Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Place.....The Way We Were ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 August 29, 2007, 3:43 pm Source: Sesquicentennial- Ledger-Enquirer Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/thewaywe13959gph.jpg Image file size: 139.1 Kb The Way We Were By Clason Kyle Sesquicentennial Editor Oh, for the good old, wild old days! As such, the nostalgia craze for everything from backgammon to Fitzgerald has settled in on the USA. Anything a couple of decades ago seems better than today, even World War II looks fun when it is performed by Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. The way we were appears preferable to the way we are, at least the way we are in the unenergetic '70s. But what about nearly two centuries ago, say 1796? Would Georgia, the Empire State of the South, have appealed to a visitor? Especially to a French peer who was also the Grandmaster of Wardrobe of Louis XVI? Or an 1834 Georgia to the celebrated Irish comedian Tyrone Power? Or a just-prior-to- the-War-Between-¬The-States Georgia to the most acclaimed landscape architect of his generation, Frederick Law Olmsted? The year 1973 saw the publication by the Savannah based Deehive Press of a volume entitled "The Rambler In Georgia," which contains excerpts from previously printed accounts of visitors to the 13th Original Colony. These reports are fascinating accounts of Georgia between wars - between the Revolution and the Civil - accounts by learned gentlemen who obviously had reliable reportage ability. The introduction, by editor Mills Lane, remarks, "It was natural that these rather cultured gentlemen would emphasize the curious and outrageous scenes of vigorous, unpolished, Georgia life." Have we changed? In a good many ways, as the reader will see. The volume's first author-visitor was an exiled French nobleman, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt; who judged the State of Georgia to be "without comparison the most unruly of all those in the Union." He found exceptions in Savannah to this "general description of the morality and Sentiments of Georgia" but was told that these people of character were indeed exceptions. "The settlers in Georgia's back country are lazier and more given to drunkenness and lawlessness than back country people in any other state of, the Union and the government alone can be blamed for these vices which have no more reason for being in Georgia than anywhere else." La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt was impressed by the fact of "odius commerce" which Georgia law at that point in time was permitting: the importation of Negroes from the African coast, to be sold as slaves for $300. The Ibos he reported were regarded as the best workers, but "they often commit suicide in the first two years after their arrival." He also noted that Indians in Georgia "own slaves but treat them kindly, do not overwork them and share their food with them." The back country, 'which he did not see ,but to which he did refer, was anywhere inland from the coast. But particularly was it the western frontier and Columbus, to be born 32 years after La Rochefoucauld-Llancourt's visit. Yet Columbus figures muchly in other accounts included in the volume. It didn't figure into John Lambert's 1808 visit, where he observed that while the state was increasing in population and riches, it hadn't made much progress in the arts, sciences and literature, remaining yet "in the Gothic Age." It is he that makes another reference to the cruelly unfair tactic of gouging out an opponent's eye while fighting. An earlier traveler, another Frenchman, had discovered Georgia to be the home of "a unique race of men, Anglo-Americans of a peculiar sort, called Gaugeurs, who are nearly all one-¬eyed. " However, with the arrival of Basil Hall and his wife to Georgia in 1828, Columbus becomes a stopping place of interest to most visitors. And much comment. First, Hall calls it "a very curious place.” And then goes on to explain how it came into being by the state government reserving a portion of the east bank of the Chattahoochee for a city. "The new city was to commence at the lower end of a long series of falls, or more properly speaking, rapids, over which this great river dashes for some miles in a very picturesque manner. The perpendicular fall being about 200 feet, an immense power for turning mills, is placed at the disposal of the inhabitants of the future City …” Hall a retired naval officer, described how the city lots were to consist of half an acre each and that these lots – plus the advantages of the new community—were advertised “for Sale over the whole Union.” The results had been successful, Hall said, the embryo town---“a city yet without a name, or existence in law or fact” – was already crowded with inhabitants, inhabitants waiting the rap of the auctioneers gavel. Hall and his wife were escorted about the town that consisted more of surveyors' stakes than actual streets, more underbrush than cleared areas. However, he makes a special point of describing the principal cluster of houses, ranging from a six-foot box or cube to a house with a half-a-dozen windows in the front. These he said were only about two or three weeks old, and most of them were "built on trucks - a sort of low, strong wheels, such as cannon are supported by -for the avowed purpose of being hauled away when the land should be sold" to other than the person already living in the houses. He also pointed out that there were at least "sixty frames of houses. . . lying in piles on the ground - and got up by the carpenters on speculation, ready to answer the call of future purchasers." (The headquarters of the Historic Columbus Foundation, Inc., the Walker-Peters-Langdon House, is