Glass. ^ ^r/ Book 1 A HIGH CIVILIZATION THE MORAL DUTY OF GEORGIANS A DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE GEORGIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. ON THE OCCASION OP ITS FIFTH ANNIVERSARY, ON MOIVDAY^ 12th. FEBRUABT, 1844. BY THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR. SAVANNAH: PUBLISHED Br A RESOLUTION OP THE SOCIETy. 1844. n CORRESPOiNDENCE. SAVANNAH, FEB 12Tn, 1844. Dear Sir, — The Georgia Historical Society, at their annual meeting hcid this evening-, unanimously adopted the following Resolution : Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, Jr I). I), for the highly interesting and impressive discourse delivered this day before them on their Fifth Anniversary, vvliich was alike worthy of himself and of the occasion, and that a copy be requested for publication. I take great pleasure in being' the organ of communicating- the above to you, and trust that I may have the same pleasure in conveying your ncceptance to the Society. 1 have the honor to be, witli great respect and esteem, Your's, very truly, I. K. TEFFT, Corresponding Secretarrj. Rt. Rev. Stepheit Elliott, Ju. D. D. SAVANNAH, FKH. IGrir, 1844. Dear Sir, — I received this morning- your'.s'fef last night, covering a Resolution of the Georgia Historical Society, requesting a copy of my address of yesterday for publication. But one answer can be given to sucli a Resolution, that the address is at the service of the Society If it can be made useful either to the Socie- ty or the State it wdl afford me the highest gratification Very lespectfu'l}', your obedient servant and friend, S lElMIEN KLUOTT, JR. T. K. Tefft, Esa., Corresponding Secrelary. ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE ISKFORE THE GEORGIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Gentlemen OP the Historical Society : When Oglethorpe, a century since, fired with benevolence, determined to devote the best years of his manhood to the foun- dation of a new colony upon these western shores, he little dream- ed, how all things had been working together, under the over- ruling Providence of God, to render that colony one of the favour- ed spots of the earth. His views were bounded by existing circumstances ; the relief of the unfortunate debtor — the in- crease of the trade and commerce of his native land — the im- provement of the Indian tribes — the strengthening of the Biitisli colonies upon their Southern frontier. If his hopes or even his aspirations stretched beyond these results, they took no definite shape ; they embodied, at least, no such idea as has been devel- oped in the independence and progression of our present State. Nor was he singular in this want of discernment, for ''although coming events had cast their shadows before," and the world for many ages, in song and story, had fixed its dreams upon a VV est- ern continent, no one had realised the distinctive glory of its set- tlement. Some had come to these shores in a spirit of the wild- est adventure, gratifying at once an ambitious temper and a thirst for gold ; others, that they might plant the cross upon this land of promise and make its future kingdoms, the kingdoms of God and of his Christ ; others again that they might carry out schemes of civil and ecclesiastical polity, which they deemed essential to truth and to happiness, and which were denied to them at home. It was a mingled feeling that peopled the land, a feeling com- pounded of some of the worst and some of the choicest ele- ments that made up the life of the Old World. None saw clearly the result of the movement — injne embraced at once the 6 past and the future and linked tliem together for the solution of the problem. Each colony had its peculiar spirit — weaved its own web of life — felt an indistinct consciousness that it was mov- ing forward to some vast purpose, but as with prophecy, the event alone could give this consciousness form and feature. And for the consummation of that event, preparing as it had been for ages, men had to wait, until God's ways — with whom a thousand years are as one day — had worked to their result. No wonder that they did not see it ; for it is ever God's plan to use nations, as well as individuals, for the perfecting of his purposes, and while puisuing their schemes of ambition and their di'eams of gain and their notions of policy — pursuing them, too, with a consciousness of the most unrestrained liberty — to mould their feelings, their thoughts, their movements, in such wise, as to guide them inevi- tably to the final cause of their creation. While all tliis movement of the Old World upon the New was in progress atid an unwonted excitement had taken hold of peo- ples and nations, no one, J say, grasped the important truth that the New World was the theatre which God had kept hidden from mankind, while the elements of a more perfect civilization than any the world had seen were gathering for its blessing, "While they supposed that they were merely transferring to a new soil ancient modes of thought