ulky. He spurred his horse forward, and
laid his whip across the judge's shoulders two or three times.

[Illustration: General Clarke whips Judge Tait 237]

These events created great excitement throughout the State. There had
already been controversy and division caused by the duel between Mr.
Crawford and Van Allen, a cousin of President Van Buren, and at that
time attorney-general of the State. Van Allen was killed; and there was
a great controversy in Georgia, in consequence, as to who was right
and who was wrong. This excitement became furious in the course of the
contest between Clarke and Crawford. Crawford was fortunately lifted out
of it by being made a United States senator in 1807. His distinguished
career afterwards is well known. He was minister to France, secretary of
the treasury, Vice-President of the United States, and would have been
elected President but for reports circulated throughout the country that
he had been stricken down with a fatal illness. But the contest between
the Clarke and Crawford parties continued to rage. Whatever issue the
Clarke men were favorable to, the Crawford men opposed. Whatever scheme
the Clarke men suggested, the Crawford men fought. There was nothing
polite about the contest. People who wore gloves pulled them off.
In cold weather the voters were warm, and in hot weather they were
steaming. The contest went on before elections, and was kept up with
just as much energy after elections. No vote could settle it, and no
success could quiet it. It was in the nature of a political squabble,
covering the whole State, dividing districts, counties, cities, towns,
villages, settlements, beats, crossroads groceries, and families. It
was a knock-down-and-drag-out fight, in which hair pulling, gouging, and
biting were allowed.

While Crawford was advancing step by step in national politics, his
party in Georgia took up George M. Troup, one of the most brilliant and
aggressive men in the State. The contest had been going on for twenty
years when Troup came upon the scene, in 1830, as a candidate
for governor. He had been a member of the State Legislature, a
representative in Congress, and a United States senator: therefore in
1820, when he was nominated for governor by the Crawford party, he was
ripe in experience. He was forty years old, and full of the fire and
energy that marked his whole career. The Crawford party now became the
Troup party, and the contests that followed were