USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 24
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had taken a headright in the latter part of the old century, and who were poor and illiterate, had now become owners of large plantations. They were, many of them, unable to read or write, but they knew how to make cotton.
Extravagance and luxury was at a discount; simplicity and plainness at a high premium.
The people of middle Georgia were no longer frontiers- men. Even the newly settled counties had none of the rugged features of the frontier, but they were still unlike their low-country fellow citizens.
The coast had been settled for near a hundred years be- fore this epoch. The planters had constant intercourse with the city. The wealthy among them were very wealth- thy, and the poor very poor. They had no middle class. The up-country people had no intercourse with their low- country fellow citizens. They were alike Georgians. Their ancestors came from the same parts of Europe, but pecu- liar environments had affected each class; and there was as much difference between the sturdy farmer of Greene and Hancock and the rice-planter of Liberty, as between a sturdy Irishman and a canny Scotchman. In many re- spects the Yorkshire man and the cockney differed nc more in their vernacular than the up-country rustic and the low-country planter. Their manners were as different as their pronunciation. The up-country man was brusque independent and unconventional; the low-country man fas tidious, considerate and mild-mannered. These people dic not coalesce when they came together.
The social life of Georgia had now taken the feature: which it wore for many years afterward, and at the risk o some repetition I ought now to portray these differen types of Georgians with some care.
The low-country people in many cases were large slave holders. They lived on their plantations during the winte
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and at their city homes, or homes on the islands, during the summer.
The planters and their families were generally people of finished manners, of good culture and of literary taste. They were very exclusive in their social relations and dis- tant to strangers, but exceedingly genial to those admitted into the charmed circle. Their houses were airy and com- fortable. Generally they were of one story, with very wide verandas and roomy halls. Their tables were well laden with the products of their own fields, and when near the coast, with fish and oysters. There was careful atten- tion given to table furnishing, and silver fifty years old, and china which had been imported by the Savannah mer- chants from Hongkong, were brought out whenever there were guests.
The best periodicals, of which there were few in Amer- ica, came to their homes, and the best books of the old English writers were on their shelves. Servants were well trained and were polite and attentive. The planter's wife and daughters had little to do except to see to the proper care of the little children or aged and helpless slaves, and entertain the guests who came at all hours.
The rice-planter and the sea-island planter were active, money-loving, energetic men. They were sometimes men of broad culture, like Mr. Cooper or Mr. Spalding, who lived among their books, and sometimes men of pleasure who followed the hounds with a sportsman's zest; but gen- erally they were intent on the one point of building up the fortunes of the family. They had generally large increase every year in their negro property. Their cattle multiplied in large numbers. They had unbounded credit with their factors. They were generally Episcopalians in religion, except in Liberty, and while Democrats in their political faith, were socially aristocrats in feeling and manner. They
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were men of a high sense of honor, guileless and unsuspi- cious, true husbands, good masters, delightful friends; not always temperate, and always ready to fight.
The negroes on the rice-fields and on the sea islands did. not differ from each other; and while to those who had never known them they seemed unhappy savages, they were the best satisfied laborers on earth. This negro was but one remove from the African savage. He revered his master as a prince royal and his mistress as a queen, and. dreaded the overseer, and especially the black driver, with a holy dread. As yet but little intelligent effort had been made to Christianize him. The traditions, the folk-lore, the superstitions his father had brought with him from Africa, he still held to. He had his fetish and feared with holy fear the conjurer or hoodoo. He had no world beyond. the island on which he made cotton, or the quarter of the rice plantation where he had his cabin.
The rich and poor whites living in this section of Geor- gia had drifted farther and farther apart. The overseer was the trusted employee of the planter, and his family was treated with great kindness and respect by the ladies of the big house; but there was no social intercourse.
The life of the planter of Burke, Jefferson, Wilkes, Co- lumbia and other middle Georgia counties was like and yet. unlike that of the rice-planter or sea-islander. This Georgian was an American of long descent. His ancestors were Virginians; he had the proudest blood of America and. England in his veins, but he was disposed to ignore that fact, and boasted of his contempt for such claims.
