USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 27
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McIntosh, who gave his ready assent to this course, was apprehensive of trouble and asked the protection of the governor. He was, however, a thoroughly fearless man,
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and took no steps for his own safety. The chiefs among the Creeks claimed that they had a well-known law that any chief selling lands without the consent of the council should forfeit his life. If McIntosh knew of this law or feared its execution, he took no precautions to protect himself; and, while he expressed his fear that he might be molested, he remained quietly and unprotected at his home on the Chat- tahoochee, in what is now known as McIntosh Bend, in Carroll county. Here he had a large plantation well stocked with cattle and a number of negroes. He had two planta- tions and three wives, and was the only chief of prominence this side of the Chattahoochee. The Indians in Alabama determined that he, whom they said had betrayed them, should die, and they made all their plans for his assassina- tion. A body of picked men quietly glided up to his house at the bend in the night, and after a brave fight on his part he was shot down, and two other chiefs were killed at the same time, and his house burned and his cattle slaughtered. The executioners of the edict of the secret council then returned to Alabama without doing further harm to any one.
The killing of McIntosh and his sympathizing chiefs produced an intense excitement in Georgia, and wild rumors of an Indian war were afloat everywhere. Governor Troup was greatly outraged at the death of his relative, and laid the blame on the general government, and especially on Crowell, whom he accused to the president as being acces- sory to this foul murder, as he called it.
The United States government had been very tardy in indorsing the procedures of the commissioners, and espe- cially Governor Troup's haste in beginning the survey, and now sent out T. P. Andrews, Esq., from Washington City, to look into matters. Andrews came at once to Milledge- ville and had the case laid before him, and especial empha- sis given to the charges against Crowell. To one who reads the voluminous correspondence between Major Andrews
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and Governor Troup it will plainly appear that if Andrews had not prejudged the matter before he came to Georgia, t did not take him long to come to the conclusion that the treaty was a fraud, that McIntosh was a traitor, and that Crowell was an innocent man.
The correspondence between Major Andrews and Gov- ernor Troup was very fiery. The surveyors were getting ready for the survey when General Edmund P. Gaines, then in command of the division, was ordered by the secre- tary of war to go to the nation and to keep the surveyors out of the ceded lands. While matters were in this condi- tion Andrews, who had definite charges made to him con- cerning Crowell, suspended him for the time being. Gov- ernor Troup sent Henry G. Lamar into the nation to find out and report the temper of the Indians, and then sent three commissioners, Messrs. Jones, Jordan and Torrance, to examine witnesses and see if it was possible to convict Crowell of the crime charged against him. The bitter hos- tility of the commission was at once manifested. They bullied and badgered and abused and insulted the old mis- sionary, Isaac Smith, and his Baptist associate, Mr. Com- prere, and all other witnesses, and made every effort to force a conviction; but their failure was pitiful. While one may well believe Crowell, who was a bitter foe of McIntosh, shed no tears over his death, yet it was evident that he had had no part or lot in it.
General Gaines was now in charge, and it was soon manifest that there was to be war between him and Gov- ernor Troup. General Gaines and Major Andrews were disposed to open the question as to whether the treaty ought to have been made, and Governor Troup was deter- mined that it should not be opened. He would go forward with the survey. The secretary of war took sides with General Gaines and Major Andrews. Then it was that Governor Troup said: "We have exhausted the argument.
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We will stand by our arms," and ordered the militia to be in readiness to march into the nation. Congress was, how. ever, in session, and the president referred the question to it for a settlement. The secretary of war, while he repudi. ated the treaty of February, immediately made another which gave the Georgians all they asked; and although the stern and intrepid governor refused to recognize this second treaty, the United States allowed the survey to go on; and so the great issue was settled. The Creeks went over the Mississippi; the McIntosh party got $100,000 damages; Crowell was acquitted, and Governor Troup was rewarded with a seat in the United States Senate. So ended without bloodshed the fiercest contest, up to that time, ever known between a State and the central government .*
In 1821 a treaty had been made by the United States commissioner with the Creeks, and that magnificent country between the Flint and the Ocmulgee had been ceded by them and distributed by lottery among the people. In 1825, as we have seen, the State secured possession of that section between the Flint and Chattahoochee, and in 1827 the Creeks ceded the last acre of land held by them and withdrew from the State.
