member of the Clarke party; but on one occasion,
when he was a candidate for reelection to the judgeship of the northern
circuit, some of the Clarke men declared that Governor Troup's warlike
message was an evidence that he was mad. Judge Dooly made the comment,
"If he is mad, I wish the same mad dog that bit him would bite me." This
happy remark came to the ears of the Troup men in the Legislature, and
it so pleased them that they put an end to all opposition to the judge
in the election.
Judge Dooly was one of the most charitable of men. He once refused to
give alms to an unfortunate woman in Savannah, and the refusal haunted
him all his life He declared that it taught him never to let Satan cheat
him out of another opportunity to help the unfortunate; that he had
determined to err on the safe side ever after.
Just before he died, a friend called to ask after his condition. His
reply was that he had a bad cold without any cough to suit it. And so,
humor bubbling from his lips to the last, there passed away, on the 26th
of May, 1827, the rarest humorist that Georgia, the especial mother
of humorists, has ever produced. Judge Dooly had a humor that was as
illuminating as it was enlivening. It stirred to laughter or it moved to
tears, according as this wonderful man chose to direct it.
A great deal of the humor that originated in Georgia has been printed
in books. We find it in Judge Long-street's "Georgia Scenes," in Major
Jones's "Travels," in Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston's "Stories
of Georgia Life," and in other volumes that have attracted public
attention. But the best of it has been lost. It originated when the
lawyers were riding about on horseback or in buggies from court to
court, and tradition has only preserved a small part of it.
SLAVERY AND SECESSION.
The dispute over slavery, which had been going on for many years, grew
furious in 1850; and its fury increased until, in 1860-61, it culminated
in the secession of the Southern States from the Union. Some of those
who have written the history of the secession movement contend that
slavery had little or nothing to do with the matter; that the South
seceded because the North had refused to grant her people their rights
guaranteed under the Constitution. This is true as far as it goes; but
the fact remains, that secession and the war grew out of the efforts of
the abolitionists of the North, and those who sympathized with them, to
keep slavery
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