USA > Georgia > The history of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881, embracing the three important epochs: the decade before the war of 1861-5; the war; the period of Reconstruction, v. 1 > Part 11
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The Senate, which was an enormous body, comprising 132 senators,
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ALEXANDER R. LAWTON.
was an unusually able council. L. H. Briscoe, Phil Tracy, Peter Cone, A. S. Atkinson, Alexander R. Lawton. A. T. Hackett, Daniel S. Printup, Thomas Butler King, Geo. T. Bartlett, Harrison W. Riley, R. Spalding, R. P. Trippe, Hines Holt, George W. Jordan, T. L. Guerry, Clement A. Evans, W. S. Wallace, W. W. Paine, James L. Seward, Edward A. Flewellen and William A. Harris, were in this senate. Philemon Tracy of Macon, was a most brilliant and promising young man, who died early. A. T. Hackett is at present a state senator, a ready speaker. Col. D. S. Printup has amassed a large fortune by successful practice of the law. George T. Bartlett has been a judge of high repute. Old Gen. Harrison W. Riley was a character, an illiterate man, but a local king, an odd, burly, shrewd old fellow, long since dead. Clement A. Evans brilliantly distinguished himself as a Brigadier General in the confederate army, and is now a shining light in the Methodist Georgia conference-a preacher of great power and piety. George W. Jordan still continues to come to the legislature from Pulaski county, when he wishes. The strongest man in this legislature was probably Alexander R. Lawton of Savannah, who has frequently represented Chatham county in the Legislature, who was afterwards Quartermaster General of the confederacy, and who recently was defeated by Joseph E. Brown for the United States Senate. Gen. Lawton has been a force in Georgia for the last twenty-five years. His erect, solid, sturdy, well-set figure and fine, open resolute face, well typify the man, intel- lectually and morally. His clear intelligence, intrepid firmness, unwav- ering truth, straight-forward candor, unpretentious simplicity, blended dignity and politeness and business energy and promptness have made him a person of growing public influence. Hon. T. L. Guerry was elected president of the Senate, and F. H. West secretary.
Gov. Brown was inaugurated and entered upon his second term as the Executive of Georgia under circumstances peculiarly auspicious. He had made an adminstration especially original and salient. He had ripened from being unknown into a state influence and political power unprecedently rapid and potential. He had received a popular endorse- ment absolutely conclusive. He was enthroned in the public confidence. His ability, practical judgment, energy, immovable will, fearless courage, sagacity and devotion to the public interest, had all been shiningly shown and tested. He had performed great and undeniable public ser- vice. He had reduced the rate of taxation from nine cents to six and one half cents on $100. He had brought up the State railroad from a condition of almost entire unremuneration to where it had paid over
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GOV. BROWN'S SECOND INAUGURAL.
$400,000 in a single year, into the state treasury, to relieve the tax bur- dens. He had established a school fund of $150,000 a year. He had canceled an extra $100,000 of the public debt beyond what was due. He had been the direct means of hedging in a latitudinarian banking system with safeguards and restraints that to this day are preserved. He had vindicated the independence of the executive department of the state government from legislative encroachment. He had fearlessly inaugurated the practice of a true civil service policy. He had instilled into every branch of the state administration a healthy activity and official responsibility. And the people knew and credited him with his valuable work. His position at this time was a proud one. He stood upon a splendid vantage ground of popular influence. He had attained this power by his own unaided brain and resolute will. And from this time on he was destined to be the master spirit in Georgia affairs, holding his firm rule through all the tumultuous phases of a great strife, and amid every shifting change of personal influence.
His inaugural address was a practical, characteristic emanation. Allud- ing to the fact that he had become Governor the first time in a period of trouble and distrust, he modestly said that he had tried to meet his official responsibilities conscientiously. The people had passed their verdict upon his administration. He then entered into a brief review of the present condition of the State, making an eloquent sum- mary of the resources and advantages of the commonwealth. Amid all of this sunshine and prosperity, however, there was a cloud upon the northern horizon that portended evil. He thus clearly stated the national issue pending.
"Our fathers consented to enter the confederacy of these states only upon terms of perfect equality ; and we, as their sons, would be unworthy of our sires, if we consented to remain in the confederacy a day longer than this principle of equality is recognized. Prompted by ambitious leaders, who are willing to sacrifice their country for place and power, a majority of the people of the northern states have, formed themselves into a great sectional, political party, which virtually denies our equality in the Union."