The middle Georgia planter had in most cases made his. fortune, and, as he was generally from Virginia, enjoyed it in a Virginia way. He had come to Georgia thirty years before, and for a considerable time had lived in his log cabin on the frontier, where the angry Creeks threatened. the settlements with their raids. He had ridden with.
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Clarke and Irwin in pursuit of the robber horde, and housed his family in the blockhouse on Fort creek while he and his slaves made corn on the rich bottoms of Shoulderbone, But the Indians had been long gone; the war for free trade and sailors' rights was over; the cotton-gin had been set up; and wealth had poured in upon him. So he built his great square house with eight rooms twenty feet square, with broad piazza and wide halls. He bought a gig for his wife, and sent his sons to Dr. Waddell and his daughters to Mrs. Dugas to school. His fields were broad; his slaves were many; his flocks of sheep and goats were large, and his cattle were in great herds. His hogs were numerous, and, alas! his still turned the produce of his orchard into peach and apple brandy, which he always kept on his side- board. He was a just master. He gave his negroes a peck of meal and three pounds and a half of bacon a week, and in after years a quart of muscovado molasses in addition. His negroes also had their three suits of clothing and a stout pair of shoes every year. He gave them their holi- days on every Sunday and on Christmas week The old planter generally dressed in homespun, and counted no man his better.
The good women of middle Georgia society at this period and for twenty years afterward were the best and busiest of their kind. They had married in the early years of the century, and had known but little of the school- teacher and had never seen a dancing-master. Reaching womanhood before they ever saw a town or city, they had the simple, genial manners learned from their old Virginia mothers. They had culture, but it had not come from books. They knew all kinds of domestic work; they could weave and spin and knit, and, if need be, cook and wash; but they had too much to do to attend to these homely duties themselves. They saw to the welfare of the negroes, especially. the ailing women and the little children. They
ate
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knew the virtues of boneset and sage and catnip; they could dress a blister or make a poultice or bind a bandage with the skill of a physician. These matrons led busy lives; to see to the making up of negro clothing; to see after the kitchen garden and the flower garden; to go to week-day meetings and to get ready for camp-meeting; to spread a generous table every day, and especially when Brother Pierce or Brother Mercer or Dr. Cunningham came-kept them constantly employed. They were proud of their Vir- ginia lineage, and spoke of the old commonwealth as if no spot on earth could ever be like that. They had read no books but the Bible and "The Pilgrim's Progress," and pos- sibly "Charlotte Temple" or "Alonzo and Melissa"; took no magazines, and had no fashion plates. Their carpets were made of rags; and they had cut the rags themselves, and had them woven by their own trusted weavers. Their house- hold furniture was plain; but the splint-bottomed chairs were immaculately white, and the beds were covered with the snowy white counterpanes in summer and the red or blue-check counterpanes in winter, woven by their own handmaidens. They ruled their households with a kindly rule, and the old squires bowed submissively to their man- dates.
The hardships of the frontier, by 1820, were left behind in all the older counties, and wealth and plenty was in the land. The lavish living of the old Virginian was repro- duced in all parts of middle Georgia.
The home of Ralph Banks still stands in Elbert county, where it was built by his own carpenters nearly seventy- five years ago. It has fourteen large rooms above ground, cellars beneath. The inventory of his estate shows scores of slaves, thousands of acres of land, horses, sheep, cattle goats, wheat, oats, barley, and, alas! good Methodist as he was, one hundred gallons of peach brandy, sundry barrel: of hard cider and a barrel of wine. On the estate all the
The
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clothing was woven by hand; the leather was made by the planter's own tanner, and the shoes by his shoemaker.
