USA > Georgia > The bench and bar of Georgia: memoirs and sketches. With an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790-1857, etc., volume II > Part 37
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Friends and brothers, you are like the mighty storm, we are like the tender and bending tree. We must now bow before you. You have torn us up by the roots, but still you are our brothers and friends. You have promised to replant us in a better soil, and to watch over us and nurse us.
Friends and brothers, the day is eome when we surrender the country of our forefathers,-land of our nativity; our homes,-the places of our youthful diversions. We surrender it to our brothers and friends, and our hearts are glad that we were not foreed to do so by our enemies. We go : our people will seek new lands, our hearts remain with you !
In relation to the difficulties growing out of the treaty and the efforts of Gov. Troup to avert them, it is proper to remark that he despatched Col. Henry G. Lamar, one of his aides-de-camp, to the refractory Indian towns Tuk-au-batchee and Cassetau, to deliver to the chiefs and headmen a special talk, which opened thus :-
I hear bad things of you. You threaten McIntosh and his people because they listened to their father the President and ceded the lands to the Georgians. They aeted like good and dutiful children. You opposed yourselves to the wishes of your great father, who was doing the best for the interest of his red people, and would not sign the treaty. But this you did, as I believe, under the influence of bad men, who pretended to be your friends, but who cared nothing about you. Now, I tell you, take eare and walk straight. MeIntosh and his people are under my protee- tion as well as under the protection of the United States. If any harm is done by you or any of your people to MeIntosh or his people, I will treat you in the same way as if you were to come into our white settle- ments and do the like. I will pursue you until I have full satisfaction. Do not let bad men persuade you that, because you live in and near to Alabama, you will be safe. If you commit one aet of hostility on this side the line I will follow and punish you.
To hear what Col. Lamar had to say, the chiefs immediately
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assembled in council. After delivering his message through an interpreter, he added excellent remarks of his own, pointing out the folly and wickedness of their opposition to the treaty and of their bloody threats against McIntosh and his party. As Col. Lamar read documents to the council, he was occasionally inter- rupted by Ho-po-eithlea-Yoholough and Little Prince, who both disclaimed any hostility to McIntosh and the other chiefs who signed the treaty. The colonel said in council, March 7, 1825 :-
We have heard that you have listened to the counsel of bad men ; that they have wrought among you an angry excitement ; and that McIntosh and his chiefs are to be the victims to appease your exasperated feelings. You are warned to turn from such wicked counsel; and be assured no friend true to the interest of the red man would recommend the gratifica- tion of such feelings. If you should attempt it your nation would be divided. Take a number of reeds, bind them close: you cannot break them. Separate them or divide the bunch, and the weakest of you can break them in pieces. This would be the condition of your people. Divided, you would fall, without the power to make one manly struggle. You would be surrounded by white men, who, by reason of your bad conduct, you would make your common enemies. They outnumber the trees in your forest. I have said that McIntosh and those who signed the treaty acted in strict obedience to the request of your father. Listen, and learn his will, and in future let it guide your determinations.
In his report to the Governor, March 10, 1825, Col. Lamar says :-
My own opinion, which is partly conjectural and in part formed from observation and conversation had with some of the Indians, is this: leave them to themselves. If they clearly understand what are the wishes of the President, they will conform to them, (I speak of them collectively as a people.) They have no correct notions of our Government and their relative connection with it. Their conclusion is that the powers of the President are absolute, and that he has an unquestionable right to coerce obedience.
