past. If he might call them dead, and bury them, it seems they only
slept, and ere he knew, at but a word, a breath, the softest sigh, they
woke once more and moved here as he thought they would not evermore.
Clarke owned large tracts of land in Wilkes county (before it was cut
up into other counties.) One deed is made to Wylie Pope in 1806. He
reserves twenty feet where his two children are buried, Elijah Clarke
and George Walton Clarke. Leaving Georgia he settled in Washington
county, Florida, on the shores of the beautiful "Old Saint Andrews."
Here he entertained his friends and here he spent the last ten years of
his life within the sound of the restless, surging waters of the gulf.
October 12th, 1832, Governor Clarke passed from this life, and eight
days later his wife joined him in the Great Beyond. They were buried
near the seashore in a beautiful grove of live oaks, and a marble shaft
erected over them bears the following inscription:
Here reposes the remains of
John Clarke
Late Governor of Georgia
And
Nancy Clarke
His Wife
(NORTH FACE OF MONUMENT)
John Clarke
Born Feb. 28th, 1760
Died October 12th, 1832
As an officer he was vigilant and brave
As a statesman energetic and faithful
As a father and friend devoted and sincere.
(WEST FACE)
This monument was erected by their surviving children, Ann
Campbell and Wylie P. Clarke.
Not far from the monument are two little graves with flat slabs and the
following inscription:
Erected to the memory of John W. and Ann W. Campbell.
Ann Hand
Born January 24th, 1823
Died Sept. 3rd, 1829
Marcus Edwin
Born Feb. 25th, 1831
Died Feb. 3rd, 1833
"Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Seventy-five years have passed and the once beautiful spot is now
desecrated. The oaks are cut, the tombstones are broken, and the grave
of Georgia's governor is trespassed upon in a shameful manner. However,
overshadowing his tomb, and keeping guard is a holly tree in all its
beauty, filled with long waving wreathes of Spanish moss, and no doubt
it whispers to the passing breeze that hurries on to ocean, the story
of a lost love!
Aye, what is it all if this life be all
But a draught to its dregs of a cup of gall,
A bitter round of rayless years,
A saddened dole of wormwood tears,
A sorrowful plaint of the Spirit's thrall
The graves, the shroud, the funeral pall
This is the sum, if this life be all.
PARTY RELATIONS IN ENGLAND AND THEIR EFFECT ON THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
(A paper read before the Ralph Humphreys Chapter, Daughters of the
American Revolution, of Jackson, Mississippi, by Dr. James Elliott
Walmsley, professor of history in Millsaps College.)
George Eliot says somewhere that all beginnings are make-believes.
Especially is this statement found true in attempting to trace the
origin of the American Revolution. Every cause assigned is at once seen
to be the effect of some more remote cause, until one might go back
step by step to the liberty-loving ancestors of the early Saxons in
their forest home of Northern Germany. Without undertaking any work so
elaborate it is the purpose of this study to show the effects of one of
these causes.
All free governments have developed parties, but as the word is used at
present true political parties in England did not arise till after the
wars of the Puritans and Cavaliers in the seventeenth century. The men
who migrated to America, with the exception of the aristocratic element
that located largely in the South between 1640 and 1660, were of the
party who believed in restricting the power of the king, and were
opposed by the party who professed implicit faith in the divine right
of kings. By the time of the accession of William of Orange the former
party was recognized by the name of Whigs, while the loyal devotees of
regal infallibility were called Tories.
The first king of the Hanover line, George I, was seated on his throne
through a successful piece of Whig politics, so admirably described
by Thackeray in Henry Esmond, and his government was conducted by a
Whig minister, Robert Walpole, assisted by a Whig cabinet. The power
remained in the hands of a few families, and this condition, which
amounted to an aristocratic rule of "Old Whigs," lasted down to the
accession of George III, in 1760. The new king, who was destined to be
the last king in America, was not like his father and grandfather, a
German-speaking prince who knew nothing of England and her people, but
one who gloried in the name Briton. Brought up by his mother with the
fixed idea he should never forget that he was king, his ambition was
to restore the autocratic power of William I. or Henry II. To attain
this end he set himself to overthrow the Whig party and so recall to
favor the Tories, who had by this time given up their dreams of "Bonnie
Prince Charlie" and Stuart restorations.
This misguided monarch, who was a model of Christian character in
private life, but who in the words of a great English historian,
wrought more lasting evil to his country than any other man in its
history, determined first to overthrow William Pitt, the elder,
the greatest statesman that the English speaking race has ever
produced--that man who sat in his room in London and planned campaigns
in the snow covered mountains of Silesia and the impassable swamps of
Prussia, on the banks of the Hugli in India and on the Plain of Abraham
in Canada, in the spicy islands of the East Indies and the stormy
waters of the Atlantic, who brought England from the depths of lowest
dejection to a point where the gifted Horace Walpole could say in 1759,
"We must inquire each morning what new victory we should celebrate."