generally considered to be one of these "prefabricated" houses, dating from 1828, making it the oldest known house in Columbus.) Basil concluded, "It must have been a curious sight after the auction, to witness the scatter which took place when the parties came to claim each his own property-to demolish or remove the old, and raise the new dwellings - to say nothing of the entangled machinery of police and other municipal arrangements - the mayor and alderman to get up, the town taxes to levy; -~ the school, - the jail, - the courthouse, - the church, all to be erected. In other places, these things rise up by degrees - but here they must have taken their date all at once and all in a body! I could form no idea, from what I saw or heard on the spot, how this strangely concocted town would get on; - nor have I since been able to learn one syllable respecting its progress. " A Swedish scholar, C. D. Arfwedson, came to Georgia five years after the Halls, and he gave the following description: "Columbus still ranks among the smaller towns, without any pretension to fame, though it may not be doomed to remain long in obscurity. Its rapid increase in population, wealth and trade may probably soon bring it on the grand stage of the world." He found "a flourishing town" where laborers "could not erect houses fast enough." He remarked that the streets that Basil Hall had only . indicated by stakes were now "so filled with loaded wagons that it was next to impossible to pass." Of the domestic construction, Arfwedson saw that "most of the houses were of wood, and some of brick, a few in the English style, others in the Grecian taste." Then he added, "The hotels are, perhaps, the worst buildings in town: I resided in one, the staircase of which bore a strong resemblance to a fire-ladder, and the bedroom, although provided with window frames, had no panes of glass in them." An even later visitor, James Silk Buckingham, a professional world traveller, was of much the same complaint when he visited Columbus in 1839, stopping at the Oglethorpe Hotel, which is now the site of the Flowers Building on the northeast corner of 12th Street and First Avenue. He found it nearly impossible to awaken the slaves who worked for the establishment, "but though not built more than four or five years, it had all the defects of a much older building. The doors of the rooms were many of them shattered, hinges and locks out of repair, windows broken and sashes and blinds out of order without any attempt being made to remedy all this. He found no rooms in order taking at least an hour to put into decent condition: the "outdoor accommodation for gentlemen (water-closets being a luxury here unknown) was worse than I had ever before found it" and the bed fell to pieces when he pulled it from the wall, i.e., its support being removed. However, it was from Arfwedson and later from the Irish comedian Tyrone Power (the great grandfather of the late movie actor) that comes the best substantiation to the La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt statement that Georgia was the most "unruly" of the states. Arfwedson felt that many of the "gentlemen" of Columbus were so uncouth that in other places they would be described by "a very different appellation" He wrote: "The proximity of the Indian territory on the other side of the river contributed not a little to the toleration among the inhabitants of a certain number of loose persons, on which account morals were at the lowest ebb. Opposite to the town, on the Alabama shore, a number of dissolute people had founded a village, for which their lawless pursuits and atrocious misdeeds had procured the name Sodom. Scarcely a day passed without some human blood being shed in its vicinity; and, not satisfied with murdering each other, they cross the river clandestinely, and pursue their bloody vocation even in Columbus." After describing other crimes of the village and of its citizenry persons "whose looks bespoke the assassin," Arfwedson philosophized that "as soon as the Indians have retired from this part of the country, and the State of Alabama can enforce the observance of her laws, even in the remotest districts, it is to be hoped that the scum of mankind now occupying Sodom will be reduced to obedience and submission; and not till then will Columbus see her own population happy and tranquil, and civilization diffusing its light among her citizens." Such a glow hadn't occurred when Power arrived in Columbus in 1834, because he described the "wild-looking village" as composed chiefly of "minions o' the moon," outlaws from the neighboring States. "These bold outlaws, I was informed, occasionally assemble to enjoy an evening's frolic in Columbus, on which occasions they cross the dividing bridge in force, all armed to the teeth, the warrants in the hands of the U.S. Marshall are at such times necessarily suspended, since to execute a caption would require a muster greater than any within" his command. If unmolested, the party usually proceed to the nearest hotel, drink deeply, make what purchases they, require for the ladies of their colony, pay promptly, and, gathering the stragglers together, retire peaceably into the territory, wherein their present rule is by report absolute. The condition of this near community, and the crimes perpetrated by its members, were alluded to within the town with a mingled sentiment of detestation and fear." Power ventured into Alabama, but later returned to Columbus. ""As we repassed Sodom, the sound of revelry proclaimed the orgies resumed," he wrote. Special Sesquicentennial Supplement 1 Ledger-Enquirer, Sunday, April 16, 1978 S2 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/thewaywe13959gph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 12.1 Kb