly and highly of him,-and to me what my grandfather thought was a measure and standard both of men and things. So God ordains to him who is early left to grow up an orphan boy. Seeing how much he was affected, -naturally a strong impression was made on me. From that moment the germ of a deep, undying interest in relation to Col. Hawkins was implanted in my mind, an interest more than justified by subsequent life long gleanings of information in regard to him, and which is still strong enough to make it impossible for me to pass finally away from the commingled affairs of Georgia and the Creek nation without commemorating him and doing him homage.
Large indeed were the claims of Col. Hawkins to be loved and honored all over Georgia, and especially along the Oconee river on both sides, and between the Oconee and the Ocmulgee. His services to our people had run through a long period and were of the most signal character. At the time of his death, it was for some twenty years that he had been occupying officially between Georgia and the Indians what may almost be called a heavenly, mediatorial relation, faithfully devoting himself as peace-maker, peace-preserver, and peace-restorer, all that time between the two mutually distrustful and bitterly divided races. Of this most ardu- ous, delicate and sometimes dangerous duty, he had acquit- ted himself with an assiduity and sagacity, with an integ- rity, ability and success that had obtained for him boundless confidence and respect from both sides and rendered him dear and illustrious alike to civilized men and savages from
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COLONEL HAWKINS.
the Savannah river to the Ohio and the Mississippi. For although he was the special resident Agent for the Creek tribe only, yet such was Washington's estimate of him that he made him General Superintendent also of all the tribes south of the Ohio ; hence he became a well known and ex- ceedingly important man to them all.
It was a noble expansive humanity that first planted him among the Indians and kept him there all his life. He went and he remained among them an angel of kindness,- an apostle of conciliation, friendship and good will. Unlike McGillivray, who belonged solely and intensely to the In- dians in his feelings and actions, and with whom enmity to Georgia was a capital virtue,-unlike Elijah . Clark, who was wholly Georgian, and was to Georgia, against the In- dians, very much what McGillivray was to the Indians against Georgia,-their bitter, most dreaded, effective foe,-Benj. Hawkins' career was on and along a middle line, as it were, his part that of at once a parental guardian and protector of the Indians and a common friend and conscientious arbiter be- tween them and their civilized neighbors. It is a fact most honorable to him, that in allowing himself to be appointed to this rather unique and very trying and difficult station, Col. Hawkins was actuated in no degree by the meaner mo- tives by which men are too apt to be governed. Nothing of a money-loving, mercernary sort entered into his reasons. It was neither penury or embarrassment in his affairs, or thirst for wealth, or a chain of fortuitous circumstances, or the loss or want of prospects satisfactory to his ambition elsewhere, that operated upon him. It was his own large, man-embracing nature, and a generous passion to be useful, aye, beneficient to his kind, that impelled him. And he rises inestimably in our view, when we consider how much he gave up, what sacrifices he made to this feeling :- Sac- rifices requisite in no branch of the public service so much as in that of Indian Agency, and which in Col. Hawkin's particular case, imparted to his conduct not a little the char- acter of a romantic, sublimated benevolence and martyr-
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like self-devotion,-nothing short of which could have moved him in his actual circumstances to quit civilized hab- itation and society, and to bury himself for life in remote savage woods, and among still more savage people, from whose midst he never again emerged.
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