By Joel Chandler Harris
The Revolution came to an end in Georgia when, on the 11th of July, 1782, Savannah was taken possession of by the American troops under General Anthony Wayne. It ended for the whole country when, on the 30th of November of the same year, the treaty of peace was signed at Paris between the United States and Great Britain. The King of Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen States, and declared them free and sovereign. This was a very happy event for the country, and had been long looked forward to by the people, sometimes doubtfully, but always hopefully.
But the great victory that had been won found the people of Georgia prostrate. The little property that they possessed when the war began had either been spent in maintaining the struggle, or well-nigh destroyed by the raids of the British and Tories. In the larger communities of Savannah and Augusta, the citizens had the resources of trade and commerce to fall back on, but in the smaller settlements and rural districts the condition of the inhabitants bordered on destitution.
At the time that Savannah was surrendered to the American troops, there was almost a famine in the land. The soldiers were without shoes, and sometimes they were without supplies. The crops were short on account of the lack of farmers. The condition of the people was quite as bad as that of the troops, especially when the disbanded militia returned to their homes. Houses, barns, and fences had been burned; stock and cattle had been slaughtered or driven away; and there was a great lack of even the necessities of life.
But those whose energy and spirit upheld them through the long struggle for independence were not the men to surrender to the hard circumstances that surrounded them. They went to work as bravely as they had fought; and the sacrifices they made to peace were almost as severe, though not so bloody, as those they had made to war. Slowly, but surely and steadily, they reclaimed their waste farms. Slowly, but surely and steadily, they recovered from the prostration that the war had brought on their industries. Slowly, but surely and steadily, the people worked their way back to comparative prosperity. There may have been a few drones in the towns, but there were no idle hands in the country places.
The men built for their families comfortable log cabins; and these, with their clean sanded floors, are still the fashion in some parts of Georgia. This done, they went about the business of raising crops, and stocking their farms with cattle. The women and children were just as busy. In every cabin could be heard the hum of the spinning wheel, and the thump of the old hand loom. While the men were engaged in their outdoor work, the women spun, wove, and made the comfortable jeans clothes that were the fashion; while the girls plaited straw, and made hats and bonnets, and in many other ways helped the older people. In a little while peddlers from the more northern States began to travel through Georgia with their various wares, some with pewter plates and spoons, and some with clocks. The peddlers traveled in wagons instead of carrying their packs on their backs, and in this way brought a great deal of merchandise to the State.
As was natural, the political development of Georgia was much more rapid than its industrial progress. In January, 1783, Lyman Hall was elected governor. He was distinguished for the patriotic stand he took at the very beginning of the controversy between the Colony and the King. The Legislature met in Savannah after the evacuation of the town by the British; but it was so far from the central and upper portions of the State, and there was so much dissatisfaction among the people on this account, that in May Augusta was made the capital. In that town the General Assembly met July 8, 1783. Measures were at once taken to seize land, and confiscate the property of those Royalists who had lived in Georgia. This property was sold for the benefit of the public. In November of the same year a new cession of land was obtained from the Creek nation by treaty. This was divided into the counties of Franklin and Washington, and the land distributed in bounties to the soldiers of the war.
It is worthy of note that about this time, when the State had hardly begun to recover from the effects of the war, the representatives of the people began to move in the matter of education. The Constitution of 1777 had declared that “schools shall be erected in each county, and supported by the general expense of the State.” On the 31st of July, 1783, the Legislature appropriated one thousand acres of land to each county for the support of free schools. In 1784, a short time after the notification of the treaty of peace, the Legislature passed an act appropriating forty thousand acres of land for the endowment of a college or university. A year later the charter for this university was granted; and the preamble of the act declares it to be the policy of the State to foster education in the most liberal way. It so happened that some of the provisions that had been made for public education were not carried out at once, and the people of the various settlements established schools of their own. Many of the best teachers of the country came to Georgia from the more northern States; and some of them won a reputation that has lasted to this day. Later, more than one of these teachers established schools that became famous all over the country. In this way the reign of the “old field schoolmaster” began, and continued for many years.