It must be admitted that in the early part of the century there were stills on most of the large plantations, and that apples and peaches, which were produced in great quanti- ties, were turned into brandy, which was to be drunk mod- erately and thankfully. Everybody drank in those days, except a few very strict Methodists. On every sideboard there was a decanter, and the host invited each guest to help himself-which he generally did, sometimes asking a blessing from heaven on this good creature now provided. No one was considered to be genuinely hospitable unless he passed the decanter.
The picture I have just drawn is of the planter who belonged to the wealthy class; but these were by no means the majority of the people. There was still in all the older counties a much larger number of small farmers than of planters. Many of them had no negroes at all; a great many only a few. They owned land and live stock, and by hard work made an abundant living. They lived in great simplicity. Their cabins were still of logs, and were often- times the same which they built thirty years before, save that a few sheds had been added to the main room as the family increased, and that a kitchen and dining-room were in another cabin in the yard. These people were the Georgia yeomanry. They had but little education; many of them could not read, and but a few of them could write their names. They were not hirelings or tenants; they were proprietors, and were as proud and independent as if they had owned princely domains. As a body they were honest. Marriages were early, and children were many. They had but few luxuries; they worked hard and lived hard, but they had an abundance of plain food and cared for nothing more than their farms produced. They did not hesitate to take a dram on all proper occa-
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sions, and when they went to town they often came from it "disguised in liquor," which was a venial sin to be acknowledged at the next monthly meeting of the church. They had little intercourse with the rich people and the town folks, and were generally at dagger's point with the rich man's "niggers," who regarded them with great con- tempt and called them "poor buckra." They dressed in homespun fabrics, and many of them, men and women, went barefoot during the summer, except when they went to town or to meeting.
These middle class people have been confounded with those below them who were known as "crackers"; but they were an entirely distinct class. It cannot be denied that scattered over Georgia there were to be found the unques- tionable "cracker"-the humblest of Georgians. He was not a yeoman, nor was he a landholder: when land was granted freely he would not pay office fees; but rented or "squatted." He was lazy and shiftless; and, while he had not a few good qualities, he was rather a poor citi- zen. He seemed to have a fondness for poor land and whisky, and wherever there was a post-oak ridge he built his cabin there. He never had a comfort, nor ever cared for one; he had but little, and seemed to want but little. He was not proud of anything but his independence and his ignorance. He was but a reproduction of the humblest English laborer or Irish peasant, from whom he was de- scended. He had no aspiration, and rarely rose to a better place. He was not, by any means, only a Georgian, for his double was found in every section of the United States. The pioneer farmers were in appearance like "the poor white," the "moss-back," the "sand-lapper," the "cracker"; but it was in appearance only. The genesis of this race of "crackers" must be sought for beyond the seas, and his first American ancestor was likely a vagrant lad picked up in the English or Scotch seaport and brought over by a sea
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captain who sold him to a tobacco-planter for five years. When his time was out he began to move and his descend- ants have kept moving ever since. He was always found where there were new settlements, and where land was poor and life was hard. In many respects he has in 1900 the same features which belonged to his class two hundred years ago; he has not degenerated-he has simply never advanced. Apparently he has disappeared; but start a cotton mill, or open a mine, or settle a new country, and he comes. He is scattered through the mountains, in the pine woods, or is now working at the poorest paid labor in the cotton mills.
The Creek Indians were never reconciled to the cession of their lands, and were disposed to depredate on frontiers- men, and, through the agency of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, in 1818 the Seminole part of the Creeks rose against the whites, and General Andrew Jackson was sent to suppress them. The war was a short one; the Indians were quickly conquered; Ambrister and Arbuthnot were hanged, and a body of friendly Indians were cruelly massacred by some Georgia troops. The Seminoles were driven to east Florida, and for twenty years there was peace on the frontier.
Political excitement ran very high between Clarke and Crawford, and was the more rancorous because the issues were personal rather than political. These parties were in the height of their antagonism, and the Clarke party had, just as this period closes, won a signal victory by electing John Clarke governor. The animosity felt toward him and his adherents was intense, and they paid it back with in- terest.
