he Revolution he had, as a partisan officer, gained
some distinction, and in the upper counties exercised considerable
influence. Many anecdotes are related of his intrepidity and daring,
and quite as many of his extraordinary orthography. At the battle of
Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina, he was severely wounded, at the
moment when the Continental forces were retiring to a better position.
A British soldier, noticing some vestiges of a uniform upon him,
lifted his musket to stab him with the bayonet; his commander caught
the weapon, and angrily demanded, "Would you murder a wounded officer?
Forward, sir!" Mathews, turning upon his back, asked, "To whom do I
owe my life?" "If you consider it an obligation, sir, to me," answered
the lieutenant. Mathews saw the uniform was British, and furiously
replied, "Well, sir, I want you to know that I scorn a life saved by a
d----d Briton." The writer had the anecdote from a distinguished
citizen of Georgia, who was himself lying near by, severely wounded,
and who in one of his sons has given to Georgia a Governor.

General Wade Hampton, George Walker, William Longstreet, Zachariah
Cox, and Matthew McAllister were the parties most active in procuring
the passage of the Yazoo Act. That bribery was extensively practised,
there is no doubt, and the suspicion that it even extended to the
Executive gained credence as a fact, and was the cause of preventing
his name ever being given to a county in the State: and it is a
significant fact of this suspicion, and also of the great unpopularity
of the Act, that to this day every effort to that end has failed. No
act of Governor Mathews ever justified any such suspicion. As Governor
of the State, and believing the sovereign power of the State was in
the Legislature, and consequently the power to dispose of the public
domain, he only approved the Act as the State's Executive, and
fulfilled the duties assigned to him by the law. But suspicion
fastened upon him, and its effects remain to this day.

The pertinacious discussions between the parties purchasing and those
opposed to the State's selling and her authority to sell, created
immense excitement, and pervaded the entire State. The decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States was invoked in the case of Fletcher
_versus_ Peck, which settled the question of the power of the
State to sell the public domain, and the validity of the sale made by
the State to the Georgia Company. In the mean