This great man was overthrown by the king in 1761, and there came into
power the extreme Tory wing, known as the "king's friends," whose only
rule of political guidance was the royal wish. These men, led by the
Earl of Bute, followed the king on one of the wildest, maddest courses
that English partisan politics has known.
At this point we must pause and examine the constitution of the
British Empire. England, Scotland, and Wales were governed by their
own Parliament, but so defective was the method of representation that
villages which had formerly flourished but had now fallen into decay
or even like Old Sarum, were buried under the waves of the North Sea,
still returned their two members to Parliament, while important cities
like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, which had grown up in the last
hundred years, were entirely unrepresented. The Whigs in England,
as least the New Whigs, the progressive element, were contending for
the same principle of representation that inspired the Americans. In
addition to the home-land, England ruled, as colonies, Ireland, the
Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, sea fortresses, such as Gibraltar and
Malta, Asiatic possessions, including in India an empire twenty times
as populous as the ruling country, Canada, Jamaica, the Barbadoes,
the Thirteen Colonies, etc. Our own thirteen colonies, which were
not united among themselves and which were not different in the eyes
of an Englishman from any other of the colonies, formed a small part
geographically of the empire and had for their peculiar distinction
only the larger proportion of English residents.
Furthermore, the modern idea of governing colonies for the welfare of
the colonies had not yet been invented. A colony was considered as a
farm or any other wealth producing piece of property. Adam Smith's
epoch-making work, "The Wealth of Nations," the first serious attempt
to discuss Political Economy, was not published till 1776, and in his
chapter on colonies he for the first time proposed the doctrine of
removing restrictions and allowing to colonies free trade and free
government. It is significant of the contentions of this article that
Adam Smith's book was at once read and quoted in Parliament by the
leaders of the Whigs, especial attention being given to it by the young
William Pitt, who was described by an enthusiastic Whig as "not a chip
of the old block but the old block itself."
With this preliminary statement we can take up the course of party
relations. One of the first distinctively party acts of George's
reign was the Stamp Act passed against the active opposition of the
Whigs; and the downfall of the Grenville ministry and the accession
of the Marquis of Rockingham, the Whig prime minister, marked by the
repeal of this act in 1766. In the next year, however, the Rockingham
ministry fell, and Townshend, the moving spirit in the succeeding
administration, carried through the series of acts that led directly to
the Boston Tea Party and its momentous results.
Finally when George III, who openly proclaimed himself a Tory,
succeeded in becoming supreme in the government, he called into office,
in 1770, Lord George North, who for twelve years was the king's tool
in carrying out a policy which he disliked. It was only his "lazy good
nature and Tory principles," which led him to defer to the king's
judgment and advocate the doctrine, in a far different sense from the
present meaning of the words, that "the king can do no wrong." From
this day it was natural that the Whigs in opposition should oppose the
government measures and should identify the cause of free government
in America with that in England and that every New Whig should become
an enthusiastic supporter of the American contentions. In fact George
and the Tory party realized that if the American theory of taxation
conditioned on representation prevailed it would be necessary to yield
to the demand of the New Whigs for reform in the representation in
England.
This fact explains some intricate points in the politics of the time.
It shows for instance why we fought a war with England and then in
securing a treaty of peace conspired with our enemy, England, to wrest
more favorable terms from our ally, France. We fought a Tory England,
but Lord North's ministry fell when the news of Yorktown came, and we
made a treaty of peace with a whig England, and the Whigs were our
friends. The Whigs in Parliament spoke of the American army as "our
army," Charles Fox spoke of Washington's defeat as the "terrible news
from Long Island," and Wraxall says that the famous buff and blue
colors of the Whig party were adopted from the Continental uniform.
Even the "Sons of Liberty" took their name from a phrase struck out
by Colonel Barre, the comrade of Wolfe at Quebec, in the heat of a
parliamentary debate.
Illustrations of this important point might be multiplied, but it may
be better to take up more minutely the career of one man and show how
the conflict of Whig and Tory politics affected the actual outcome of
the struggle. Lord George Howe was the only British officer who was
ever really loved by the Americans, and there is to-day in Westminster
Abbey a statue erected to his memory by the people of Massachusetts.
After his death at Ticonderoga in 1758 his mother issued an address
to the electors of Nottingham asking that they elect her youngest son
William to Parliament in his place. William Howe, known in American
history as General Howe, considered himself as the successor of his
brother and as the especial friend of the Americans. When war was
threatened in 1774 he told his constituents that on principle the
Americans were right and that if he were appointed to go out against
them he would as a loyal Whig refuse. Of course this was a reckless
statement, for an officer in the army can not choose whom he will
fight. He was put in supreme command in America when General Gage was
recalled, but was directed by his government to carry the olive branch
in one hand. That he obeyed this command, which was to his own liking,
even too literally, is easily established.