and feeling, they were really, as Arnold expresses it in another connexion, taking "not only a step in advance, but //if last step — it bore mai'ks of the fulness of times, as if there would be no future history beyond it. For the last eighteen hundred years, Greece had fed the human in- tellect ; Rome, taught by Greece and improving upon her teach- er, had been the source of law and government, and social civi- lization ; and what neither Greece nor Rome could furnish, the perfection of moral and spiritual truth, had been given by Christ- ianity. The changes which had been wrought had arisen out of the reception of these elements by new races, the English, the German, the Saxon ; races endowed with such force of character, that what was old in itself, when exhibited in them seemed to become something new. Now looking anxiously around the world for any new races which may receive the seed (so to speak) of our present history into a kindly yet a vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new, for a future period, Ave know not where such are to be found."* W'e may not find new races, but we inhabit that New World, where God desit^ned to work out, through the combination of tiiese elements of civilization, the highest purposes of human nature. These colonies sprang into existence in possession of every thing which would inevitably give them, so soon as natural difficulties were overcome, immense moral weight in the scale of nations. What Europe had been gradually moulding herself into for centuries — a series of con- stitutional governments — formed the basis of their civil state. What Rome had expended all her power and wisdom to attain — a higher social life, a life of law and equity — at once came over to them with the legal institutions of their father-land. What Greece had worked out as the result of a most happy intellec- tual freedom and activity — the co xaXov in letters, in arts, in taste — flowed in as their heritage from the schools and universi- ties in which they had been bred, and to crown the whole, what God had been consummating for the nations — the revelation of his will — the manifestation of himself in the face of Christ Jesus — became the moving cause of much of the emigration which made the wilderness a peopled city, and the desert a place of habitations. As these colonies grew into life, thev were nuitur- ed in religion, literature, laws, lite, which the world had been perfecting in its long and varied course ; nurtured, too, under circumstances in which many of the evils which had growi, up along with them could be shaken oflj and their inherent blessings find room to develope themselves, in any direction and toward any perfection the will of man might suggest While such views as these were overlooked by the colonists of the New World, matters of minor importance were proposed as inducements to colonial settlement. Georgia, especially, was proclaimed as the garden spot of the earth. Two centuries of disappointment were not enough to prevent the enthusiasm of the Old World from being anew enkindled by the descriptions which were circulated respecting this land of perpetual spring and ever blooming flowers and exhaustless life. Prose and poetry vied • Arnold's Lectures on Modern aistory. pp. 28, 29. London, 1843, B with eacli other to give celebrity to this choicest spot of nature, and Europeans were again led to cast themselves upon America, lured by the promise of advantages which they never reaped. Wine and silk, and, above all, hmg life, were the great incentives held out to the settlement of Georgia, and these expectations — delusive as they have proved themselves to be — outweighed the wretched fate of the Spaniards, and the miserable experience of the other colonists, and even the very recent story of Indian mas- sacres at the gales of Charleston. It is vv^onderful that men should have risked any thing in the face of such an experience, but all things were in the hands of Him, who was overruling the wills of men to his own high purposes. But although these things were overlooked by those who first planned their footsteps upon this soil, it is nevertheless our duty to take them up and carry them out to their fullest extent. So soon as the concurrence of circumstances, and the sequence of events, determine the destiny of a people, that moment is that people morally bound to perfect that destiny. However blindly its founders may have advanced to their work — however ignor- ant they may have been of the ultimate purpose for which they were spending their labour and shedding their blood — still were they laying the foundation as they were directed, and we must raise the superstructure as we are directed. In either case is the finger of God pointing to the duty and to the responsibility We can see what they were not permitted to see ; their labour hath raised us to an height whence we can distinctly discern the whole purpose of God, and how we may give it its utmost fulfilment. Their part in this great drama, wherein we are now the busy