USA > Georgia > The story of Georgia and the Georgia people, 1732 to 1860 > Part 32
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The gold-hunters dug the gravel from the bottom of the streamlets and the banks and valleys near by, rockec their long-toms in the daytime, gathered their nuggets and spent the nights in drinking, gaming and fighting.
In addition to the annoyance the governor had from the intruders, he had more serious trouble from the Cherokees themselves. They were a somewhat weak tribe, who had shared with the Creeks the possession of Georgia. They had been so often defeated by the "Long Knives," as they called the Virginians, the Georgians and the South Caro linians, that there had been no open war for a long time and they had lived quietly in their beautiful valleys.
The Moravian, the Presbyterian, the Congregationalist the Methodist and the Baptist missionaries were at work among them, and with good success. Many of the Scotch traders lived in the nation during the last century, had married Indian wives and their children were now in con trol of the tribe.
The United States government, after having agreed with Georgia to extinguish the Indian title, had granted a title in fee to many of these Indians, and a reservation had beer secured to them; and one of their chiefs, John Ridge, act ing under the instructions of another chief, John Ross, il the dead of winter, after having warned off some white in truders and after their refusing to leave, had burned th cabins of the intruders and drove their families from th nation.
The indignation among the whites was very great, and
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it was all the governor could do to restrain the angry fron- tiersmen from taking summary vengeance and precipitating a bloody conflict. In vain had the appeal been made to the president to carry out the agreement with the State to extinguish the Indian title. So the Legislature was called together, the laws of the State were extended over the ter- ritory, and all the white men who were in the nation were required to take the oath of allegiance to the State govern- ment. An Indian having committed a murder, was tried for the crime in Hall superior court, which had juris- diction over the entire nation, and he was convicted, and, despite the interference of the Supreme Court of the United States, he was duly hung. There were a number of white missionaries from the North who refused to vacate their places or take the oath; and they were arrested and tried on the charge of contemning Georgia laws, and they all purged themselves of contempt and were discharged but Messrs. Worcester and Butler, who refused positively to do so. They were arrested and were treated very brutally by Gen- eral Nelson, who was the officer in charge of the militia forces, for which, much to his indignation, he was called to account by the governor. These missionaries were brought before the civil court and tried for contumacy. They were ably defended, but being unwilling to make any conces- sions, were finally sentenced to confinement in the State prison. They were offered a free pardon on condition that they would comply with the law or leave the nation. They refused to do either, and went submissively to the State prison. Their punishment was more nominal than real, and after a short time in prison they gained their consent to make the submission demanded, and were released.
The governor was roundly abused for the persecution of these good men, but it is evident that the missionaries were unwilling to do anything to relieve the situation and that he reluctantly consented to allow the law to take its course;
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and it is evident there was no disposition on the part of any of the civil authorities to throw any impediment in the way of proper missionary work. The two imprisoned mission- aries were doubtless honest in the course they took of re- bellion against the State, although they took a course which none of the other missionaries felt called upon to take. The rabble who had gone into the territory to dig gold was removed out of the nation by the Federal troops, and steps were taken by the president to secure the removal of the Indians from Georgia. This was not finally accom- plished until Governor Gilmer's second term, which began in 1837.
The course of the governor in not at least winking at the course of the intruders made him so obnoxious to many that he was defeated when he offered for reelection in 1831, and Governor Wilson Lumpkin took the vacated place. Gover- nor Lumpkin was a Virginian by birth, who had spent his youth in the clerk's office in Lexington, where his father was clerk. He entered early into public life, was a mem- ber of the Legislature and filled important county offices; and now, as candidate of the Crawford party, defeated Gov- ernor Gilmer.
While he was governor the Cherokee lands were surveyed and laid off and distributed by lottery, although the In- dians were still in the territory. The lots were of forty and sixty acres, the small lots being in the gold region.