Proceeding to state that in the great presidential contest of 1860, soon to come, the issue lay between the Black Republican and Demo- cratic parties, he thus concluded:
"I love the union of these states, and am prepared to make every reasonable sacrifice to maintain it, so long as it does not violate the rights of my native South. But should the two come into conflict, I love the rights of the South more, and am prepared to defend them at any sacrifice and at every hazard. In the present condition of affairs I would advise the citizens of Georgia to stand united with the National Democracy, so long as they continue to stand by her rights, and to protect them in the Union. But should this
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SPIRIT OF THE YEAR BEFORE THE WAR.
organization be broken down, and her constitutional rights be denied, and her equality in the Union destroyed, I would then advise her citizens to strike for independence out of the Union-and to pledge each other, 'their lives, their fortunes, and their most sacred honor,' never to forsake each other till triumphant success shall have crowned their efforts. My fervent prayer to Almighty God is, that this necessity may be averted,- that wisdom, moderation and justice may control all our National and State councils- and that the rights of the States, and the Union of the States, may be thus perpetuated."
The concluding expressions of this inaugural were the outcome of the national situation in politics, and betokened the dangerous temper of the southern people at that time, but a little more than a year before the great civil war of the century. Gov. Brown's utterances were sig- nificant, and emanating from that source, were full of portent. He was not a man to utter meaningless words. He was a singularly true expo- nent of the controlling popular sentiment, and has been all of his life. A subtle sympathy with the masses added to extraordinary common sense methods has made him a natural born, popular leader. In the premonitory phase of the great conflict that began in 1861, Gov. Brown was in profound affinity with the southern side of that important moral and political convulsion. He represented two especial and practical characteristics of southern spirit, the intense state's rights conviction, and the decisive purpose to enforce that conviction. This matter will be more fully touched upon a little farther on, but at the present the narrative of state affairs will be resumed.
Gov. Brown's second annual message was an entirely practical docu- ment. It contained some of those business-like suggestions that his common sense intelligence was ever deducing from actual experience. And they were made in that direct, unmincing sort of way that belonged to the man. There was no circumlocution, no red-tape diplomacy in Gov. Brown's official utterances. He went directly to the pith of mat- ters, and dealt with facts without ceremony. In his views he was governed by no consideration of the majesty of a coordinate branch of the state government. There was no glamour of official authority that affected him. He attacked what he conceived to be an error or a wrong practice in the General Assembly, and asserted what he conceived to be a constitutional prerogative of the Governor's office in a fearless and frank manner, and without any punctilious palaver of etiquette. He was a homespun man of business, doing what he deemed his duty care- less of opposition or consequences. He rasped in his message what is to-day, and has always been, an evil practice of legislatures, viz., neg- lecting the earlier part of a session, and hurrying business at the close, resulting in hasty and inconsiderate legislation. He also attacked
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THIE VETO POWER.
another chronic practice of legislation, demanding reform, and which the new Constitution of 1877 endeavored to correct,-trivial class and local action. He took ground against the expensive multiplication of new counties which had become a nuisance. He urged the reduction of the Senate from its unwieldy size. He assaulted the costly clerk system of the legislature, which had become an onerous pecuniary burden to the State. His entire nressage was full of plain, sensible recommenda- tious in regard to the judiciary, education, militia, etc. Among other valuable suggestions he urged what has since been commenced, a miner- alogical and geological survey of the State. He was then an ardent advocate for state aid in developing the resources of the commonwealth. His views on education, as can be supposed, were liberal and broad. All of his messages and inaugurals pressed the enlargement of free educational facilities for the people.
During his first term Gov. Brown had used the veto power more freely than any Governor in the state's history. His enemies had attempted to impair him in the public estimation for this. In his inessage he made a brief allusion to his exercise of the veto power, in which with a few sharp sentences he shattered these assaults. The constitution had assigned to the Governor certain powers and duties as well as to the General Assembly, and the people should hold himself responsible for the independent exercise of those powers. The revision of bills passed by the legislature was a constitutional power of the Executive. If the Governor out of mere respect for the General Assembly signed bills his judgment did not approve, he denied to the people the exercise of that executive revision which under the constitution they had a right to demand as a protection against hasty or unwise legislation. And the Governor went on with his vetoes. He vetoed a bill relieving a surety on a criminal bond; a man standing between the law and a criminal must take the consequences. He vetoed a bill granting a divorce to certain parties; divorces belonged to the courts. He vetoed a bill giving to certain minors the privileges of adults; the law fixing twenty- one years as legal maturity is a wise one, founded on the experience of ages, and it is safe to adhere to it. He made other vetoes, but all of them based upon clear, sound reasons of law or public policy, and «vincing the vigilant care and unyielding decision that he brought to the discharge of his executive duties.