There is one almost unwritten chapter in American history which I would
like to leave in oblivion, but candor demands its settlement. Our
people were not as a whole enthusiastic over the war, in many sections
a majority were opposed to it, those who favored it were too often
half-hearted in their support. Had the men of America in 1776 enlisted
and served in the same proportion in which the men of the Southern
States did in 1861, when fighting for their "independence," Washington
would have had at all times over 60,000 in his army. As a matter of
fact there never were as many as 25,000 in active service at any one
time, the average number was about 4,000, and at certain critical times
he had not over 1,000. General Knox's official figures of 252,000
are confessedly inaccurate, and by including each separate short
enlistment make up the total enlistment for the six years, sometimes
counting the same man as often as five times. At the very time when
Washington's men were starving and freezing at Valley Forge the country
people were hauling provisions past the camp and selling them to the
British in Philadelphia.
Much more might be said, but enough for a disagreeable subject. No
careful historian to-day will deny that considering the lack of
support given to Washington and his army, the Revolution could have
been crushed in the first year, long before the French alliance was
a possibility, had the English shown one-half the ability of the
administration in the recent South African War. Among the causes
assignable for this state of incompetence the political situation
deserves more attention than it has hitherto been given.
No one has ever explained Howe's inexcusable carelessness in letting
Washington escape after Long Island, no one can explain his foolish
inactivity during the succeeding winter, except by the fact that Howe
was a Whig, his sympathies were with the Americans, the Whigs had said
repeatedly that the Americans could hold out against a good army and it
seemed now that they were helping fulfill their own prophecy.
It is rarely stated in our American histories that Howe was
investigated by a committee of Parliament after his evacuation of
Philadelphia, that he was severely condemned for not assisting Burgoyne
and for not capturing Washington's starving handful of men at Valley
Forge, that Joseph Galloway, the noted American loyalist, who was a
member of the first Continental Congress, openly accused him of being
in league with a large section of Whigs to let the Revolution go by
default and to give America its independence, and that immediately
after his return to England he resumed his seat in Parliament and spoke
and worked in opposition to the king and in behalf of the Americans.
The case of General Howe is typical and can be duplicated in the other
departments of the government. The leading Tory ministers claimed that
the rebellion would have failed but for the sympathy in the House of
Commons, and this charge was made in the very House itself.
It would be a gross exaggeration to say that our Revolution was merely
the result of a party quarrel in England, but the unfortunate party
attitude of King George III. certainly was one of the most potent
causes of trouble, and the progress of the war reacted most strongly on
the party situation in England. When William Pitt, the younger, at the
age of twenty-five took into his hands the premiership of England in
December 1783, he did it as the representative of the English people,
and the revolution which began in this country was completed in the
English Parliament. Up to 1776 the history of America and England
flowed in the same channel, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Pitt are ours
as much as England's, and it should always be remembered that just
when the countries were in the act of separating the system of George
III. was shaken off and shattered by the free people of the two great
Anglo-Saxon powers, and the Whig statesmen of England could join with
their party friends in America in welcoming a new self-governing people
to the council of nations.--_American Monthly Magazine._
EARLY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION BY LAND AND WATER.
The facilities for conveniently carrying persons or property from
one place to another affects in a measure the physical welfare of
every human being, and all progressive nations desire to secure the
advantages to be derived from the best systems of transportation. This
country of ours has tried many experiments and been rapidly benefited
in the results obtained. It hardly seems to us possible, in this day
of improved and rapid travel, that the entire system of transportation
is still in the transition state, and in some parts of the country the
very expedients which we have tried, improved upon and cast away, are
at present in use. But our topic deals with other days than these, and
we must hasten back to the beginning of things here in America.
According to Indian tradition, it is believed that within a brief
period prior to the discovery of America by Columbus, the Indians had
travelled over a large portion of the country between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, and were familiar with the topographical features of
the continent. Their frequent wars and their long continuance in the
hunter state, made them necessarily a migratory race and their pathways
were the first trails for the white settlers when they came. When we
travel over crooked roads and even crooked streets in our towns, how
many of us stop to think that we are travelling the same road as blazed
out for us by an Indian or trodden down for us by an early settler's
straying cow?