Some of the influences stated by Col. Lamar to have produced opposition to the treaty may be traced in the following extract of a letter from Col. Samuel Hawkins (the interpreter of the National Council) to Gov. Troup, dated April 12, 1825 :-
SIR :- I have taken the liberty of addressing you on this occasion, be- lieving you to be the friend of our nation, and of stating to you some facts which relate to the conduct of our Agent, Mr. John Crowell, which I will at any time, if called upon, swear to. When the Agent, John Crowell, first paid money to the nation as their annuity in 1821, he paid it in hundred and fifty dollar bills to the principal chiefs, to be divided by them to their respective towns. The Big Warrior told the Agent at the time that the money could not be fairly divided, for the want of smaller bills, and requested the Agent the next time he paid them off to
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bring small bills. Before the Agent had ever met the chiefs in council, his brother, Mr. Thomas Crowell, brought to Fort Mitchell a large stock of goods; and, when the Agent came to the council-house, he told the chiefs that his brother had goods and that he had given him a license, and that they might buy what goods they wanted. The chiefs, having what money was to go to their respective towns of large bills of fifty and hundred dollars, were compelled to go to Thomas Crowell and buy do- mestic homespun at fifty cents per yard, of the same description of goods that Gen. McIntosh had furnished the nation at twenty-five cents per yard only a few months ago, or to make an unequal division of their money, or go to the settlements for change. At the time the annuity was paid to the nation in 1822, the Agent, John Crowell, again paid off the nation in fifty and hundred dollar bills; and, when the chiefs asked him for change, he said his brother was provided with change or small bills, and at the same time cautioned the chiefs against counter- feiters and said there were a great many counterfeit bills and many suspi- cious persons about, but that the change which his brother had was genuine. The chiefs, after receiving their respective amounts allowed their towns, went to Mr. Thomas Crowell, the Agent's brother, and asked him to change their money: he told them, the chiefs, (myself acting as interpreter,) that he would give the chiefs of the towns each five dollars in cash, but that the balance of the money must be laid out in goods. Some of the chiefs agreed to do so, but others refused and went off.
The foregoing quotations may perhaps be considered by some as rather too voluminous in the memoir of Mr. Torrance; but, as he acted a conspicuous part in the scenes which followed, these frag- ments of history are deemed pertinent.
McIntosh was murdered on the night of 29th April, 1825. Passing by the communication of Gen. Alexander Ware, of Fayette county, to Gov. Troup, dated May 1st, detailing the force of hostile Indians engaged in the massacre, the tragedy will be related in language the more touching.for its simplicity. From her asylum in the white settlements, Peggy, the wife of Gen. McIntosh, writes to Messrs. Campbell and Meriwether, under date of May 3, as follows :-
When you see this letter stained with the blood of my husband, the last drop of which is now spilt for the friendship he has shown for your people, I know you will remember your pledge to us in behalf of your nation, that in the worst of events you would assist and protect us; and when I tell you that, at daylight on Saturday morning last, hundreds of the hostiles surrounded our house, and instantly murdered General McIntosh and Tome Tustunnuggee, by shooting near one hundred balls into them, (Chilly and Moody Kennard making their escape through a window.) They then commenced burning and plundering in the most unprincipled way, so that here I am, driven from the ashes of my smoking dwelling, left with nothing but my poor, little, naked, hungry children, who need some immediate aid from our white friends; and we lean upon you while you lean upon your Government. About the same time of the morning that they committed the horrid act on the general, another party
·
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caught Col. Samuel Hawkins and kept him tied till about three o'clock, when the chiefs returned from our house and gave orders for his execution in the same way, and refused to leave his implements to cover his body up with, so that it was left exposed to the fowls of the air and the beasts of the forests; and Jenny and her child are here in the same condition as we are.
Jane Hawkins, daughter of Gen. McIntosh and wife of Col. Samuel Hawkins, whose violent deaths are related above, thus bewails her misfortunes in a letter to the Commissioners of May 3, concluding,-
My condition admits of no equal, and mocks me when I try to speak of it. After I was stripped of my last frock but one, humanity and duty called on me to pull it off and spread it over the body of my dead husband, (which was allowed no covering,) which I did, as a farewell witness of my affection. I was twenty-five miles from any friend, (but sister Catharine, who was with me,) and had to stay all night in the woods, surrounded by a thousand hostile Indians, who were constantly insulting and affrighting us. And now I am here with only one coat to my back, and not a morsel of bread to save us from perishing, or a rag of a blanket to cover my poor little boy from the sun at noon or the dew at night. I am a poor, distracted orphan and widow.