ac- tors, was that of toil, and suffering, and peril, and sword ; ours to give that life of deprivation its full effect by schooling ourselves through a severe intellectual and moral discipline for the attain- ment of the high point of civilization marked out for us. Should we not march up to that great and noble end in the proper tone of mind and spirit, we should be derelict to the trust which has been committed to us — we should be taithless to the memories of our fathers, who suffered that we might be the heirs not only c»f inestimable privileges, but likewise of incalculable responsibili- ties. They haye acted their part well ; before their energy and perseverance the forests have given place to the habitations of hixu- ry; under their wise policy and determined courage a weak colony has grown into a powerful State. Every thing which obstruct- ed their progress has been put out of the way and we are left in full and free possession of a mighty domain, richly covered with the blessings of nature and inheriting every element of civilization which the experience of the world has accumulated. They brought in the inaterials of power and of glory, and removed the physical obstacles which hindered their developement ; to us it remains to work up those materials into their highest perfection, and reach the point of culmination. As one has well expressed it, "We must be shamefully and monstrously inferior to our fathers, if we do not advance beyond them." The highest civilization of a land is wrought out when the so- cial, intellectual, moral and religious elements become universal and harmonize the will of a free people. The oneness of a tyranny is nothing but coercion ; it is force pressing every thought and feeling into a like mould ; it has form and system, but lacks the vigour and elasticity of life. The oneness of which we speak is that produced by a consent of the universal and un- fettered will of the people to a line of conduct the noblest and the best — the best, not only as a question of interest or policy, but the best because the loftiest in tone and the sublimest in truth. Such oneness as this gives a mighty impulse to a people and car- ries them to true greatness with a certainty which nothing can re- sist. In such action as this, the whole power of a commonwealth is concentrated, and from the highest to the lowest — nay, there is no highest and no lowest when men move in such an harmony, for it is all the truest nobleness — there is one motive, one feeling, one burning desire to press forward and upward nearer the ideal, satisfied with no resting place, till it hath planted its foot upon the point nearest perfection. It is this infusion into the mass of high principles, social, intellectual, moral, religious — it is this unity of purpose and of will for lofty ends — that is civi- lization — the civilization which God designed to be worked out through the combination of these elements in this land, where they all meet upon a wide and glorious arena, with nothing to 2 10 fetter their fullest developement. May we train ourselves for the struggle with moral evil, which alone can hinder us from treading the path of truth and therefore of glory ! There has been much hitherto to prevent Georgia from pos- sessing this unity of purpose and of will. Settled at a period just preceding the Revolution, its close found her with but a very scanty portion of her domain either peopled or possessed. A line drawn from a point a very little above Augusta until it struck the waters of the Ogeechee, following the course of that river un- til it reached Fort Argyle, and diverging thence to the southern- most point of St. Simons, would have embraced every thing of territory with which Georgia entered upon her career of indepen- dence. The residue of her vast domain was peopled by Indian tribes, chiefly of the great Mobilian family. To the north among the mountain fastnesses were the Cherokees, much of whose rich and beautiful country has been just added to the active territory of the State. Along the Savannah between the Currahee and Auo-usta and extending westwardly over the Oconee were the XJchees. Spreading westwardly from the Oconee and covering all that beautiful rolling country between the branches of the Alatamaha — once the favourite hunting ground of the Indians, now the ravaged and desolated clay hills of Morgan, Newton, Put- nam, Jones and Jasper — and sweeping away to the Gulf of Mexico and the Alabama river, were the numerous tribes of the Muscogees or Creeks. With a domain extending from the At- lantic Ocean to the Mississippi and from the Savannah to the Flor- ida line, Georgia could call up to her Legislative councils so late as 1784, delegates from only a few Parishes skirting the lower Sa- vannah and the Atlantic coast. From that time until the present has she been incessantly engaged in reclaiming her territory and assimilating to herself the emigrants that have flowed in, as she opened hei fresh and lovely lands to the stranger and the wander- er. And too often did