As the Indian, as a guide through the almost impenetrable forests
was of great aid to the early settlers, so also was the canoe of the
Indian a great service. Of course the white man crossed the ocean in
larger boats, but when it came to travelling from point to point,
after reaching America, the lighter craft of the Indians was the only
possible means of water travel, for the numerous falls or rapids, and
the frequent portages between distinct water systems, made the use
of a heavy boat impossible. These canoes were of birch bark, buffalo
skin, stretched over wooden frames, or even large trees felled, the
trunk cut into sections and split, then hollowed out by burning first
and the ashes scooped out with the hands or pieces of shell, until
the sides and bottom were reduced to the utmost thinness consistent
with buoyancy and security. The method of propelling these canoes was
usually by paddle, but some had sails. The size varied from twelve feet
to forty feet in length, and they were capable of carrying from two to
forty men. Of course the larger canoes were used principally for state
occasions, military purposes, or when large stores of supplies were to
be transported.
One old historian tells of the way the sails were used. The Indian
stood in the bow of the canoe and with his hands held up two corners
of his blanket, and the other two corners were either fastened to his
ankles or simply placed under each foot, while in the stern of the
canoe, the squaw sat and steered. The scheme was an ingenious one and
must have been a grateful change to the poor squaw, who otherwise would
have had to propel the canoe by means of the paddle.
Of the Indian canoe Longfellow says:
The forest's life was in it,
All its mystery and its magic,
All the lightness of the birch tree,
All the toughness of the cedar'
All the larch's supple sinews;
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water lily.
On account of the dense forests and the difficulty experienced in
penetrating them, the early settlements were upon the banks of streams
and consequently the water channels and seaports, for communication
between the various settlements, as well as with the mother country,
were a necessity and the very first legislation with regard to
transportation related to boats, canoes and landings. It was a long
time before any internal development of the land took place, because
these waterways formed the main reliance for all movements of persons
or property. Each of the thirteen original colonies had one or more
seaports and the main current of trade, during the colonial period,
and in fact up to much later times, was between these ports and the
interior districts on the one hand, and the outer world and the ocean
on the other. Commerce between the colonies was limited and all
movements from one colony to another were by various kinds of sea going
vessels. All the boats subsequently built by the European settlers
showed the influence of the Indian canoe. The raft was another method
of the Indian for transporting property, and from this grew the various
kinds of floatboats. The raft itself is still in use but more as a
means of transporting the lumber of which it is composed than as a
means for carrying other freight.
For land travel, when the Indians had burdens to carry they did it by
means of the burden strap, an arrangement of leather bands which fitted
around the forehead and was lashed to a litter borne upon the back. It
was usually about fifteen feet in length and braided into a belt in the
center, three or four inches wide. This carrying of burdens upon the
back is the one method of transportation which combines the greatest
amount of human effort with the least practical effect. But it was at
the time the only method available and formed one of the most serious
privations and discomforts of savage life.
It is recorded in the case of a white man, who helped the Indians in
one of their wars, early in 1600, that he was wounded and could not
walk. Thereupon he was placed in a basket of wicker work, doubled up,
and fastened with cords until he could scarcely move, and so carried
upon the backs of Indians for several days.
In winter we are told they had some sort of primitive sledges, and they
used dogs in some sections. Then, of course, they had the snow shoe,
which, to them, was a rapid way of travelling, but when the poor white
explorers or captives travelled with the Indians on winter expeditions,
they suffered sharply until they caught the hang of it. Chilblains were
not the worst of the suffering, for the tie over the instep and the
loops over the toes caused friction, and bleeding, frozen feet were the
result.
When the white man came, he, in time, brought horses and these were
much appreciated by the Indians, who seemed to know intuitively how
to manage and use them. In place of carrying burdens upon his own
back, the red man fastened one end of his tent poles to the horse and
fastened upon them the skins which composed his tent, and allowed the
poles to trail upon the ground. This support furnished a method of
transporting baggage, household effects and even women and children
vastly superior to the old way.
The old trails of the red man, over which for many years they had
traveled with their peculiar but rapid walk, now furnished bridle paths
for the white man and his horse, and many of those bridle paths are
today in use. Of course, the first sturdy settlers walked these trails
as did the Indians, and we have the history of one journey of Governor
Winthrop, when he was carried, at least over streams, "pick-a-pack"
upon the back of an Indian. This is a very human, if undignified,
picture of the worthy governor.
An early explorer in Virginia said that had she "but horses and
kine and were inhabited with English, no realm in Christendom were
comparable to it." As these blessings were all added to Virginia in
course of time, we must believe her the fairest of colonies. As the
Indians were too poor to buy the carefully guarded horses of the early
settlers, and could not steal them, they were compelled to wait until
races of wild horses were developed from the horses brought to Florida,
Mexico and California by the Spaniards. The better grade of horse
was used by the warrior and for travel, but the poorer horses for the
drudgery and were quite naturally called "squaw ponies." In the early
days before the carriage was introduced, wounded or sick persons were
carried upon stretchers between two horses.