Governor Lumpkin finished his term, and was succeeded by Governor Schley. Governor Schley was a Marylander. He came to Georgia when a boy: He studied law and be- came a leading lawyer in Augusta. He was then a mem- ber of Congress and a judge of the superior court, and was elected governor in 1835.
While he was governor the Seminoles in Florida, who were kinspeople of the Creeks, rose against the whites; and the Creeks in Alabama having heard of this insurrection,
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resolved to make one more effort to recover their Georgia ands. They invaded Georgia in May and June of 1836. The settlers fled, and Governor Schley ordered out the militia and took the field in person. The Indians burned he little village of Roanoke in Stewart county and killed welve persons. They burned a steamboat which was at anchor at the village and attacked another which was ascend- ng the river and succeeded in capturing it. They had a sharp fight with a small body of whites on Sheppard's plan- ation. They then took position in a dense swamp, from which they were finally routed. Another band of Indians making an effort to reach the hostiles in Florida were at- acked by the whites and defeated, and the disheartened tribe at last made a full surrender and consented to remove In a body to Arkansas, and the last Creek left Georgia. There was no further disturbance with the Indians in the State, and the wild Seminoles were driven into the Ever- glades of Florida and from thence removed to the west.
The Cherokees, as we have seen, were somewhat tardily accepting the situation and were peaceable, and then the wise, far-seeing governor gave himself to the work of advancing the general interests of the State. He was a man of great sagacity and broad views, and recommended in his message to the Legislature the building of the Western and Atlantic railroad, a geological survey, and what was sadly needed, an asylum for the insane. He was a man of affairs, and when his time was out as governor and Governor Gilmer was elected in his place, he retired from public life and became a manufacturer.
Governor Gilmer was elected governor the second time in 1837. The first part of the period now under survey was a time of great inflation. New plantations were being opened in all sections of the State. Villages and towns were springing up like magic. Macon and Columbus, 27
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which were not ten years old when this period ended, and which were but founded when it began, were now consider- able cities.
The banking interest had taken a new impetus and rose, ac- cording to Governor Gilmer, to a mania. The State, which had a large block of stock in the Planters Bank, the Bank of Darien and the State Bank, now chartered a new bank, called the Central Bank of Georgia. The capital stock was to be the balance in the State treasury, the State's shares in the Bank of Augusta, in the Planters Bank, the Bank of Darien and the Bank of the State of Georgia. The purpose in establishing this bank was to make money easy for the planters, and the ease with which discounts were secured was in inverse ratio to the ease with which collections of the notes were made.
Four banks were established in Columbus, five in Macon, one in Milledgeville, one in Brunswick, one in Rome, one each in Hawkinsville, Irwinton, Florence and other small towns.
The notes of these various specie-paying banks were legal tender, and they were all specie-paying when there was no extensive call for redemption. Notes were issued freely and paper discounted readily, and there was a wild era of speculation. The rich lands in the newly opened western counties in Georgia and in the Cherokee country were bought and sold in many markets.
The Georgia land speculator crossed the Chattahoochee river and bought land in Alabama. Land-trading was uni- versal. Lawyers, preachers, doctors, merchants and bankers were all buying plots, grants and soldiers' warrants and selling them at an advance. Money was easy, and when the trader had no money of his own he went to a bank and secured a loan.
Negroes came in droves from Virginia and Maryland, and were bought on nine months' time, and large fortunes
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were apparently possessed by men who were in debt for everything they held.
The growth of the cities made speculation in town lots a prominent feature of the times, and many men trading in town lots became rich by repute in a few weeks. There was what is called in modern language a " boom" in real estate in town and country.