The Creeks were the most powerful of all the Indian tribes in Georgia, but they had no very extensive settlement in the State. Their main towns were in Alabama, and, while they laid claim to all Georgia, comparatively few of them lived on this side of the Chattahoochee. By succes- sive agreements they had surrendered first one part of the country and then another, until, after nearly a hundred years had passed since Oglethorpe made his first treaty
* I have not given, and could not well do so, my authority for the several statements in the above account. I have carefully consulted all the authorities within my reach, and give above what I think is a straightforward statement of this interesting event. In Harden's "Life of Troup," in White's Sketch of Troup and in the public documents bearing on it, which contains all the cor- respondence, the main facts are found in full.
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with them, they were entirely removed from the present erritory of the State.
Georgia now made great strides forward. Planting cotton vas never so profitable, and the tide of immigration into he new lands was at its flood. The immigration from Vir- inia and North Carolina of people of means, such as those who settled in Jones, Jasper, Putnam and Baldwin, had now liminished very considerably, and the current from Virginia was flowing to the black lands of Alabama and Mississippi; ut a great crowd of worthy people of small means was noving from central North Carolina and upper South Caro- ina into Walton, Gwinnett and Newton, while from the pine woods of eastern Georgia and the southern part of South Carolina the restless cattlemen were moving into Ware, Appling and Irwin.
The rich hummocks of Thomas and Lowndes and Deca- jur were attracting large slave-owners from Burke, Bulloch, creven, Laurens and Montgomery, and the rich lands of Baker were settled by the large planters from Jones, Twiggs, Putnam, Burke and Liberty.
Cotton was now worth fifteen cents a pound, and was, to large degree, a surplus crop, since the thrifty planter hade all his provisions on his plantation. The opening of cotton lands in southwest Georgia, where large bodies could be easily bought, led to the making of many very large plantations, and what had been occasional in the older counties became the rule in this new section, and throughout Lee, Baker and Early the same system of planting obtained which was found on the large cotton plantations of the older counties. It grew up as the negro population increased, und had reached immense proportions at the beginning of he war. Many men who began life with a family of negroes of perhaps five or six found themselves at sixty years old possessed of a hundred slaves, and had never bought any, but many more bought negroes and land with every ending
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year, until their slave property was very great and their lands were baronial in extent.
They wore out the hills of eastern Georgia making cotton, and then came to southwestern Georgia and bought large bodies of land and opened plantations. They did not live on their places themselves in many cases, but employed an overseer and fixed their negro quarters on them. Their plantations were managed with a great deal of skill and with a complete organization. A large plantation was a little kingdom. The overseer was in charge, a black driver was under him, there were hoe-hands, plowmen, quarter- masters, cooks, gardeners, blacksmiths, carpenters, shoe- makers, a midwife, nurses, dairy maids, spinners, weavers, seamstresses, chicken- and turkey-raisers, and even a gang of little negroes, called the "drop-shot gang," who carried water and food to the hands in the field. The system of working was exact. There was a horn blown, or a bell rung, as early as it was possible to see, and by sunrise the, hands were in the fields. The work was steady until noon, then the mules were fed and the hands ate their midday meal; work was then resumed and continued till dark. On. Saturday the rations of three and a half pounds of bacon, one peck of meal and one quart of molasses were given to each adult. Twice a year each negro received a suit of cotton clothing and once a year one of woolen kersey, and in win- ter had a pair of strong, well-made shoes. At the quarter each negro family had a cabin, a garden or patch, some chickens, and often a pig.
Plantation discipline was very strict and punishment for any dereliction was very sure, and for grievous offenses sometimes severe, but rarely cruel. Young negroes were punished with a few strokes of a cowhide, and more serious offenses by bucking and strapping the offender.
