s countenance. None doubted the
patriotism or capacity of Dooly for the position; but he was a
Federalist, and the friend of many of the prime movers of the Yazoo
fraud; and these were unpardonable sins with Crawford and his friends.
No one ever charged upon Dooly the sin of a participation in this
speculation, or the frauds through which it became a fixed fact, as a
law of the State, by legislative act. But it was, for a very long time,
fatal to the political aspirations of every one known to be personally
friendly to any man in any way concerned in the matter. They were
pariahs in the land, without friends or caste.

Of all the men prominent in his day, George M. Troup was the most
uncompromising in his hostility to those engaged in this speculation.
It certainly was the work of a few persons only, and did not embrace
one out of fifty of the Georgia Company. All, or nearly all of these,
honestly embarked in the speculation, not doubting but that the State
had the power to sell, and knowing her pecuniary condition required
that she should have money. Had they known that it required bribery to
pass the measure, they would have scorned to become parties to such
corruption; nevertheless they were inculpated, and had to share the
infamy of the guilty few who thus accomplished the purchase, as they
shared the profits arising therefrom. But it did not stop with the
participants. Their personal friends suffered, and no one individual so
fatally as Dooly. He asserted the power of the Legislature to sell--he
was sustained by the decision of the Supreme Court--he was not a
stockholder--he afforded no aid with his personal influence; yet the
public clamor made him a Yazoo-man, and Troup was foremost in his
denunciation of him. On this account it was that, upon a memorable
occasion, Dooly declared that Troup's mouth was formed by nature to
pronounce the word Yazoo. It had been proposed to Dooly, at the time
Forsyth abandoned the Federal party, to follow his example; but he
refused to part with his first love, and clung to her, and shaded,
without a murmur, her fortunes and her fate, which condemned him to a
comparative obscurity for all the future.

It was long years after, and when Mr. Forsyth was in the zenith of his
popularity, that the friends of Dooly proposed his name for the Senate
of the United States. His was the only name announced as a candidate to
the Legislature, but, on counting the ballots, it was found Forsyth had