The people had been cultivating cotton on a small scale before 1791; but the staple was so difficult to handle, that the planting was limited. Those who grew it were compelled to separate the seed from the lint by hand, and this was so tedious that few people would grow it. But in 1793, Eli Whitney, who was living on the plantation of General Greene, near Savannah, invented the cotton gin. The machine was a very awkward and cumbrous affair compared with the gins of the present day; but in that day and time, and for many years after, the Whitney was sufficient for the needs of the people. It was one of the most important inventions that have ever been made. It gave to the commerce of the world a staple commodity that is in universal demand, and it gave to the people of the South their most valuable and important crop. But for this timely invention, the cultivation of cotton would have been confined to the narrowest limits. The gin proved to be practicable, and it came into use very quickly. The farmers prospered, and gradually increased the cotton crop.
The population also increased very rapidly. The rich lands were purchased and settled on by farmers from Virginia and the Carolinas. The colony that had been planted by Oglethorpe had never ventured very far from the seacoast. A few probably followed the course of the Savannah River, and made their homes in that region; but the people brought over by Oglethorpe were not of the stuff that pioneers are made of. The experience they had undergone in the mother country had tamed them to such a degree that they had no desire to brave the future in the wilderness. Adventures of that kind were left for the hardy North Carolinians and Virginians who first settled what was then known as Upper Georgia. After the Revolution, this tide of immigration increased very rapidly, and it was still further swelled by the profits that the Whitney gin enabled the planters of Georgia to make out of their cotton crops.
The settling of Georgia began with the charitable scheme of Oglethorpe. The making of Georgia began when the North Carolinians and Virginians began to open up the Broad River region to the north of Augusta. It was due to the desperate stand taken by these hardy pioneers that Georgia continued the struggle for American independence. To Upper Georgia came some of the best families from Virginia and North Carolina,—the Grattons, the Lewises, the Clarkes, the Strothers, the Crawfords, the Reeses, the Harrises, the Andrewses, the Taliaferros (pronounced Tollivers), the Campbells, the Barnetts, the Toombses, the Doolys, and many other families whose names have figured in the history of the country. Here also settled James Jack, the sturdy patriot who volunteered to carry the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence to Philadelphia. The Congress then in session chose to shut its eyes to that declaration, but it was the basis and framework of the Declaration afterwards written by Thomas Jefferson.
After the Revolution, when the Cherokees went on the warpath, the Virginia settlement was in a state of great alarm. Men, women, and children met together, and decided that it would be safer to camp in the woods in a body at night rather than run the risk of being burned to death in houses that they could not defend. They went into the depths of the woods and made an encampment. One night while they were around a fire, cooking their supper, suddenly the report of a gun was heard, and then there was a cry of “Indians!” The men seized their guns; but they hardly knew where to turn, or what to do. Suddenly a lad who had not lost his head emptied a bucket of water on the fire. This was the thing to do, but no one else had thought of it. The name of the lad was Meriwether Lewis. He went into the regular army, became the private secretary of President Jefferson, and was selected to head the party that explored the Territory of Louisiana, which had been bought from France. Meriwether Lewis selected for his companion Captain Clark, an old army friend and comrade. Leading the party, Lewis and his friend Clark left St. Louis, and pushed westward to the Pacific coast, through dangers and obstacles that few men would have cared to meet. The famous expedition of Lewis and Clark has now become a part of the history of the country. Lewis took possession of the Pacific coast in the name of the United States. There was a controversy with Great Britain some years afterwards as to the title of Oregon, but that which Lewis and Clark had established was finally acknowledged to be the best.
Meriwether Lewis won a name in history because the opportunity came to him. His name is mentioned here because he was a representative of the men who settled Upper Georgia,—the men who kept the fires of liberty alive in the State, and who, after helping to conquer the British and the Tories, became the conquerors of the wilderness that lay to the west of them. From Wilkes, Burke, Elbert, and the region where Clarke and his men had fought, the tide of emigration slowly moved across the State, settling Greene, Hancock, Baldwin, Putnam, Morgan, Jasper, Butts, Monroe, Coweta, Upson, Pike, Meriwether, Talbot, Harris, and Muscogee counties.
Some of the more adventurous crossed the Chattahoochee into Alabama, and on into the great Mississippi Valley and beyond. Their descendants live in every part of the South; and Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas have had Georgians for their governors, and their senators and representatives in Congress,—men who were descended from the Virginia and North Carolina immigrants. One of the most brilliant of these was Mirabeau B. Lamar, scholar, statesman, and soldier, the president of Texas when that Territory had declared itself a free and an independent republic.