they flow in merely to despoil her beauty and leave her to years of widowhood and desolation. It is mourn- ful, as one passes over that glorious country between the Broad and the Oakmulgee rivers, and listens to the traditions of its beau- ty, over which the older settlers love to linger, as it lay one vast rolling woodland with the wild deer bounding through it, and the 11 btill wiiiier Indian rejoicing in its gorgeous vistas, to look upon the change which has come over its face. The eye rests now upon decaying villages and sweeps of deserted hills, protruding their bald heads and furrowed cheeks, fit emblems of the reck- less and dissipated culture which has so soon covered them with the marks of decrepitude, deep tokens of the tears which nature herself has shed over the sad treatment she has received ! An old man said to me with deep emotion, " fSuch farmers as those in sinning against natute, have sinned against God." The domain of Georgia originally extended as far south only as the Alalamaha, and it was not until just a few years before the revolt of the colonies that her charter was extended so as to em- brace the tenitory between that river and her present southern line. The convention between South Carolina and Georgia in 1787, at Beaufort, arranged with South Carolina her northern line and confirmed her title to the southern portion of her tem- tory. From the dale of this convention was Georgia engaged in laying out new counties in the Broad River country, until 1794, when incipient steps were taken to organize what was technically called the Tallisee, which had been ceded by treaty with the Creeks at Galphintqn in 1785. This Tallisee extended from the Alatamaha to the St. Mary's, and included the present counties of Glynn, Wayne, Camden, Appling and Ware. Again was there a long pause, during which the State was creeping slowly up to the Oconee and the Alatamaha on the West and to the Gurrahee on the North. The year 1S02 witnessed the ratifica- tion of the acts of agreement and cession mada the previous spring between the United States' Commissioners on the one part and those of Georgia on the other, by which Georgia ceded all her territory West of her present boundary line, to the United States, upon certain conditions, one of wh.ch was the speedy ex- tinguishment of Indian titles within her present limits. In pur- suance of this act of agreement and cession, the Indian title to a part of the lands lying between the Oconee and Oakmulgee was extinguished by treaty at Fort Wilkinson in the summer of 1802, and their title to the remaining portion of the same lands by treaty at the City of Washington, in 1805. Here let us pause and look at Georgia in 181-1, before the treaty 12 of Fort Jackson. It is just thirty years since and we find the State in possession of not quite one half of her territory. Much of the most lovely portion of her domain — that mountain region skirting the borders of the Carolinas — and all of the richest of it — those exhaustless lands between the Alatamaha and the Chatahoochie — was still the heritage of the Cherokees and the Creeks. They still roamed over the picturesque vallies of the Naucoochie, and the Soqui, and sported beside the deep chasm, and unapproachable cataract of the Tallu]gi,h. They still coursed the deer over the rolling forests of the South West, and laved their sinewy limbs in the rushing waters of the Flint and among the rapids of the Chatahoochie. Spots which are now covered with the habitations of luxury, were then in the garb of their creation. Forests, whose silence was then unbroken save by the roar of the wild beast or the still more fearful yell of the Savage, have given place to the busy marts of commerce and of trade. All this time was Georgia shoi'n of her wealth, almost ignorant that she was the mistress of mines of gold and of acres more val- uable far than gold; all this time was she toiling, as it were, after her greatness, seeing it in visions, yet not realising it — marching painfully towards it, yet never graspijig it, until she covered with the elements of civilization all the land which was embraced within her limits. It was impossible, under circumstances like these, that the Stale could unfold its resources either with power or harmony. Her new territory was filled with emigrants, who, for a time at least, wei'e not assimilated to the State which received them. They necessal^ly brought along with them the feelings and the prejudices of their own homes and looked back upon the States which they had left, with more pride and attachment than upon her who had adopted them. Besides, the fresh outlying lands seemingly too abundant ever to be exhausted, created in the peo- ple a restlessness which was adverse to every thing like perma- nent improvement. With improvement of that kind, there must always be connected a feeling of stability — a hope, at least, that it will descend upon and be useful to our children. But when the prospect was before men, that every decade of years would open to them a virgin