The session of 1859 elected Hon. R. F. Lyon and Linton Stephens judges of the supreme court in the place of Henry L. Benning and Charles J. McDonald. Judge Lyon was almost wholly without speak-
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UNEXPECTED TRIBUTE TO OGLETHORPE.
ing ability as a lawyer, but he was an able counselor and gentleman of fixed views. He is still living and in the practice of his profession. The abolishment of imprisonment for debt was a subject of discussion by this Legislature. The following resolution passed the House, but seems not to have been acted on farther, and is a tardy tribute to the man it honors:
"Whereas, it has been customary from time immemorial with all civil and enlightened nations to honor the memory of their illustrious and noble dead, and emblazon their deeds in marble or brass for coming posterity, it is therefore but right and proper for us as Georgians, and the dictates of patriotism and a grateful people demand that the life, memory and character of the illustrious founder of our great and growing state, should be rescued from the darkening shade of oblivion; therefore be it
Resolved, That the Governor be authorized and requested to have erected in the capi- tol yard a handsome, elegant and appropriate marble monument to the memory of the illustrious founder of our state, Gen. James Oglethorpe, who combined in his life and character the great and noble qualities of a soldier, scholar, statesman, philanthropist and christian."
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CHAPTER XIII.
A HOT CHAPTER OF GATHERING REVOLUTION.
The Drive to Disunion .- Yancey's "Leaguers of the South."-Alec Stephens Retired .-- Toombs' Disunion Speech .- Senator Alfred Iverson's Griffin Disunion Speech .- Alec Stephens' Union Speech of Farewell at Augusta .- The two Utterances a striking picture of Contrasts .- The Disastrous Political Effect on Iverson .- The John Brown Raid, and the Georgia Legislature's Burning Resolutions .- The State Aflame,-Two State Democratic Nominating Conventions in Georgia to send dele- gates to the National Democratic Presidential Convention at Charleston .- The Split of the Georgia Democracy .- Howell Cobb and Alec Stephens, Presidential Timber .-- Cobb endorsed by one Convention, and not by the other, withdraws .- The Delegation to Charleston .- Personelle of the Georgia Conventions .- A Succession of Exciting Events .- Another Great Speech of Mr. Toombs .- " Pull Down the Pillars and Bring a Common Ruin." -- Georgia the Dominant Factor in the Revolution at hand and Toombs its Genius.
DURING the year 1859 the great conflict between the North and South was steadily maturing. Public sentiment in regard to slavery was in an inflamed and inflaming condition. The popular pulse tingled at the very mention of the subject. The Black Republicans of the North were avowed in their purpose to crush slavery. We had in the South bold open disunionists. In Alabama an association had been estab- lished by the Hon. William L. Yancey, called the "Leaguers of the South," the motto of which was, " A Southern Republic is our only safety." Alexander H. Stephens, the most conservative leader of the South, bade farewell to public life, and thus was eliminated from the national councils the most prudent, influential and eloquent union power we possessed. Mr. Toombs long before had made a burning speech in the United States Senate that thrilled the country, in which he daringly declared that unless the aggression upon slavery and the rights of the South ceased, he was for Disunion. The Supreme Court of the United States had decided in the celebrated Dred Scott case that there was no difference between slave property and other property, and a Territory could not discriminate against slaves. Mr. Douglas had planted himself upon the famous "squatter sovereignty" doctrine, which claimed the right of Territorial legislatures to determine the ques- tion of slavery in the Territories. Mr. Douglas was bitterly abused by
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SENATOR IVERSON'S DISUNION SPEECH.
a large portion of the Southern Democrats for this doctrine, while Mr. Buchanan was denounced by those who sustained Mr. Douglas.