The overseer's orders were imperative and absolute, and were never resisted. He knew his own interests too wel
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o punish injuriously a slave or to overwork him or neglect him. He was always a man of good sense and of energy, nd was often a good practical physician, who made his own prescriptions for ordinary ailments. He received a good salary and always made money.
There was never a time when fortunes were so rapidly nade as by the Georgia planters from 1820 to 1835, and here never were a people more eager in their pursuit of wealth. The old restriction on the domestic slave-trade vas removed, and the negro speculator, as he was called, brought great troops of negroes from Virginia and Mary- and and sold them to the Georgia planters. The lands of he older parts of middle Georgia were not worn out, and he lands in the west of Georgia were now new and un- opened. Cotton was bringing a high price and had ready sale. Negroes rose in value every year, and the rich planter bought a number every winter and opened new grounds.
No business was in greater disrepute than negro specu- ating, but it was profitable. The eastern Virginian found himself with worn-out lands and many slaves on his own es- tate, and was compelled to sell some of his slaves or move from his ancestral halls. The Richmond slave-dealer bought his negroes and sent them to Georgia, and bought also those who were sold by guardians and administrators, and many of them came to Georgia.
The planter spent his own money and borrowed from the bank that he might buy more land and more negroes. There was nothing thought of but making cotton. The planter bought more land to make more cotton to buy more ne- groes to make more cotton. There was no attention paid in many cases to any improvements in the condition of things around his home. A man with an income of $5,000 per year from his cotton crop, and that clear profit, often lived in a log cabin and fed his family on fat bacon and corn bread. The rich lands of the western counties enticed
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the well-settled planters in the east to sell out their homes and begin life again in a log cabin. All was bustle and hurry. Forests were felled, fields were opened, cotton-gins and screws were erected, and now, for the first time, mules were largely bought.
The system of making cotton and buying supplies was not yet in vogue. The planter made what his plantation required-in many cases economizing in what his family needed that he might buy a new lot of negroes and a near- by plantation. The pine lands were still neglected; but there were extensive ranches in Thomas and Lowndes, and rich planters had thousands of cattle on their stock-farms in these barrens. Money was easy, and the planters could get almost unlimited accommodations at the various banks. Macon had sprung up like magic, and cotton from all these new counties and some of the old was being emptied into the warehouses on Walnut street and Bridge row. A line of steamboats had been put on the river, and barges loaded with cotton were towed down the Ocmulgee to Darien. Haw- kinsville, which had absorbed old Hartford, was the center of trade from the counties south of it, and Houston and Dooly, and the cotton-producing counties on the west shipped their cotton to Columbus. Augusta and Charleston were the markets of the up-country merchant, who bought his groceries in Augusta and his dry-goods in Charleston, and sent his cotton in wagons to Augusta and Savannah.
The planters who did their work on a large scale were not more eager after money than the prosperous cotton factor, the merchant, or the small farmer who cherished now the hope of becoming a large planter himself in time.
During the early part of the period of which we write religion was sadly neglected, and little attention was paid to education; but there was not an entire cessation of inter- est in the matter of academies. The education of girls began now to attract a considerable amount of attention,
TECHNOLOGICAL SCHOOL.
.MANZ
SENEY HALL, EMORY COLLEGE.
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and, although the Legislature had refused to charter any female academy and give it a part of the appropriation (as we have seen in the account of Jackson county), in 1827 a charter was granted for a female academy, and it received a small appropriation. There were few exclusively female schools, but all the schools aided by the State up to this time were mixed.
The matter of transportation was now, in some sections, more satisfactory, as steamboats had been put on most of the rivers.
In the cities the banking facilities were much increased, and there were now the Planters Bank, with a circulation of $214,922; the Mechanics Bank, with a circulation of $456,621; Marine and Fire Insurance, with a circulation of $155,000; Bank State of Georgia, capital $1,500,000; Bank of Darien, with a circulation of $329,000; Bank of Augusta, with a circulation of $437,764; Central Bank of Georgia, with a circulation of $223, 125-this bank had a capital of $2,485,753.51. Just as this period drew near its close the Bank of Macon and the Bank of Columbus were estab- lished. These banks claimed a specie basis for their cir- culation, and at this time were all specie-paying banks. The State had large interests in several of them, as it had in some of the transportation companies.