and fertile soil — fertile in reality, but still more 13 fertile because imagination lent its colouring to reality — tlic temptation to a wasteful use of the land they possessed was irre- sistible, and icestward, westward was inscribed on every house- hold banner. No cultivation was adopted but that which might soonest wring from the soil its treasures, careless of the waste which was committed upon the heritage of the State, and thought- less of the consequences they were entailing upon her for long years to come. No dwellings were erected which looked beyond the extinguishment of the next Indian title, and men tabernacled rather than abode in the land which they had received at the bountiful hands of the State. Poor requital for her liberality ! She has learned, almost too late, that where there is no tie be- tween her and her people than the sordid one of interest, that tie will be carelessly snapped so soon as that same interest sum- mons them elsewhere. From 1814 to 1825 there were four cessions of land, that of Fort Jackson in 1814, of the Cherokee Agency in 1817, of the Creek Agency on Flint River in 1818, and of the Indian Springs in 1825, and these placed Georgia in possession of some of her very richest lands and extinguished the title of the Creek Indians to all the territory within the limits of the State. These succes- sive cessions gave to Georgia that fine mountain region, which is fast becoming the retreat of luxury and refinement, and those fertile South-western tracts which are to minister to that luxury and work out that refinement. It is not twenty years — less than the period of a generation — and only then did the State lay her hand upon territory absolutely essential to her completeness and the stability of her people ; the one section fujnishiug them with a healthful summer retreat and thus obviating the necessity of an annual emigration to the North — so prolific a source of expense and idleness — the other jjroviding for them within her own limits lands of unbounded fertility and checking the Western current which was perpetually draining her of her resources and her population. And what a change have these twenty years wrought ! They have served to do the work of a century, and already are improvements of every kind gathering thickly around these favoured regions. Schools of a very high order; colleges of good repute; dwellings that may compete with the luxury of 14 older countries, have sprung up, as it were, by magic, and are but heralds of the glory that is dawning upon the State, if she will only be true to herself. And it is a singular coincidence that almost at one and the same time, the Cherokees and the Creeks ceded those tracts of country which must eventually play into each other's hands — the salubrious regions of Hall and Haber- sham, and the rich cotton lands of the Flint and the Chatahoochie. May a blessing follow this seeming Providence and prove that the hand of the Lord was in it. And yet after all this was Georgia still doomed to ten years more of struggle before she could gain final possession of her domain. Her best farming lands — that which was wanting to give compactness and harmony to the whole — were still in the possession of the Cherokees. The Chatahoochie was still hev boundary upon the North-west, while she had a right — at least such a right as any State could lay to Indian lands, a right which each, in its time, had exercised and seen no evil in it, until it was their neighbour's turn to reap the benefit — to stretch herself to the Lookout mountain and the Hiwassee. No wonder that she struggled hard for these lands and that the Indian struggled equally hard to retain them, for they are worth any struggle. Combining in a happy degree, healthfulness, fertility, and pictur- esque beauty, containing mines of gold, mountains of iron, and in- exhaustible quarries of marble, richly watered with bold yet quiet streams, the Cherokee country must become eventually the garden of the State. It cannot vie in magnificence with the North-eastern counties, where the ganglion of mountains pre- sents every species of the sublime in nature ; neither can it compare in fertility with the rice lands of the Atlantic coast or the cotton lands of the South-west, but it combines the char- acteristics of them all in a sufficient degree to satisfy the most fastidious. The banks of its streams may almost compete with the farming lands of Kentucky and the beautiful vallies which run down to the Coosa can bear a population as thick as that of the older countries of Europe. No wonder that the In- dian struggled for it, as he never again will find so pleasant a land, and wander where he may, he will sigh for the flowery banks of the Etowali and the fertile levels of the Oostanalau. 