The growth of cotton in the western counties made the question of transportation one of prime importance, and schemes of various kinds were entered upon to provide for the carrying of produce to the seaports. Railways were now attracting attention and charters were granted to quite a num- ber. The Central Railroad and Canal Company was to con- nect Macon and Savannah, and the Georgia Railroad and Turnpike Company to connect Augusta with Eatonton, with branches to Madison and Athens. The Monroe railroad was to run from Macon to Forsyth, the Western Turnpike Company from Rome to Chattanooga, and Thomas Spald- ing was given a charter to dig a canal and build a railway from Brunswick to Albany. It was to be a railway of wood, or a canal. Mr. T. Butler King and his associates were to construct the great Western road from Brunswick o Macon, and thence to Tennessee. A road was to be built from Brunswick to Florida, and a railroad from Macon to Columbus and Lagrange. Steamboat lines were to run rom Augusta to Savannah, and from Macon to Darien; the Western and Atlantic railroad from some point near Rossville, on the Tennessee line, to some point in middle Georgia, either Athens, Madison, Milledgeville, Forsyth or Columbus. This was to be built by the State. A railroad was also chartered from Madison to the Chattahoochee, und from St. Marys to Columbus.
These were some of the railway and steamboat lines chartered, and then there were sundry other corporations ind joint stock companies. Among them the Macon In-
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surance Company, the Flat Shoals (Dekalb) Cotton Mill the Augusta Mining Company, the woolen and cotton mill in Augusta, a woolen and cotton mill in Upson, the Frank. lin factory in Upson, the Camak factory in Clarke, the Richmond factory in Richmond, the Scull Shoals Company in Greene county, the Pigeon Roost Mining Company ir Lumpkin, the Auraria and Blue Ridge turnpike, the Eaton ton Manufacturing Company, the Georgia Mining Company, the Flat Shoals Manufacturing Company in Harris county the Oglethorpe Insurance Company in Macon.
This long list of companies shows the character of the times. Stock companies of all kind sprang up in every direction. This state of things continued until the sudder burst of the panic of 1837, when the whole country was swept by a cyclone of disaster from which there was no recovery for near ten years.
In these flush times there was a new impetus given to the cause of education. The people in Georgia were mostly planters and farmers and had made their property by hard work, and the one sin in their eyes was laziness. The rapid increase of wealth and the multiplication of slaves had led the planters to fear that their sons might grow up in indo lence and become worthless. The scheme of manual labo schools, some of which were established in the North struck them favorably, and led to the establishment of sev eral in Georgia. Of these more is said in a succeeding chapter. From these schools the advance was made to th chartering of new colleges. The Mercer University amon; the Baptists, Emory among the Methodists, and Ogle thorpe among the Presbyterians were all chartered an established. The Macon people of all denomination secured a charter for the Georgia Female College, and th Baptists in Washington one for a Baptist female college which, however, was never founded.
The last of the Indians were removed from Georgi
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during this period. The Creeks and other tribes had gone years before, and now the Cherokees (in 1837) were removed. They were a weaker but more civilized tribe than the Creeks, and, as we have seen elsewhere, had a number of villages in upper Georgia. They had large towns .in Murray, Polk and Gordon, and had schools and churches; and when an effort was made to remove them they stub- bornly resisted it. The sympathies of the Northern people, who had freed themselves from the presence of the Indians, were now with the Cherokees. The Georgians wanted the and the Indians held, and claimed it by virtue of the same title with which the New England and all the older States held their Indian land. The United States had agreed to ex- tinguish the Indian title nearly forty years before this period, and had provided a better country for the Indians in the West and offered them free transportation to it, a year's supply of provisions and full pay for their belongings in Georgia; but the Cherokees were not willing to go. They appealed to the supreme court of the United States, and gave Wm. Wirt a fee of $20,000 to defend their right to their old homes. The State had, as we have seen else- where, extended her laws over that part of the nation which was in her boundary and had forced all the white people in the Indian country to take the oath of allegiance to Georgia or to remove, and had punished those who had refused to do so. It had surveyed the country and granted to its citizens land of the Indian nation; but still the Indians lived in their old homes. Governor Gilmer, who was a political foe of President Van Buren, found that Ross, the Indian chief, still pressed the case of the Cherokees before the supreme court of the United States. The president still delayed action, and apparently purposed to give the Indians two years longer in which to decide whether they would remove or not. So Governor Gilmer took matters in his own hands and ordered General Chas. Floyd to march with
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his militia to the nation .* General Scott was in charge of the United States troops in the nation, and was now ordered tc gather the Indians into forts. Still the poor Cherokees thought they would be permitted to return to their cabins again; but they soon found the decree was irrevocable, and that they must go to a new land and one to them unknown It was a pitiful scene. The land they were to leave was theirs and had been the land of their fathers. For it they had fought against the Creeks and the Long Knives; they had not sold it, nor had it been wrested from them in war nor had they given it away; but by a law which they could not understand they were compelled now to go to an un- known land far away and leave behind them all the little property they had accumulated, or to sell it at such price as the whites in authority chose to pay. Some of these homes were very humble, for most of the Indians were very poor; but the ruling chiefs, who were generally half-breeds had large plantations and, for those days, very handsome brick residences and many slaves. The edict went forth the poor Indians were obliged to submit, and the Chero- kees left Georgia forever in 1837.