At this period the number of chartered academies in the State was very large. There were but few county towns in which there was not one; and in the thickly settled counties there were a number in various parts of each. There was a small fund given by the State for the education of poor children, but it was very meager, and in the poorer sections the people had very few educational advantages. The sub- scription school (as the private school was called) was still the only reliance of many of the people, and it was a poor and uncertain one. The University had Dr. Waddell now 23
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at its head, and was becoming prosperous. The thriving city of Milledgeville was the first city in Georgia to attempt a school on the modern plan, and endeavored to establish a common school system; but evidently the effort was not successful. The lottery was still popular. The Salem Acad- emy in Clarke (in after time under the care of the Methodists) was now to have the benefit of a lottery; Augusta, Macon, Milledgeville and Monroe were to build Masonic halls with a lottery to help them. The male and female academies in Greensboro, the Eatonton academy, the poor in Burke county, the Wrightsboro academy, the DeKalb county academy, the Washington county academy, the Madison academy, the Clinton academy, the Fayette county academy, the Madison county academy, all were to be helped by lotteries.
Up to this time there had been nothing on the statute books prohibiting the learning of a negro to read or write. But the abolition question was beginning; there was an insurrection of negro slaves in Virginia; so the Legislature passed an act prohibiting all persons from teaching negroes to read or write.
The newspapers established during this period were The Constitutionalist (Augusta), The Macon Telegraph (Macon), The Enquirer (Columbus), The Athenian (Athens), The States- man and Patriot, The Courier (Savannah), The Advertiser (Mt. Zion, Hancock county), The Republican (Jackson), The Cabinet (Warrenton), The Phoenix (Darien). There was nc daily, but the Constitutionalist and Courier were published semi-weekly.
During this period Georgia was visited by the greatest religious awakening in her history. The Georgians were as far as their every-day conduct was concerned, far from being exemplary, but the common people were very sound in their faith. There were a few skeptics among some o the leading public men of the older cities, but the plair
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people believed in the Bible and reverenced religion. The camp-meeting had now become a fixture in nearly all the counties. There was no county in which there was not a camp-ground, and in many there were several.
The settler had not built his cabin in the new purchase before the circuit-rider was at his door. Soon a suitable place near a spring was chosen for an encampment, a bush harbor was made, logs were provided as seats, and a camp- meeting was announced. In the older counties where camp- meetings had been held for twenty years comfortable little tents made of rough plank or logs had been built and a large board-covered tabernacle provided. Crowds came from a score of miles, preachers by the dozen assembled, and the most gifted men of the churches preached their most earnest sermons. There were often, during this period, one hundred tents on the ground, and sometimes five thou- sand people were in the congregation.
The religious awakening extended to all sections and em- braced all classes of people, and largely changed the face of Georgia. The rough brutality of the ring, the horse- race and the shooting-match ceased in middle Georgia; children grew up to manhood who had never seen a play- ing card, and even dancing was given up in the country neighborhoods. Churches sprang up everywhere, and in villages and in county towns where there had been none houses of worship were built.
Judges like Colquitt opened their courts with prayer and preached to the people during the recesses of the court. Many deplorable things were left, but in the Georgia of 1830 there was a vast change for the better.
It was during this great revival that the distinguished Judge Longstreet became a Methodist, and afterward a Methodist preacher. He never lost his individuality, and was the same humor-loving man after his conversion as he had been before. It was while he was a leading layman
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in his church that he wrote "Georgia Scenes." It has been absurdly said that he was greatly ashamed of this book and endeavored to suppress it. On the contrary, he recognized it-as it was-as the truest picture of certain phases of Georgia life which had ever been painted.
Walter T. Colquitt, the great Democratic lawyer, was an- other who became a Methodist.
Dr. John E. Dawson, a cultivated and wealthy physician, was converted and gave up his practice and became one of the most distinguished Baptist preachers in the South.
George F. Pierce, then a boy at college in Athens, who afterward was the bishop of the Methodists, and Dr. John Jones, long one of the most noted of Presbyterians, were converted during this great awakening.