There were now in Georgia six newspapers: Augusta Chronicle, Savannah Republican, Washington News, Georgia Journal (Milledgeville), Savannah Georgian, and the Recorder (Milledgeville). These papers were about evenly divided between the two parties. It had not been a time for book-
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making, and not a book (save a book of laws) had been published in the eight years.
The war between England and the United States, to which we have alluded in the last chapter, did not for some time seriously involve Georgia. There was some little alarm felt on the coast, and a few troops were stationed in Savan- nah and St. Marys; but the restless Seminoles and bitter Creeks were on the war-path in both Southern Georgia and Alabama. A body of Georgia troops under the command of General John Floyd, who had come to Georgia a Vir- ginia ship-carpenter and acquired a large estate, and who was a man of real parts, marched into the Indian Nation beyond the Ocmulgee, near Columbus. Here he built Fort Mitchell, and, marching westward, fought the battle of Autosee, in which he was wounded. The general was the first man to march through the great Okefinokee swamp, where he cut a road known as Floyd's trail. He recovered from his wound, and was in command at the battle of Chal- libee, where the whites were again victorious. The war ended with the battle of New Orleans early in 1815.
During this period the war with England and the war of the Creeks came to an end.
By the treaty made by General Jackson with the Creeks all of the southern and southwestern parts of the State still held by the Creeks was surrendered to the State of Georgia; the Cherokees relinquished their control over a part of their country; and by a second treaty by ex-Gov- ernor Mitchell the Creeks surrendered their control over that country between the Ocmulgee and the Flint, which was afterward divided into Walton, Gwinnett, Hall, Haber- sham, Appling, Early, Irwin, Emanuel and Rabun counties.
In giving an account of these new counties it may be best to divide them into groups. There were three kinds of country represented: The mountains, including Rabun
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and Habersham; the hill country of Gwinnett, Hall and Wal- ton; the pine woods of Emanuel, Early, Irwin and Appling.
The mountain country of upper Georgia was largely occupied by the Cherokee Indians. Only two counties were now formed in this territory. The country was very wild and very sparsely settled. It was exceedingly rough, and the few inhabitants at that time were perhaps the most thriftless of the Georgia people. They had gone into the mountains, where they built log cabins of the most primi- tive sort, with dirt floors and leaky roofs. They planted some corn and had a few cows. The country was full of game, and they depended largely upon their skill with the rifle to secure food for their families. Clothing was hard to get and money they never had.
The pioneer went once a year to the new town of Athens or Clarksville and traded his peltry for a little powder and lead, an axe and a hoe and some iron, and a little " spun truck," as he called cotton yarn, and went back to his mountain cabin to stay there for the year.
During the summer life was not so hard. The crofter in Scotland, the peasant in Ireland and the English farm laborer, from whom in all likelihood the first mountaineers came, had in many respects a harder life than their Georgia descendants, for their woods were not full of game, nor did they have fuel furnished them without stint, nor had they as rich pasturage for their cattle.
It cannot be denied that at this early day and for many years afterward, that not a few of the lonely denizens of these mountain coves were fugitives from the penalties of the law. In South Carolina, or North Carolina, or Ten- nessee, in a rough-and-tumble fight he had gouged out an eye, or bit off a nose, or mayhap have been guilty of some act more disreputable, and had fled to this lonely corner of a new State and hid away.
Sometimes the poor settler was averse to steady work
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and sought to find some place where he could as far as possible live without it. In these wild mountains he lived as free as an Indian and had as few comforts. He had a little patch of corn and he pounded it in a mortar or made it into hominy. He went barefoot in summer and wore Indian moccasins in the winter. A coon skin made him a cap, and his wife wove the cotton cloth which he wore in summer and the jeans he wore in winter. He had no edu- cation. He could not read, his wife could not read, the peasant from whom he had descended could not read. He lived in the same kind of house his over-the-sea forefather had lived in, only the cottage of that peasant was made of stone and covered with peat and he paid rent for it, and the mountaineer paid no rent and lived in a cabin of poles covered with boards. He kept his hearth ablaze with wooden logs, while his progenitor hovered over a fire of peat. He had never known any other life than the lowly one he lived, and was satisfied with it. No landlord asked for rent, no tax-gatherer for taxes, and in those days not even an office-seeker came near him.
