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"They are taking her to Georgia for to wear her life away" was a slave refrain welcome to the ears of masters outside that state; and the slanderous imputation gave no offence even to Georgians, for they recognized that the intention was benevolent, and they were in turn blackening the reputations of the more westerly states in the amiable purpose of keeping their own slaves content.
As far back as 1802, when Georgia made her final cession of western lands to United States, the latter agreed to extinguish the Indian title to lands within the State whenever it could be done "peaceably and on reasonable terms." This pledge the Georgians never allowed the federal authorities to forget. After 1815 several large tracts were liberated.
The tall, soldierly Tennesseeans, of whom their commander said, when asked if he could take and hold a position of transcendent danger, "Give me my Tennesseeans, and I'll take and hold anything;" the determined, ever-ready Texans, who, under the immortal Terry, so distinguished themselves, and under other leaders in every battle of the war won undying laurels; North Carolinians, of whose courage in battle I needed no better proof than the pluck they invariably showed under the torture of fevered wounds or of the surgeon's knife; exiled Kentuckians, Arkansians, Georgians, Louisianians, Missourians, Marylanders, sternly resentful, and impatient of the wounds that kept them from the battle-field, because ever hoping to strike some blow that should sever a link in the chains which bound the homes they so loved; Alabamians, the number of whose regiments, as well as their frequent consolidation, spoke volumes for their splendid service; Georgians, who, having fought with desperate valor, now lay suffering and dying within the confines of their own State, yet unable to reach the loved ones who, unknowing what their fate might be, awaited with trembling hearts accounts of the battle, so slow in reaching them; Mississippians, of whom I have often heard it said, "their fighting and staying qualities were magnificent," I then knew hundreds of instances of individual valor, of which my remembrance is now so dim that I dare not give names or dates.
After resting for nearly a week at Frederick City, Md., the battalion, with the Fifteenth South Carolina and the Georgians of Drayton's Brigade, was ordered to re-enforce General D.H. Hill, who was guarding Lee's rear at Crompton's Gap, in South Mountain.
On the eve of returning to the army, I learned of my promotion to brigadier, to relieve General Walker, transferred to a brigade of Georgians. This promotion seriously embarrassed me. Of the four colonels whose regiments constituted the brigade, I was the junior in commission, and the other three had been present and "won their spurs" at the recent battle, so far the only important one of the war.
A storm of cheers greeted the general, as he sat his gray war-horse, in front of the men his head bare, his eyes flashing, and his cheeks flushed with the fighting-blood of the soldier. General Gordon, however, spurred to his side and seized his rein. "General Lee!" he exclaimed, "this is no place for you. Go to the rear. These are Virginians and Georgians, sir men who have never failed!
At this moment Jennings, who for some time had been uneasily groping through his beard, and turning the rings round and round on his thin damp fingers, broke in with a flood of speech about modern French art, in which names of all the latest painters of Paris spun by like twigs on a spate of turbulent water. The Georgians were soon up and after him in full cry.
This feeling was perpetuated by the political campaigns in which his son, John Clarke, took part after the war. A trace of this is to be seen in the sketch which Governor Gilmer gives to Elijah Clarke in his curious book entitled "Georgians."
Ephrinell did not get out. Here was I striding along the platform of a very poorly lighted station. A dozen travelers had already left the train. Five or six Georgians were crowding on the steps of the compartments. Ten minutes at Elisabethpol; the time-table allowed us no more.
There we found four young girls, who, it was explained to me, formed the Turkish general's "field harem." He had left in too much of a hurry to take them with him. They were Kurds and Circassians, or Georgians and the general had shown no lack of taste in his selection!
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