him, were merely occasional things, it is true, but they oc-
curred often enough and were successful enough to make the
General feel what power he had among the people and to
familiarize and endear his exercises of that power to the
people. But destiny, which had hitherto been forced into
being his friend by his irresistable valor and energy, and by
his ardent, uniform adherence to a right conduct in all
things, began at length to be his enemy and to impel him
into some improper and ill-starred, though not ill-meant
courses. His first error was his lending himself to the
scheme of the unmannerly, mischief-making French Minis-
ter, Genet; his* next, that of setting on foot the Oconee
Rebellion, as it was called; missteps, both of which, were
owing rather to accidental circumstances existing at that
particular time, than to any intentional wrong doing on his
part. For the Indian war, which, although not entirely
quashed as yet by the New York treaty, was by its influence
greatly crippled and reduced in magnitude, no longer pre-
sented a sufficient field for the restless, bellicose passions
which it had nurtured. These passions not having died out
proportionately with the war, were still alive and smoulder-
ing in many adventurous bosoms, among others in Gen.
Clark's, at the date of Genet's arrival in the United States,
in the Spring of 1793, and engaging in his insurrectionary
tamperings against the foreign policy of our Government.
The French insanity, which had already seized strongly on
the country, now rapidly spread and increased. Most gen-
erally, however, it found vent only in a wordy fray intended
to influence the Government and to drive it from its neutral
policy into a belligerency on the French side. But Gen.
Clark was by all his temperament, training and habits, a
man of emphatic deeda and substantial daring, and when
GEN. ELIJAH CLARK. 37
the French wild-lire readied him, it ignited a nature which
wanted hut, opportunity to break out into action, and enlist-
ed a man, who felt assured that his standard, once raised,
would bring a numerous body of daring, war-loving
spirits of the South and West around him. Hence spnlng
those two marring and reprehensible 1 incidents of his life
above noticed, namely, his complicity with (Tenet in his
schemes, and then, as an offshoot therefrom, his Oconee
irregularity. For it would be the sheerest misnomer to call
it a rebellion. And as those incidents are both matters
which have been greatly misunderstood and mishandled to
the no little detriment of Gen. Clark's name, a name dear
to Georgia and which she is bound ever to overwatch and
protect with grateful guardianship, I purpose by a faithful
and succinct account to set them both in a clear and true
light.
SECTION II.
Genet was the first envoy to the United States from regi-
cide, Revolutionary France. Worthy to represent such a
crew as Robespierre and the Jacobins, he came drunk, with
the wild, unschooled spirit of liberty, which in his own
country was then newly broken loose from the despotism of
ages and was insanely exultant there still over the ruins of
an old and the chaos of a new order of things. From the
moment of his landing on our shores, he showed himself
the very impersonation of diplomatic fanaticism, wrong-
headedness and indecency, and entered at once on what was
evidently a predetermined course of criminal, urmeighborly
intermeddling and agitation. He seemed bent on signaliz-
ing his embassy by every audacity and impropriety that
could tend to throw our country into mad excitement and
precipitate it as an accessory into the fiery whirlpool of
French wars and quarrels. How successful he was in kind-
ling the flames of popular fury and stirring up the people
against their own Government for its firm, immovable stand
against him and his machinations, forms one of the most
174842
38 GEN. ELIJAII CLARK.
extraordinary passages in American history. To such
height did things get that the elder Adams in his writings
speaks of the multitude in Philadelphia, (which had now
become the seat of the General Government) as ripe for de-
throning Washington himself'.*
Genet was artful as well as bold and unscrupulous. This
he evinced clearly from the moment of his appointment.
Sailing from France in a ship under his own orders, he di-
rected his voyage to Charleston, a port very distant from
the seat of Government, and after landing there on the 8th
of April, 1793, and tarrying for awhile, busied in illicit,
inflammatory intrigues, he consumed weeks, devoted to simi-
lar objects, in his journey from thence overland to Philadel-
phia, where he arrived on the 16th of May, and whither th e
news of his evil practices had long preceded him.f No
where, however, on his whole route dii he meet with greater
encouragement than in South Carolina. The large, very
influential French Hugenot element in the lower part of
that State responded to him promptly with assurances that
went beyond mere expressions of sympathy. Indeed, a
strong feeling of French consanguinity added force there to
the universally prevalent sentiment of gratitude to France
as our generous Revolutionary ally. Hence the people's
hearts warmed readily to his appeals. He was greatly em-
boldened. A reckless French enthusiasm that had already
gotten wide hold now spread and grew more intense in all
directions. It soon crossed the Savannah river. And
nowhere either in or out of Georgia did it seize upon a man
more ardently prepared to be carried away by it than Gen.