These were some of the first mountaineers but by no means all. There in the mountains were valleys idyllic in their beauty. They had been the home of the Indians, and when they vacated them, men of some culture, who had known something of society but who had become weary of the bustle of life, sought a secluded home here, and more frequently the bustling North Carolinian, landless and enterprising, led by the fertility of these valleys, built his cabin in one of them and planted his orchard.
These mountaineers who eighty years ago and those who succeeded them for twenty years afterward were as distinct from other Georgians as the Scotch Highlanders were from their Lowland kinsman. They were not like the upper Georgia yeoman, the middle Georgia planter, or even the piny woods rustic. These were not themselves all alike,
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and a description of one person, however exact, would be entirely unsuited to another who lived near him.
The same class of people who came into the mountains of upper Georgia settled in North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and western Virginia. The north Georgia moun- taineer came generally from the mountainous parts of North Carolina, as the piny woods stock-raiser came from the pine woods of eastern North Carolina.
As a rule the people were for many years poor and illit- erate. They were fearless, sensitive, prejudiced, but hos- pitable, kindly and sincere. They were not as a general thing enterprising, and seemed too content with privations which industry would have removed. At the time which this period covers there were all the discomforts of the earliest frontier, and everything was in its pristine wildness.
The hill country of Walton, Gwinnett and Hall presents such uniformity of feature that it is difficult to give an account of any one of the counties without saying what was true of another adjoining.
The country lies at the foothills of the Blue Ridge, and while none of it is remarkably fertile, it is nearly all arable. There are some rich valleys along the rivers and on the many creeks and branches, called in Georgia parlance " bottoms."
The country produces corn, wheat, oats, rye, potatoes, cotton and tobacco; apples, peaches, pears, cherries and plums grow in great abundance. It is not, however, gen- erally a fertile country, and needs careful culture and gen- erous fertilizing in order to produce good harvests.
The water is cool and the air pure.
The rich cotton lands of middle and southern Georgia were more attractive to the Virginia slaveholders than these sections, and they turned their steps thither, and left all this country to people of small means who had few or no slaves. I doubt if there was in all this section in 1820
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a farmer worth twenty thousand dollars. Perhaps not one was worth half so much. Land was sold as a general thing for a dollar an acre, or less, except the exceptionally fine land on the rivers, which brought from two to five dollars.
The people who settled here were mainly Carolinians, either from upper South Carolina or western North Caro- lina. They came from the hill country to the hill country. They were very plain and very simple in their lives and had very small estates; but were thoroughly independent and self-reliant. They were landowners and had their farms stocked and made a good livelihood, and while not generally people of culture, they believed in churches and schools, and though there was much ignorance and much drinking among them, there was much good sense and piety. As a class they filled the place between the middle Georgia planter and the ignorant mountaineer. There were many very poor and ignorant people among them, and the inimitable " Bill Arp " (Colonel Charles H. Smith) has drawn a picture of one so graphic that I transfer it to these pages as presenting in a more satisfactory way a pic- ture of a class of people who have been sadly misread by those who have merely caught a glimpse of them and noted their striking and peculiar traits.
* * * * * *
" So I did not rob Bill Arp of his good name.
"He was a small, sinewy man, weighing about 130 pounds, as active as a cat, as quick in movement as he was active, and always presenting a bright, cheerful face. He had an amiable disposition, a generous heart, and was as brave a man as nature makes.
" He was an humble man and unlettered in books; never went to school but a month or two in his life, and could neither read nor write; but still he had more than his share of common sense, more than his share of ingenuity, and
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