Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/777

Rh on the ground that they had been fraudulently and corruptly made, as was probably the case, and the rescindment was embodied in the Constitution of 1798., In the meantime the United States Senate had appointed a committee to inquire into Georgia’s claim to the land in question, and as this committee pronounced that claim invalid, Congress in 1800 established a Territorial government over the region. The legislature of Georgia remonstrated but expressed a willingness to cede the land to the United States, and in 1802 the cession was ratified, it being stipulated among other things that the United States should pay to the state $1,250,000, and should extinguish “at their own expense, for the use of Georgia, as soon as the same can be peaceably obtained on reasonable terms,” the Indian title to all lands within the state of Georgia. Eight years later the Supreme Court of the United States decided in the case of Fletcher v. Peck (6 Cranch 87) that such a rescindment as that in the new state constitution was illegal, on the ground that a state cannot pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts; and at an expense of more than four millions of dollars the Federal government ultimately extinguished all claims to the lands.

This decision greatly irritated the political leaders of Georgia, and the question of extinguishing the Indian titles, on which there had long been a disagreement, caused further and even more serious friction between the Federal and state authorities. The National government, until the administration of President Jackson, regarded the Indian tribes as sovereign nations with whom it alone had the power to treat, while Georgia held that the tribes were dependent communities with no other right to the soil than that of tenants at will. In 1785 Georgia made treaties with the Creeks by which those Indians ceded to the state their lands S. and W. of the Altamaha river and E. of the Oconee river, but after a remonstrance of one of their half-breed chiefs Congress decided that the cessions were invalid, and the National government negotiated, in 1790, a new treaty which ceded only the lands E. of the Oconee. The state appealed to the National government to endeavour to secure further cessions, but none had been made when, in 1802, the United States assumed its obligation to extinguish all Indian titles within the state. Several cessions were made between 1802 and 1824, but the state in the latter year remonstrated in vigorous terms against the dilatory manner in which the National government was discharging its obligation, and the effect of this was that in 1825 a treaty was negotiated at Indian Springs by which nearly all the Lower Creeks agreed to exchange their remaining lands in Georgia for equal territory beyond the Mississippi. But President J. Q. Adams, learning that this treaty was not approved by the entire Creek nation, authorized a new one, signed at Washington in 1826, by which the treaty of 1825 was abrogated and the Creeks kept certain lands W. of the Chattahoochee. The Georgia government, under the leadership of Governor George M. Troup (1780–1856), had proceeded to execute the first treaty, and the legislature declared the second treaty illegal and unconstitutional. In reply to a communication of President Adams early in 1827 that the United States would take strong measures to enforce its policy, Governor Troup declared that he felt it his duty to resist to the utmost any military attack which the government of the United States should think proper to make, and ordered the military companies to prepare to resist “any hostile invasion of the territory of this state.” But the strain produced by these conditions was relieved by information that new negotiations had been begun for the cession of all Creek lands in Georgia. These negotiations were completed late in the year.

There was similar conflict in the relation of the United States and Georgia with the Cherokees. In 1785 the Cherokees of Georgia placed themselves under the protection of the Federal government, and in 1823 their chiefs, who were mostly half-breeds, declared: “It is the fixed and unalterable determination of this nation never again to cede one foot more of land,” and that they could not “recognize the sovereignty of any state within the limits of their territory”; in 1827 they framed a constitution and organized a representative government. President Monroe and President J. Q. Adams treated the Cherokees with the courtesy due to a sovereign nation, and held that the United States had done all that was required to meet the obligation assumed in 1802. The Georgia legislature, however, contended that the United States had not acted in good faith, declared that all land within the boundaries of the state belonged to Georgia, and in 1828 extended the jurisdiction of Georgia law to the Cherokee lands. Then President Jackson, holding that Georgia was in the right on the Indian question, informed the Cherokees that their only alternative to submission to Georgia was emigration. Thereupon the chiefs resorted to the United States Supreme Court, which in 1832 declared that the Cherokees formed a distinct community “in which the laws of Georgia have no force,” and annulled the decision of a Georgia court that had extended its jurisdiction into the Cherokee country (Worcester v. Georgia). But the governor of Georgia declared that the decision was an attempt at usurpation which would meet with determined resistance, and President Jackson refused to enforce the decree. The President did, however, work for the removal of the Indians, which was effected in 1838.

On account of these conflicts a majority of Georgians adopted the principles of the Democratic-Republican party, and early in the 19th century the people were virtually unanimous in their political ideas. Local partisanship centred in two factions: one, led by George M. Troup, which represented the interests of the aristocratic and slave-holding communities; the other, formed by John Clarke (1766–1832) and his brother Elijah, found support among the non-slave-holders and the frontiersmen. The cleavage of these factions was at first purely personal; but by 1832 it had become one of principle. Then the Troup faction under the name of States Rights party, endorsed the nullification policy of South Carolina, while the Clarke faction, calling itself a Union party, opposed South Carolina’s conduct, but on the grounds of expediency rather than of principle. On account, however, of its opposition to President Jackson’s attitude toward nullification, the States Rights party affiliated with the new Whig party, which represented the national feeling in the South, while the Union party was merged into the Democratic party, which emphasized the sovereignty of the states.

The activity of Georgia in the slavery controversy was important. As early as 1835 the legislature adopted a resolution which asserted the legality of slavery in the Territories, a principle adopted by Congress in the Kansas Bill in 1854, and in 1847 ex-Governor Wilson Lumpkin (1783–1870) advocated the organization of the Southern states to resist the aggression of the North. Popular opinion at first opposed the Compromise of 1850, and some politicians demanded immediate secession from the Union; and the legislature had approved the Alabama Platform of 1848. But Congressmen Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, Whigs, and Howell Cobb, a Democrat, upon their return from Washington, contended that the Compromise was a great victory for the South, and in a campaign on this issue secured the election of such delegates to the state convention (at Milledgeville) of 1850 that that body adopted on the 10th of December, by a vote of 237 to 19, a series of conciliatory resolutions, since known as the “Georgia Platform,” which declared in substance: (1) that, although the state did not wholly approve of the Compromise, it would “abide by it as a permanent adjustment of this sectional controversy,” to preserve the Union, as the thirteen original colonies had found compromise necessary for its formation; (2) that the state “will and ought to resist, even (as a last resort) to the disruption of every tie that binds her to the Union,” any attempt to prohibit slavery in the Territories or a refusal to admit a slave state. The adoption of this platform was accompanied by a party reorganization, those who approved it organizing the Constitutional Union party, and those who disapproved, mostly Democrats, organizing the Southern Rights party; the approval in other states of the Georgia Platform in preference to the Alabama Platform (see ) caused a reaction in the South against secession. The reaction was followed for a short interval by a return to approximately the former party alignment, but in 1854 the rank