Gov. Troup's letter of 3d May to Col. Joseph Marshall, a half- breed chief and a signer of the treaty, is a fine specimen of ener- getic composition. It is given entire :-
FRIEND :- I heard with sorrow yesterday of the death of our common . friend McIntosh. All good hearts among the whites deplore it as much as you. Satisfaction will be demanded, and satisfaction shall be had ; but we must not be hasty about it. We will be cool and deliberate in the measures we take, and then we will be certain to be right. You be peace- able and quiet until you hear from me, in the same manner as if nothing had happened to McIntosh or Tustunnuggee; but, depend on it, my re- venge I will have : it will be such as we have reason to believe the Great Spirit would require,-such as our Christ would not think too much, and yet so much all red and white men will be content with. Mind what I say to you until you hear from me.
To show that the Governor was in earnest, he issued orders, 5th May, through his aide-de-camp, Col. Seaborn Jones, which, after reciting the outrages upon McIntosh and other chiefs,-
Ordered, That Major-General Wimberly, Major-General Shorter, and · Major-General Miller, of the 5th, 6th, and 7th divisions, forthwith proceed to take the necessary measures to hold in readiness their respective divi- sions to march at a moment's warning, either by detachments or other- wise, as they may be commanded by authority of the Legislature or of the commander-in-chief.
In the mean time, the Governor was not unmindful of the helpless condition of the friendly Indians who had taken refuge in the white VOL. II .- 20
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settlements, and he thus wrote to Generals Wimberly and Miller, under date of 5th May :-
I wish you in the distribution of your orders to instruct the different quartermasters, particularly of the frontier-counties, where the Indians are most likely to take refuge under the protection of our arms, to look to their comfortable support by contracts, which you will be pleased to in- struct them to form with strict regard to economy. The funds will be advanced by the State, on the credit of the United States or the Indians, and will be reimbursed by one or the other.
Writing to the Governor from Macon, May 6, General C. J. McDonald says :-
A Mr. Freeman-a gentleman no doubt of high character-has just arrived in this place from Alabama with his family: he states that the Indians appear to be in an alarming state of excitement, and, from their general demeanor, so far as it came under his observation, seem determined upon mischief. Their professions, however, so far as he understood them, are entirely friendly to the whites, with the exception of the Agent : on his destruction both parties secm determined.
After thanking Gen. McDonald for the preparation he had made to take the field pursuant to orders from Major-General Wimberly, the Governor thus responds the next day :-
I hope that no harm has befallen him, (the Agent;) and, if not, you may assure him that any force which may be necessary to reduce to order and obedience any militant tribes of the Creeks within our limits shall be furnished promptly, under the command of a trusty officer, who will be . charged with full powers to act efficiently, under any exigencies which may arise.
Col. John Crowell, the Agent, once a Representative in Congress from the Alabama Territory, has been dead many years; and it would be uncharitable to his memory to assert that he wilfully directed or contrived the murder of McIntosh. He was a man of strong passions, and wielded great influence over the Indians. An old Indian who was present at the killing of McIntosh then stated to Mr. Francis Flournoy, a traveller and lodger in the house of McIntosh when it was attacked, that the Agent
Told the council that the only way to get their land back was to kill all that had any hand in selling it, and burn and destroy all they had which they could not carry away, and after that other chiefs never would attempt to sell their land, for fear of being treated in the same way,-and, when they had completed the above as ordered by the council, they would send word to the President that they had saved their land and had taken it back, and now he and the white people should never have it again.
The above is part of a statement sworn to by Mr. Flournoy on
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the 16th day of May, 1825, before H. Allen, a justice of the Inferior Court of Baldwin county.
At May Term, 1825, of the United States Circuit Court for the district of Georgia, held at Milledgeville, the Grand Jury in their presentments say :-
The Grand Jury deem it necessary to the character of the Government of their country that the authors, perpetrators, anders, and abettors of the crimes lately committed (the murder of McIntosh and others) should be sought for, and, when ascertained, prosecuted and severely punished. They have no language strong enough to mark their abhorrence of the white persons, if any, who have seduced or irritated the unhappy Indians to perpetrate this tragedy. They recommend the severest scrutiny into the conduct of all white persons in the Nation, and the judicial prosecution of each and every one of them against whom sufficient evidence to justify it shall be discovered.