Senator Iverson came home and made a lengthy speech in Griffin, Georgia, on the fourteenth day of July, 1859, that created intense and acrimonious discussion. It was a most aggressive Southern Rights speech. His slogan was, "Slavery, it must and shall be preserved." He denounced the Missouri Compromise which, "to save the union," had divided the national territory into "free" above and "slave " below a certain line of 36° 30'. He denounced the Wilmot Proviso, which was to shut out slavery from all the territory acquired from Mexico. He denounced the famous Compromise measures of 1850, which provided for the admission of all new states, with or without slav- ery, as their Constitutions might prescribe. He declared " all lost at the North," and the Northern Democracy "paralyzed and powerless." He denounced the Kansas bill which made Kansas a free state. He had once embraced the " squatter sovereignty " heresy, but he now repudiated it, and declared that it was the duty of Congress to protect slavery in the territories. Reading this speech of Mr. Iverson in the light of events since, it was profoundly prophetic. He declared that 1861 would witness the inauguration of a free soil President, and he boldly announced that the election of such a President he should con- sider a declaration of war against slavery, and be in favor of separation and the formation of a Southern Confederacy. He was in favor now of a square defiance to the abolition party, a repudiation of all com- promises, and a distinct unconditional demand for the equality and pro- tection of slave property everywhere.
This speech was widely circulated and heatedly discussed. Mr. Iver- son was charged with pandering to extreme Southern prejudice to get re-elected to the senate. Mr. Stephens but a few days before made his well remembered speech in Augusta, in retiring to private life, in which he had declared that the great questions of difference between the North and South he considered honorably and finally settled, and the country was in a most prosperous condition. He declared that slavery was firm and secure; that it was getting stronger and will continue to get stronger. He declared the compromise of 1850, which opened the territories to slavery and left them free to all, was a grand triumph of constitutional equality. He did not believe that we would have much more slave country without an increase of African stock. Mr. Stephens wound up with this tribute to the Union: " With our common country . I leave like good wishes and the earnest hope for undisturbed peace and
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STEPHENS AND IVERSON.
prosperity, and that our institutions unimpaired, national and state, may long continue to bless millions, yet unborn, as they have blessed us."
It would be difficult to conceive of two utterances of public view and policy so utterly and absolutely antipodal as these speeches of Mr. Stephens and Mr. Iverson. Mr. Stephens saw an era of peace, pros- perity, order, the triumph of slavery and the South, and settled princi- ples and a fixed Union. Mr. Iverson read in the public aspects, sectional strife, hopeless conflict of interest, the victory of abolitionism, con- tinued aggressions and internecine struggles with the horror of Disunion which he demanded in preference to Mr. Stephens' settlement. It is bootless now to enter into any comparison of the conflicting views of these two distinguished and able public men. Both were right in some things, and both wrong. No fallible human intelligence, however strong, can grasp the great plans of a Divine Providence. The mighty convulsion that was to end in the utter uprootal of slavery was swiftly culminating. Under the ordinary human judgment, Mr. Stephens seemed right, and the general Georgia and Southern public sentiment concurred with him. Mr. Iverson was generally condemned, and there is little doubt that his radical disunion speech lost him his re-election as United States Senator. He was marvelously and prophetically right in many things. He did not exaggerate the truth when he said that there could be no compromise with abolitionism, and there would be no let up in its war upon slavery. He saw with amazing correctness the nature of the crusade against the slave institution, and he portrayed in wonderfully accurate words the drifting portents of the times. He diagnosed the coming storm clearer than his more generally sagacious contemporary. The earthquake was at hand, and he foretold it with a wise wit. He was wonderfully right in another thing. Compromises had but postponed the day of a square fight for slavery. The true Southern policy was to have met the issue at once, and fully to have resisted concession at the beginning. The battle had to come for its existence. It would have been wise and politic to have maintained its proud and vital equality against every assault. Concession but strengthened the enemy. But Mr. Stephens was grandly right in his essentially wise and correct judgment that the proper place to fight abolitionism and defend slavery was IN THE UNION. Every advan- tage was given the North in leaving it the name, the memories, the glory, the organization and sacred power of the Union. The Southern people were with Mr. Stephens then. Less wise and firm than he, they did not stay with him when the hour of passion was upon them. And
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THE JOHN BROWN RAID.
strange, most strange inconsistency, they repudiated Iverson and his policy at its very suggestion, and followed his policy when the con- tingency he predicted came, and disregarded the counsel of the wiser Stephens. Iverson was for disunion if a sectional free soil president was elected, and the State of Georgia condemned the man and de- nounced the suggestion. When the event happened, in accordance with his prediction, they followed his counsel, though they had buried politically its author. It was a comical yet a pathetic political incon- gruity.