15 Well for him was it that he was conquered in the struggle, for it has placed him in juxtaposition with his own race, out of the reach, we trust, of the vices of civilization, yet not beyond the in- fluence of its blessings ! It was not until 183S that the removal of the Cherokee Indians finally took place and Georgia found herself, after a tedious struggle of sixty years, the mistress of her fine domain. What the memorial of the Senate and House of Representatives of Georgia stated in 1819 was still more forcible in 1838. " It has long been the desire of Georgia that her settlements should be extended to her ultimate limits; that the soil within her bounda- ries should be subjected to her control, and that her police, or- ganization and government, should be fixed and permanent. For the fulfilment of these desires, we have waited the tide of events and observed the march of time for seventeen years. Within this period, we have witnessed, with much gratification, the spread of the Union and the accession of States and Territories, greater in extent than the original confederation. Two of the members of this vast family are the descendants of Georgia ; yet Georgia loses her strength and influence as a member of the Republic, retarded as she is, in her growth and population and denied the fostering aid of her common patent." It would thus seem that Georgia only now finds herself in a position in which she may hope to carry out to their highest re- sults, the purposes of her settlement. For the first time, I speak of course inclusively of a few years last past, does her population extend over every part of her vast teriitonal surface. No longer is there any temptation uponher people to restlessness and change, or if there is, it is only from one portion of her borders to ano- ther for the purpose of final and permanent abode. Whatever is done now, must be done substantially. There are no more lands to be opened — no more Indian titles to be extinguished — the terra incognita is all unveiled and stripped of the charm which traditi«)n and imagination had weaved around it. All that Georgia is, her sons now know — all that she shall be, remains for them, under God, to determine! For the first time, in her history, may Georgia now look for a native j/ojjulation — a population born upon her soil and loving 16 her because they may call her mother. Not that those who have emigrated into her do not love her — many of her most faithful and devoted public servants come within this category — but nothing can replace the peculiar feeling which man sucks in with his mother's milk for the spot where first he breathed the air of Heaven. Those who have come into her may feel them- selves identified with her, so that her interest is their interest, but strive as they may, they cannot acquire that enthusiastic love — made up of moral sentiment and youthful association — which springs out of an identity as well of lineage, as of pursuit. The Greeks expressed this feeling when they gloried in being " (x-oTti'jpr,vsg" s(ms of the soil, and felt that a stain upon their coun- try was a stain upon a mother's I'eputation, and a reproach to her an insult that went to their hearts as to the hearts of children. This is what Georgia, for years to come, should especially cultivate — this feeling o^ homebred affection — the saying of her sons, "This is my own, my native land," and not only saying it, but living it in thought and word and action. It has been impossible for her hitherto to have possessed it in her length and breadth, but now she may, and now she will, and it must give her an impulse that shall show her sister States that she is "as a giant awaking out of sleep." Let her sons but lock their shields together, and nothing can impede her progress tn greatness ! Nor is it wrong to cultivate this feeling. It is entirely consis- tent with kindness and sympathy for those who may cast their lot in the midst of her ; nay, it is a guarantee to them that they are casting that lot where every individual feels himself a conserva- tor of the public faith and the public honour. Under our system of goveri.ment every State is Sovereign, save where that sover- eignty has been yielded up, and the surest path to united great- ness is that each part should cultivate greatness within itself. There are few stronger safeguards, I speak as a man, against dishonor and crime — there are few more stirring incentives to nobleness and self-devotion, than this love of country — this liome-fcel'mg towards one's State, as if all her sons formed one great fire-side, and the public hearth was to be kept unpolluted like a private one! Local attachments can never be effaced. Man may reason against them ; may fly away from them ; may strive to create them 17 anew ; but ilie heart goes back to the fire-side of its childhood and the play-grounds of its y»)Uth. Man every day goes forth to toil, cheered by the single hope that he may one day return to the .scenes of his ewrly recollections. History is full of the record of those who have died that glory might be wreathed around their place of birth, or that shame might be averted from it. Such a feeling can be productive of nothing but good, for it adds to all the other res- traints upon human nature this mighty one, of a high public char- acter