These extracts close the narrative until it shall be resumed in- cidentally in noting the acts of the commission of which Mr. Tor- rance was a member.
Gov. Troup convened the Legislature in special session on the 23d of May, 1825. After calling their attention to the treaty, and the disposal of the lands acquired under it, with a searching review of the occurrences referred to in this memoir, Gov. Troup concluded his message by alluding to the resolutions of the Hon. Rufus King in the United States Senate, and the doctrines imputed to the Attorney-General adverse to the rights of the South respect- ing domestic slavery. As this portion of the message has a national renown, and drew from Mr. Jefferson the application of the epithet " hot-headed Georgian" to Gov. Troup, it is here given :-
If this matter (slavery) be an evil, it is our own; if it be a sin, we can implore the forgiveness of it: to remove it, we ask not even their sympathy or assistance. It may be our physical weakness ; it is our moral strength. If, like the Greeks and Romans, the moment we cease to be masters we are slaves, we thenceforth minister-like the modern Italians-to the luxury and pleasures of our masters. Poets, painters, musicians, and sculptors we may be : the moral qualities, however, which would make us fair partakers of the grandeur of a great empire would be gone. We would stand, stripped and desolate, under a fervid sun and upon a generous soil, a mockery to ourselves, and the very contrast of what, with a little firmness and foresight, we might have been. I en- treat you therefore most earnestly, now that it is not too late, to step forth, and, having exhausted the argument, to stand by your arms.
The correspondence between Gov. Troup and the Secretary of War relative to the conduct of Maj. Gen. Gaines, Col. T. P. Andrews, Special Agent, and other functionaries of the General Government, covers too large a space and involves too great a variety of facts to
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be analyzed here .* This celebrated controversy was the first prac- tical assertion of State sovereignty in this Union. Other States had announced the theory ; but it was reserved for Georgia, under the lead of her enlightened and fearless Chief-Magistrate, to prac- tise it triumphantly. The Creek lands were surveyed, in defiance of the President and his major-general. Some idea may be formed of the excitement of that period by a few extracts from public documents.
For causes deemed amply sufficient, Gov. Troup had suspended all official intercourse with Col. Andrews and Gen. Gaines. In his letter to the President, dated August 7, 1825, the Governor . says :-
Gen. Gaines is reported to me to have said, in the presence of one of the Commissioners on the part of the State, that, if twenty-three States out of the twenty-four were to pronounce the Agent guilty, he would not believe them.
Gen. Gaines has been guilty of the childish indiscretion of threatening to cut off the head or ears of citizens of Georgia who happened to offend him, as if you had given him his sword for that special service. But in- deed, sir, it is high time to dismiss the subject of this officer.
In maintaining correspondence with the Government of the United States, I have not permitted any false considerations of dignity, or any false estimates of forms and ceremonies which usually govern diplomatic intercourse between States, to interpose the least difficulty. So far from it, I have cheerfully descended to the level of every thing it pleased you at any time to employ as your representative or organ,-from the clerks of your Bureaus up to your major-generals by brevet,-and have acted and treated them as equals.
In the deportment of some of these I have experienced arrogance, self- sufficiency, a haughty and contemptuous carriage, and a most insulting interference with our local politics,-and these characteristics not exhibited to one, but to all the constituted authorities of the State. Now, sir, suffer me in conclusion to ask if these things have been done in virtue of your instructions, express or implied, or by the authority of any warrant from you whatever,-and, if not so done, whether you will sanction or adopt them as your own, and thus hold yourself responsible to the Government of Georgia.
A brief notice of the labors of the commission will suffice. Messrs. Warren Jourdan, William W. Williamson, Seaborn Jones, and William H. Torrance proceeded to its fulfilment with energy and despatch. Michael J. Kenan, Esq., was appointed Secretary to the Commissioners, and rendered efficient aid by his skill and promptness. Col. John S. Thomas and Capt. Bowen were the acting marshals to execute the orders and process of the Commis- sioners. A large mass of evidence was collected by the examina-
* But see the memoir of Col. D. G. Campbell, vol. i. chap. 5.