But none the less did Senator Iverson's speech demonstrate the domi- nant possibilities of revolution alive and flaming unconsciously yet pow- erfully, and growing swiftly in the Southern heart, and working out mysteriously the colossal purposes of Providence. Mr. Toombs, in response to an invitation, made a speech in Augusta, September 8, 1859, which was a careful, exhaustive and masterly review of the whole sub- ject of federal legislation upon slavery, in which he, notwithstanding the squatter-sovereignty views of Mr. Douglas, from which he differed, · declared his preference for him. Mr. Toombs also took position against putting a plank in the Democratic platform demanding the protection of slavery in the Territories. While he believed in the right of Con- gress to do it, he was against the exercise of the power. This speech was a remarkably conservative one.
There occurred at this time an incident that stimulated sectional pas- sion to fever heat. Old John Brown, or, as he was better known, Ossa- wattamie Brown, of Kansas notoriety, organized a slave insurrection at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Both the Governor of Virginia, Henry A. Wise, and President Buchanan promptly acted in suppressing the mat- ter. This occurrence was like the application of a lighted match to a powder magazine. It inflamed the whole country, North and South. It drove argument and reason from the public forum. The South believed that the Harper's Ferry affair was but the small part of a general abolition movement to strike down slavery. In the Georgia Legislature Mr. Hartridge offered a set of resolutions declaring the fixed determination of the people of Georgia as to their future course and conduct. Referring to the John Brown raid, they said: "Fanaticism grown bold by impunity has invoked the aid of treason, murder and rapine, has crossed the border, and, advancing upon Southern soil, has spread bloodshed and excitement throughout a Southern State." These bold words of accusation concluded with this resolve:
" The State of Georgia holds herself ready to enter into any concert of action with
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TWO STATE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTIONS CALLED.
the sister Southern States, which will secure their common rights under the Constitu- tion in the Union, or if that be no longer possible, their independence and security out of it."
Mr. Lewis, of Hancock, offered an amendment of bitter defiance that "We do not waive or postpone the conflict which such aggressions seek and provoke," and further, that the history of the past taught us " that it is unreasonable to expect the protection of our rights by the Federal government." Resolutions were passed thanking Governor Wise and President Buchanan for their prompt action in the matter. These official declarations of the General Assembly will afford some concep- tion of the spirit of the people of Georgia and the crushing drift of sentiment to a dissolution of the Union and Southern independence.
The National Democratic Convention to nominate a Presidential can- didate was to meet in Charleston, S. C. Already public attention in Georgia was converging to that important gathering. On the evening of the 21st of November, 1850, a large portion of the Democratic members of the Legislature met in the Representative Chamber in Milledgeville. Peter Cone presided; James J. Diamond was Secretary. - Thomas F. Jones, of Newton, offered resolutions, which were adopted, calling a State Convention for the Sth of December to appoint delegates to Charleston. On the 22d of November the State Executive Committee, composed of D. C. Campbell, E. J. McGehee, Thos. P. Saffold and S. W. Burney, called the Democratic State Convention for the second Monday in March, 1860. Col. Wm. K. De Graffenreid, of this commit- tee, dissented from the committee and joined the Democratic members of the Legislature in their call for a convention for December, before the Legislature adjourned. Thus there was a conflict upon this matter. It seemed as if the unfortunate slavery controversy that was convulsing the country and so swiftly sweeping to a great upheaval of peace, was affecting everything with its discordant spirit of dissension. The strife in the Georgia Democracy became lively over this twin convention busi- ness. The practice had begun as far back as 1842 of the party mem- bers of the Legislature calling State Conventions to appoint delegates to the Presidential nominating conventions, and had continued unbro- kenly up to this time. And these State conventions consisted chiefly of the members of the Legislature, who represented their counties in the convention. If counties were not represented or represented only in part in the Legislature by Democrats, such counties sent other dele- gates. The call of the members, therefore, for the convention of the Sth of December was in conformity with precedent, and its advocates
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