resting upon a private one ! This then, as I said before, is the feeling which should be es- pecially cultivated for years to come in what may be called " Young Georgia'^ — the feeling that this is Home, and that noth-* ing but the direst necessity shall separate them from it — nay more, when that neces^^ity comes, and they are forced to burst the bonds of nativity, to go forth, like the nobleman in Sterne, having first laid up their swords in the public keeping, until they shall be ready to reclaim them. Generated at every part of the State — cultivated and nurtured in the homestead — it would create a bond of sympathy among the young — those who must, in a few years, hold in their hands the destiny of the State — stronger than ambition or interest or party. What could external politics advance that could compete with a feeling like this? "What enthusiasm could ever gather around the name of a public man like that which would be kindled at the name of Georgia ? The question would no longer be, how will this course of policy affect this or that party, or what influence will it have upon this or that Presidential candidate, but how will it affect that which is dearer to me than men or party, my own native land. Geor- gia, as a State, would then stand above all other influences and nothing would find favour among her sons that did not tend to place her higher in the scale of States, or stronger on the foun- dations of truth and justice. An unity of purpose would thus be created through the impulses of nature, and a homogeneousness insensibly grow up, which under continued cultivation would proceed on to higher perfection. The next step in the increase of this home-feeling and this uni- ty of the people, must be to collect our young men together in literary institutions of our own creation. School and college 3 16 friendships are those which last through life, and such friendships must exercise a powerful influence in assuaging the bitterness of party in after life, nay, in preventing the division of the State into parties and cliques. Hence the advantage of one well endowed public University; so endowed as that the highest education may be obtained at home and the leading minds of the State be cherished up to greatness in contact with each other. Thrown together at a time of life, when the evil passions of our nature have not yet fully developed themselves, personal prejudices would be worn away, sectional feelings would be softened, and the mountains and the seaboard would find that their very truest interest was to be faithful and just to each other. Every State that would im- press itself morally and intellectually upon its age — take for ex- amples Massachusetts and Connecticut — must build up within it- self and sustain, if need be, from the public coffers an University that may give at home to its sons as thorough an education, as can be procured any where else. So surely as this is not done, must her young men be educated below the standard of the country and be made to feel through life their inferiority, or else be sent abroad to form their feelings and their sympathies among strangers, per- haps to nurture prejudices against their home, that will go very far to unfit them for usefulness in future life. Now is the time for Georgia to assume this position, and lavish — I purposely use the word — her treasures upon the endowment of her University. If there is any thing in which economy is a fault, it is in connex- ion with education. Well paid Professors and a numerous corps of them too — an extensive library which might enable her litera- ry men to pursue at home any train of thought or matter of re- Search — scholarships and fellowships to nurture her own sons for the high places of literature in her schools and colleges — such things as these would keep at home much treasure which is now spent abroad in the pursuit of learning, would elevate the intel- lectual standard of the whole State, and would bring our young statesmen together in the halls of legislation not with the feel- ings of rival gladiators, but with the hearty welcome of school and college friends, come up to bestow upon their common Pa- rent the fruits of their intellectual maturity. These bonds of nature and of education having thus combined 19 to harmonize the State, the next step is to bring these elements of higb civilization into still greater homogeneousness by a chain of internal improvements leading to a rapid intercommunion. Nothing will so soon and so happily break down all sectional jea- lousy, and all foolish prejudices, as bringing the people face to face in a constant intercourse, Hilhcrt<» the various sections of the State have been almost unknown to each other, and the cities north of us have been much more familiar to Georgians than the cities of their own State. In the Legislature, this section and that section have been bandied against each other, as if the good of the one part was not the good of every part ; as if one member of the body corporate could pulsate with joy or