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tion of witnesses in various parts of the Creek Nation and else- where. Many official notes passed between the Commissioners and Col. Andrews, Gen. Gaines, and the Agent, in the course of the investigation. The Agent was represented by his counsel, Col. Samuel Rockwell, who usually met the Commissioners on notice that testimony was to be taken. The missionaries were called forth as witnesses. Some of the Indian chiefs were exa- mined in council, and every proper source applied to for informa- tion as to the guilt or innocence of the Agent. The facts thus collected were laid before the Governor in two reports from the Commissioners, one dated July 16 and the other August 23, 1825, the whole forming about one hundred printed pages. Curious and exciting disclosures were made, implicating the Agent and other appointees of the General Government in a conspiracy to thwart the interests of Georgia.
The toils of the commission were fully shared by Mr. Torrance. He and Col. Jones were ripe lawyers, and knew well the points necessary to be established. They and their colleagues acted in all fairness to the adverse party. Truth was their object, and they pursued it with zeal and industry.
For devoting so much space to the treaty and the matters growing out of it, the author makes this explanation :- It was ad- mitted to be an extraordinary contest ; and, as such, the particulars ought to be collected for the young men who are to succeed the actors in that struggle between State sovereignty on the one hand and the powers claimed for the Federal Government on the other. Mr. Torrance' was a warm personal and political friend of Gov. Troup, and took an active part in defence of his administration through the press and other channels. These events deserve to become historical, and to this end the author has introduced them here as appropriate.
After being routed in his diplomatic functions, and his glaring improprieties exposed by the Governor, Col. Andrews published a vindication of himself in the National Journal at Washington City, under date of September 9, 1825, in which he indulges very rude personalities toward the Georgia Commissioners, as evidenced by the following passage :-
Col. W. H. Torrance. This gentleman has been convicted within about a year, by a sentence of the court of the place in which he resides, (Mil- ledgeville,) of a disgraceful slander, and a considerable fine imposed by the sentence of the court as a punishment.
This reflection on Mr. Torrance having gone to the country
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through the news-press in every quarter at the time, justice requires a statement of the facts. The author never saw the article which was deemed libellous by a jury, and is therefore unable to give its substance,-which, in connection with the canvass between Gov. Troup and General John Clark, would prove, as he has been informed, no "disgraceful slander." It was a review of Gen. Clark's pretensions as a public man, in which particular acts of his life, especially his overbearing temper and the outrages it led to, (chastising judges, and the like,) were severely animadverted upon. It was for this offence -- a newspaper communication -- that Mr. Tor- rance was indicted in the county of Baldwin, where General Clark resided, and the whole of his great influence was brought to bear on the trial in the form of an appeal to save him from dishonor. The result was that the gentleman accused had to pay a fine of one hundred dollars; and thus terminated the affair. No one ever thought less of Mr. Torrance, with a knowledge of the circum- stances.
In this address of Col. Andrews a full share of vituperation is lavished on Captains Bowen and Thomas, the marshals to the Georgia commission. No person attached to it was worthy of respect, in the estimation of the President's envoy, except Mr. Kenan. Not for any value to which the opinion of Col. Andrews is entitled respecting the officers or citizens of Georgia, but merely as an act of justice, a different passage is quoted from his pen :-
Mr. Kenan, the Secretary of the Board of Commissioners, so far as I observed or learned any thing of his character or conduct, is a young gen- tleman of capacity and merit, who, at the same time that he discharged his duty to the Board and to the State of Georgia, conducted himself as a gentleman toward all those who had occasion to have any intercourse with him.
About this time the professional engagements of Mr. Torrance rapidly multiplied. He was retained in nearly all the litigated cases in the courts which he was in the habit of attending,-several in the Ocmulgee, Flint, and Southern circuits respectively. At the session of the Legislature in 1827, he was employed by Col. Joseph Blackshear, of Laurens, to exhibit charges, in the form of a memorial, against the Hon. Moses Fort, Judge of the Superior Courts of the Southern circuit, for misconduct on the bench and for habitual intemperance. The complaint was referred to a select committee, of which the Hon. Charles Dougherty was chair- man, in the House of Representatives, before whom witnesses were examined touching the allegations. Mr. Torrance appeared as
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