Five years before this the land had been surveyed, divided into lots and distributed by lottery. This new territory was divided into the counties of Cherokee, Cass, Cobb, Forsyth Gilmer, Lumpkin, Murray, Paulding, Walker and Floyd These counties divided themselves into groups : there were the gold-producing counties, the hill counties of the freestone group, and the blue limestone counties. In the mountain gold-producing group were Lumpkin, Union and Gilmer in the hill country were Cobb, Forsyth and Cherokee while the blue limestone counties were Cass, Paulding Floyd, Walker and Murray. Each of these groups had it: distinctive features. In Lumpkin and the adjoining coun
* These facts are largely presented in Governor Gilmer's " Georgians," i his autobiography.
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ties there was gold, but only in Lumpkin did mining have prominent place.
The lottery which divided the land was drawn in 1832. It was a time of absorbing interest. The discoveries of gold in the nation had been just sufficient to arouse the highest hopes of richer discoveries, and men expected to find mines of untold wealth on the newly granted lands. There was one lot which the intruders had found very rich. It was known as lot No. 42, and it was supposed that it would give its owner a princely fortune. When the drawing came off men waited eagerly to hear who would draw it. The spec- ulators were on hand, prepared to hurry to the lucky drawer and buy it from him. When the fortunate drawer was known one man, by the aid of a relay of horses, reached the owner and for a fabulous sum succeeded in buying it. When he went to the mine and began work he found its treasures all gone. There were many such cases. Men sold their estates in Middle Georgia, bought gold lots and at- tempted gold-mining, and in many cases lost all they had invested. There was little besides the mines to lead men to settle in the mountains of northeast Georgia. The valleys were narrow, the hills were not naturally fertile, and when cleared of timber soon washed away, and the mountains were too rugged and barren for profitable culture. But the scenery was charming and the healthfulness of the country perfect; the products were such as were necessary for family use, and so to the hard-working man there was a chance for a livelihood.
We have already in a previous chapter given an account of the first mountaineers; and while the lapse of twenty years had made many changes, and the class of people who had come into this section were superior to the first settlers, there was much that was very rude. The people had no money crop and so money was scarce. The winters came early and went late. Roads were few and poor and the
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people necessarily scattered. Those who were fond of ease did not find it in the rugged land, and there was little to attract the man of means. So settlements were slowly made. There was no considerable change from the moun- tains of twenty years before, except that there was less game and a less luxuriant pasturage. There were some valleys which were so fertile that they drew substan- tial farmers from North Carolina, but in the main the people were still poor and illiterate. The settlers were mainly from the mountains of North and South Carolina, and the country was settled slowly. The gold mania, how- ever, had made the mountain country known, and many who came to dig gold bought little farms and built cabins and raised large families of sturdy children.