with sorrow and the whole body not feel the influence. It is no matter through what sections these roads may run — it is no matter what they may cost, within any reasonable amount — it is no matter whether they repay to the State in money any expenditure which may be made upon them ; the benefit which will accrue from bringing the people together and binding them in the ties of hospitality and of interest, will far out-weigh ail the cost of the expenditure. It is a narrow view to consider the mere money return of such chains of intercommunion; there is a moral return which they are ever making of infinitely higher and moie enduring value; are- turn visible in softened prejudices, in enlarged views, in loftier aspirations, in the advancement of the social affections ; a return necessary and beneficial to all, but especially necessary to a State of such vast territory as that of Georgia, and just assimilating to herself a population galhei'ed from almost every State of the Uni- on. Unless this be done speedily, and I rejoice as a citizen of Georgia, that it is rapidly progressing, the exchange trade of the State will find other out-lets than the proper ones of her own Atlantic towns, and seriously disturb that homogeneousness after which we have shown that we ought m >st especially to strive. The natural out-let of the country iN'ortli-wjst of the Chatahoo- chie IS the Coosa River, and with a very little labour — unless an artificial channel be at once created, linking that fertile farming country with the rest of the State — will all that trade be diverted to Mobile. Without a rail road at very low rates, it could fiud a ■>y 20 profitable market at no other point. The natural out-let of the rich cotton lands of the South-west are the Flint and the Chata- hoochie, and unless an artificial channel be created, binding in like manner those inexhaustible cotton regions to the rest of the State, must all that trade pass to the Gulf of Mexico. And thus would the commercial connexion of two most important sections of our State be disjoined from her and with that disjunction would ensue the disjunction of interest, of sympathy, of feeling, and finally of legislation. But binding all the parts to each other, the line of in- tercourse would follow the course of trade, and one purpose would move the whole population from the mountains to the At- lantic. We too. Gentlemen of the Historical Society, may exercise a poweiful influence in the production of this State-feeling and State-unity of which I have spoken so much, by collecting to- gether the materials which make up her annals and preserv- ing the traditions and associatictns which constitute so laige a part of the pride of a country. The abstract will not do for hu- man nature. It must have the concrete ; it must fix its affections upon spots, upon scenes, upon individuals ; it must twine its feel- ings around events and circumstances, and oft-times a name, a word will enkindle an enthusiasm, which not all the elaboration of elo- quence could elicit. And these materials of enthusiasm it is our province to collect. We have associated together that we may gather up the ashes of the depaited great and inurn them for pos- terity; that we may embody the floating traditions of the State and give them a local habitation and a name; that we may call back the affections of the people to spots consecrated by the labour and the blood of their fathers; that we may fill the young with enthusiasm for the past and with an honourable ambition to emulate its vir- tues and its fame. We can do much to improve the future in the perpetuation of the past, to turn the feeling inward upon the State, which has too long been wasted elsewhere. Who can calculate the concentrating and harmonizing effect which such a wi iter as Scott has produced upon his country 1 He has invested eveiy glen, and crag, and loch, and mountain, and ruin with bl world- interest, and in doing this has made every Scotchman proudei that he is one, and linked his heart to his home by ties stronger tlian 21 any distance or time can obliterate. He did what we are strivino- to do — caught every tradition as it floated by and gave it perma- nence ; seized every event which told for his country's glory and riveted it upon the imaginations of his countrymen ; evolved her story from the dust of antiquity and made it the possession of eve- ry cottage fire-side. We may not compete with his imagination, nor need we, for our work is history — his was fiction illustraring history — but we can imitate his research and industry, and rescue from the ravages of time, all that is great and noble, and worth pre- serving in the slory of the past. We are but a youthlul race if we reckon back only to the beginning of our colonial existence; if we cross that line, European history is our history; but the aborigines have a history, one of deep interest and moving pathos — a history, too, connected with a still anterior civilization, and this will yet give an interest to scenes now unnoticed, because nothin