Among the Baptist workers were Dr. Adiel Sherwood, young Dr. Dawson, Jonathan Davis and Dr. Charles D. Mallary, one of the most cultured of their preachers, who had been brought up and educated in Vermont, and was the associate of Stephen Olin in college and his lifelong friend.
Stephen Olin, who was also a Vermonter, a man of mag- nificent intellect and fine culture; John Howard, famous for his eloquence and his fervor; Lovick Pierce, then in his vigorous young manhood, and James O. Andrew, afterward bishop, were among the Methodists ; while Jos. C. Stiles and Dr. Hoyt, who had just come to Georgia, were among the Presbyterians.
As we have seen, there was quite a large and fertile sec- tion of land opened to settlement, and the rush of immi- grants was immediate and continuous. There were some of the older counties now divided and all the new purchase was mapped out into counties. The land was granted by lottery. Many who drew the lots removed at once to them and settled. Some sold their grants to others, who moved, and in many cases the land speculator bought the plot and
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grant for investment. There was quite a diversity in the quality of the land opened to settlement. Some of it was what was known as land of the first quality. Much in the counties of Coweta, Troup, Meriwether, Harris and Talbot was not surpassed by any in the State. It was healthy, fertile and accessible, and brought good prices for those times.
The lands in the low-country pine woods varied much in fertility and were very cheap, while the lands of Carroll and Campbell were sold at very low prices, and, at that time, were regarded as only desirable by those who wanted cheap homes and an extensive range.
There was no part of Georgia as yet exhausted, and the tide of prosperity which had set in just after the war with England had not ebbed. The counties formed during this period divide themselves into groups closely resembling those mentioned in previous chapters. Henry, Fayette, Dekalb, Newton, Pike and Butts made one group. The land, as a whole, was not fertile, but, in the main, arable. The price at which the land was sold was generally not more than one dollar per acre, often much less.
Cotton was not the chief product, and few men had many slaves. The account given of each county will show such a similarity of nature and conditions as will render the story of one county the story of all, except in certain individ- ual features. Troup, Meriwether, Harris, Coweta, Talbot, Monroe, Houston, Bibb and Upson were great cotton-raising counties in which there was little diversity of feature. The people who occupied the lands were largely cotton-plant- ers, and the land was famous for its fertility. In Marion, De- catur, Baker, Randolph and Thomas there was a country of mixed features, in which there were large cotton plantations and many slaves, or wide unsettled ranches in the pine woods; while Lowndes, Ware, Crawford, Dooly and Muscogee were almost exclusively piny woods counties, in which there
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was little raised for market besides cattle. The people who occupied these counties varied in accordance with the nature of the soil and the character of its products, running all the way from the most ignorant rustic who lived in a one- roomed cabin to the wealthy planter with five hundred slaves and an elegant mansion.
Manufacturing had been almost entirely abandoned, and the people were intense anti-tariff men, and for years after this the word "tariff " was sufficient to rouse any average rustic to wrath. Judge Longstreet used to tell of a traveler from the up-country who came suddenly upon a railway, the first he had ever seen. Directly, to his alarm and that of his boy, the train came rushing by. "Dad," said the thoroughly frightened boy, "what is that ar thing?" "I dunno, son," said the father; "but I 'spect it ar the tariff." And this was over ten years after this time. The passage of the tariff act of 1828 aroused great alarm and resent- ment, and Georgia was in a fever of political excitement when Governor Gilmer, in 1829, took the gubernatorial chair.
We turn now to the study of the counties:
HENRY.
Henry county, which was laid off in 1821, was rapidly populated. It was named in honor of Patrick Henry and its county town after the gallant McDonough. In 1830, not ten years after it was made a county, there were over 10,000 inhabitants in its borders. It was a healthy county; land was cheap, and settlers from South Carolina and the older counties in Georgia crowded into it. They were very plain, good people-industrious, economical and religious. Much of the land was hilly, and much of it very thin; but it produced those things that were needed for the sup- port of its inhabitants, and there was no want among them.
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