The Memories of Fifty Years

f the Yazoo Act-Development of Free Government-Constitu

constitutes the entire States of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, except that portion of Alabama and Mississippi lyi

own to be exceedingly fertile, and proffered inducements to settlers unequalled in all the South. Speculation was very soon directed to these regions. A company was formed of citizens of Georgia and Virginia for the purchase of an immense tract of territory, including most of what is now Mississippi and Alabama. This company was known as the Georgia Company, and the territory as the Yazoo Purchase. It was a joint-stock company, and managed by trustees or directors. The object was speculation. It was intended to purchase from Georgia this domain, then to survey it and subdivide it into tracts to suit purchasers. Parties were delegated to make this purchase: this could only be done by the Legislature and by special act passed for that purpose. The proposition was made, and met with formidable opposition. The scheme was a gigantic one and promised great results, and the parties concerned were bold and unscrupulous. They very soon ascertained that means other than honorable to either party must be resor

to the general welfare; that the territory included in the grant to Oglethorpe and company was entirely too extended, and that by a sale a new State or States would be formed, which would increase the political power of the South-especially in the United States Se

t had actually imperilled their personal safety. Upon the return to their homes, after the adjournment, they were not only met with universal scorn, but with inappeasable rage. Some of the most guilty were slain; some had their houses burned over their heads, and others fled the State; one was pursued and killed in Virginia, and all not only entailed upon them

trepidity and daring, and quite as many of his extraordinary orthography. At the battle of Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina, he was severely wounded, at the moment when the Continental forces were retiring to a better position. A British soldier, noticing some vestiges of a uniform upon him, lifted his musket to stab him with the bayonet; his commander caught the weapon, and angrily demanded, "Would you murder a wounded officer? Forward, sir!" Ma

nd was the cause of preventing his name ever being given to a county in the State: and it is a significant fact of this suspicion, and also of the great unpopularity of the Act, that to this day every effort to that end has failed. No act of Governor Mathews ever justified any such suspicion. As Governor of th

was invoked in the case of Fletcher versus Peck, which settled the question of the power of the State to sell the public domain, and the validity of the sale made by the State to the Georgia Company. In the meantime the Legislature of Georg

as opposition to the Yazoo fraud. Every candidate at the ensuing election for members of the Legislature was compelled to declare his position on the subject of repealin

ur through the State, preaching a crusade against the corrupt Legislature, and denouncing those who had produced and profited by this corruption, inflaming the public mind almost to frenzy. He resided in Savannah, and was at the head of the Republican or Jeffersonian party, which was jus

tinued to be, we should never have known the present deplorable condition of the country,

g the records containing it to be burned. This was carried out to the letter. Jackson, heading the Legislature and the indignant public, proceeded in procession to the public square in Louisville, Jefferson County, where the law and the fagots were piled; when, addressing the assembled multitude, he denounced the men who had voted for the law as bribed v

vade the entire circle in which he moved, inspiring a purity of character, a loftiness of honor, which rebuked with its presence alone everything that was low, little, or dishonest. Subsequently he was elected Governor of the State, bringing all the qualities of his nature into the administration of the office; he gave it a dignity and respectability never subsequently degraded, until an unworthy son of South Carolina, the pus and corruption

f her nature. To this, or some other inexplicable cause, nature seemed to resort in preparation for coming events. In every State there came up men, born during the war or immediately thereafter, of giant minds-men seemingly destined to form and give direction to a new Government suited to the genius of the people and to the physical peculiarities of the country where it was to control the d

d and gave direction to the new Government. Under its operations, the human mind and human soul seemed to expand and to compass a grasp it had scarcely known before. There were universal content and universal harmony. The laws were everywhere respected, and everywhere enforced. The freedom of thought, and the liberty of action unrestrained, stimulated an ambition in every man to discharge his duties faithfully to the Government, and honestly in all social relations. There was universal security to person and property, because every law-breaker was deemed a public enemy, and not only received the law's condemnation, but the public scorn. Under such a Government the rapid accumulation of wealth and population was a natural consequence. The history of the world furnishes no example comparable with the progress of the United States to nation

ondition of servility to this superior intelligence, and rising in the scale of humanity to a condition which under any other circumstances his race had never attained. I may be answered that this labor can be had from the black as a freeman as well as in the condition of a slave. To this I will simply say, experience has proved this to be an error. Such is the indolence and unambitious character of the negro that he will not labor, unless compelled by the apprehension of immediate punishment, to anything approaching his capacity for labor. His wants are few, they are easily supplied, and when they are, there is no temptation which will induce him to work. He cares nothing for social position, and will steal to supply his necessities, and feel no abasement in the legal punishment which follows his conviction; nor is his social status among his race damaged thereby. As a slave to the white man, he becomes and has proved an eminently useful being to his kind-in every other conditio

d it as a great truth that nature points to her uses and ends; that to observe these and follow them is to promote the greatest happiness to the human family; and that wherever these aims are diverted or misdirected, retrogressio

evelopments in a new and progressive Government. The shackles which have paralyzed the mind, forbidding its development, are broken; the unnatural superstition ceases to circumscribe and influence its operations; and thus emancipated, it recovers its elasticity and springs forward toward the perfection of the Creator. Rescued from these baleful influences, the new organization is vigorous and rapid in its growth, yielding the beneficent blessings natur

to any antecedent period. The production of those staples which form the principal bases of commerce has increased in a quadruple ratio. Cotton alone increased so rapidly as to render its price so far below every other article which can be fashioned into cloth, that the clothing and sheeting of the civilized world was principally fabricated from it. The rapidity of its increased production was only equalled by the increase of wealth and comfort throughout the world. It regulates the exchanges almost universally. It gave, in its growth, transportation, and manufac

es added to the commerce and wealth of the world during the last two centuries, and especially the last, is beyond computation. How much of human comfort and human happiness is now dependent upon their continued production, and in such abundance as to make them accessible to t

of men in civilized society. This feeling is manifested in high bearing and sensitive honor, a refinement of sentiment and chivalrous emprise unknown to communities without caste. This is to be seen in the absence of everything little or mean

racter to her legislative assembly, so long as they held control of the Government. A peer among these was Ja