The hill country of Cobb, Forsyth and Cherokee has been already described in telling of the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge in the eastern part of the State. Indeed, these hill lands of Cherokee and Cobb and Forsyth were largely peopled by those who came to them from Franklin, Jackson, Hall and Madison-eastern counties of the same kind. Gold was looked for in all these Cherokee counties, and so the lots were only forty acres in size. When gold was not found and there was no indication of it the lands were very cheap; from $10 to $20 was the price of a single lot, and many a man bought a small farm for the price of an Indian pony. The cheapness of the lands led to rapid and thick settlement. The country was soon filled up with enter- prising young people, and numbers who became substantial farmers on large farms began life in one of these Cherokee counties on forty acres of poor land.
While the homes of the planters in eastern and middle Georgia were elegant and well furnished, there was much of upper and lower Georgia in which there was the same sim- plicity of life which had belonged to the settlers in eastern
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Georgia a hundred years before. The people in all this hill country were a sturdy, brave and self-reliant people.
Their literary culture was very limited. It is likely that, outside of the mines and the country towns, there were in none of these new counties a half-dozen classical scholars, and but a small number had had any training in English, many could not write and some could not read.
For some years there was not an academy in any of these counties where the classics were taught. There was not a piano in them outside a few in the villages. There were few negroes and little wealth, but there was no pauperism. The men plowed, and the women did the household work and often helped in the field. The people had never known luxury and were independent of it.
The country was not an easy one to subdue. The land was stony and often sterile, but the water was cool, the air bracing, and, though the land was not rich, it produced enough to give a comfortable support. A worthier people never lived.
While the class who had settled this new country were, as a general thing, men of little property and of little cul- ture, and while there were many of them rude and disposed to wild revelry, there were many of a different class. They lived in cabins, but their cabins were clean and neat. They were pious and industrious, and the camp-ground and the log schoolhouse and the log church were sure to be near their homes. The Baptists had churches, often cabins of logs, in every nook, and the Methodist circuit - rider reached every settlement. The most gifted men of the Methodist Church were presiding elders in this section. There were scattered through these counties, chiefly in the country villages, some highly educated Presbyterian minis- ters, men of cultivation, who were preaching or teaching.
There was much intemperance still in the country, but during this period the great total abstinence movement was
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being pressed. Men like James O. Andrew, Adiel Sher. wood and Jos. C. Stiles were ardent friends and workers for total abstinence; and Josiah Flournoy, one of the wealthiest men in Georgia, was canvassing Georgia for signatures to a petition against allowing liquors to be retailed. He was bitterly opposed and his life was threatened, his gig was smeared, his horses' tails were shaved, and every annoy- ance that could be heaped on the good man he was called on to encounter, but he kept bravely on. He had many backers, but the politicians were against him and his ad- vance movement was defeated.
There was now every variety of life to be found in Geor- gia. The uneducated, uncouth farmer from the mountains was in the Legislature side by side with the aristocratic sea island planter and the cultivated, college-bred lawyer from the city; or the educated, wealthy planter from Wilkes or Hancock-men like Colquitt and McDonald and Stephens and Toombs-were the political friends of men who lived in log cabins and could barely read and were unable to write their names, but who could carry their counties in any election.
While some parts of Georgia had been settled a hundred years, this new country had just been opened, and there was found in it all the features of frontier life. There were but few slaves and few comforts as yet in it. The log cabin with one room was still the home of the settler. Governor Gilmer, after he left his place in Congress and before he was elected governor, in 1837 made a tour from his home in middle Georgia to Montgomery, Ala., and back in his private carriage. In returning he says : "We arrived a little before night at the home of a man in Carroll county who had sixteen children. The family lived in one room without a loft. There were three beds in the room, and I and my wife occupied one. The next morning when I wanted a towel for my wife, the hospitable hostess took a
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a shirt of one of the boys and tore off a part of it and gave it to me for my wife to wipe her face and hands on." The aristocratic Virginia lady was asleep when this provision for her comfort was made, and was in blissful ignorance of whence the rag came which she used as a towel. The next night, he says, they spent in a house located in a potato patch and for supper ate ""'sobbed' Irish potatoes and coffee with one grain to the gallon, without milk or sugar." These frontier hardships were found only in the newly settled counties, where houses were few and far between.
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