ma, and Texas, there are
many--the descendants of those who participated in events transpiring
fifty years ago--who have listened at the parental hearth to their
recital. To these I send this volume greeting; and if they find
something herein to amuse and call up remembrances of the past, I
shall feel gratified.

To the many friends I have in the Southwest, and especially in
Louisiana and Mississippi, where I have sojourned well-nigh fifty
years, and many of whom have so often urged upon me the writing of
these Memories, I commit the book, and ask of them, and of all into
whose hands it may fall, a lenient criticism, a kindly recollection,
and a generous thought of our past intercourse. It is an inexorable
fate that separates us, and I feel it is forever. This sad thought is
alleviated, however, by the consciousness that the few remaining sands
of life are falling at the home of my birth; and that when the end
comes, as very soon it must, I shall be placed to sleep amid my
kindred in the land of my nativity.

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
REVOLUTIONARY TRADITIONS.

Middle Georgia--Colonel David Love--His Widow--Governor Dunmore--
Colonel Tarleton--Bill Cunningham--Colonel Fannin--My Grandmother's
Bible--Solomon's Maxim Applied--Robertus Love--The Indian Warrior--
Dragon Canoe--A Buxom Lass--General Gates--Marion--Mason L. Weems
--Washington--"Billy Crafford"

CHAPTER II.
PIONEER LIFE.

Settlement of Middle Georgia--Prowling Indians--Scouts and their
Dogs--Classes of Settlers--Prominence of Virginians--Causes of
Distinction--Clearing--Log-Rolling--Frolics--Teachers Cummings and
Duffy--The Schoolmaster's Nose--Flogging--Emigration to Alabama

CHAPTER III.
THE GEORGIA COMPANY.

Yazoo Purchase--Governor Matthews--James Jackson--Burning of the Yazoo
Act--Development of Free Government--Constitutional Convention--Slavery:
Its Introduction and Effects

CHAPTER IV.
POLITICAL DISPUTATIONS.

Baldwin--A Yankee's Political Stability--The Yazoo Question--Party
Feuds and Fights--Deaf and Dumb Ministers--Clay--Jackson--Buchanan--
Calhoun--Cotton and Free Trade--The Clay and Randolph Duel

CHAPTER V.
GEORGIA'S NOBLE SONS.

A Minister of a Day--Purity of Administration--Then and Now--Widow
Timberlake--Van Buren's Letter--Armbrister and Arbuthnot--Old
Hickory Settles a Difficulty--A Cause of the Late War--Honored Dead

CHAPTER VI.
POPULAR CHARACTERISTICS.

A Frugal People--Laws and Religion--Father