Clark. For all his feelings, his whole nature was strong,
and with all his strength and soul he sympathized with
France in her struggle for liberty, and paid back with every
breath what he felt to be the impayable debt of love and
gratitude his country owed her, for her aid in our great
Revolutionary contest. Genet was not long in finding him
*Jna. Mams' Life and Writings, Vol. 8, 279.
^American State Papers, For. Re. Vol. I, p. 167, 168.
GEN. ELIJAH CLAUK. 39
out and learning all about him, and lie eagerly- pitched upon
him as a man eminently suited in all respects, and especially
by his great military prestige in the South, to become tin-
leader in the military operations which it was his object to
set on foot against the neighboring Spanish dominions, and
which looked to nothing less than the seizure of the Flori-
das and reconquest of Louisiana mainly by means of Amer-
ican arms seduced to that illegal service. He thought that
the pending war between France and Spain and the French
epidemic now pervading the United States presented a fine
opportunity for this purpose. Particularly was his heart set
on the recovery of Louisiana, that vast region the loss of
which, by the treaty of Paris of 1T6;>, had never ceased to
lie bitterly on the French stomach. Aside from the zeal for
France by which he was fired, he burned with the personal
ambition and thirsted intensely for the personal glory of
exploiting this great achievement for his nation. And for
the chance of it, he hesitated not to sacrifice all ambassa-
dorial decorum, as well as to outrage our country's laws and
neutrality, and endanger her peaceful relations and important
pending negotiations with Spain.
This last consideration, however, was far from being any
drawback with Gen. Clark. It rather impelled than deterred
him. Nothing would have suited him better than war with
Spain. For he hated her hardly less than he loved France,
and he felt that she well deserved all his hatred as being
already and for years past the venomous enemy of the United
States, and especially of Georgia, groundlessly, as he thought,
seeking to rob her of a vast territory, at the same time
meanly screening herself behind the Indians and insidiously
instigating them against us. It was his deliberate convic-
tion that in taking up arms against her, though under
French colors, he was acquitting himself patriotically to his
own country. He accordingly refused not the high com-
mand which was tendered him.* Commissions, also, for
* Both Stevens in history of Georgia and White in his statistics tell us he
was commissioned a Major-General in the French service with a pay of $ lo.no
40 GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
subordinate officers were placed in his hands in blank,
money and means were likewise furnished him, though in
too limited an amount for the greatness of the enterprise.
His authority was everywhere recognized by the adventurers
whom Genet, his agents and emissaries succeeded in starting
up and enlisting. From the banks of the Ohio to those of
the Oconee and St. Mary's, his orders were obeyed in the
making of preparations and getting up armaments, and men
thronged from both South Carolina and Georgia to his
points of rendezvous on the two latter streams,! fired at once
by the splendor of the project and the renown of the leader.
But mark! there was no movement whatever, actual or con-
templated, against the Indians or their lands either within
the chartered limits of Georgia or anywhere else. Nor did
the Indians manifest any hostility towards the adventurers,
trespassers, though they were on their hunting grounds.
For it seems to have been made to be well understood by
them that the whole aim was against the provinces of Spain,
from whom the Indians, especially in parts remote from the I
Spanish border, were gradually becoming estranged since
the treaty of New York, and were now still more disposed
to be weaned when they were told there was a prospect of
the restoration of the French as their neighbors, to whom
they always had more liking than either to the Spaniards or
Anglo-Americans. Indeed, the French made it their study
to cultivate the favor of the Indians, who were even solicited
to join in the enterprise. In every way it was sought to
make fair weather with them with a view to the march of
troops through their country on the proposed errand of
Spanish invasion, while other forces recruited in the West
per annum ; and there is no doubt of the fact. But when White further says
that he was solicited by two great European powers to enter their service, it is
giving him a little too much trans-Atlantic military renown. The story is a
figment, which, like the statement that McGillivray was the Indian commander
whom Gen. Clark defeated at Jack's Creek, must be numbered among the
pretty fables, parasitical mistletoes, that are perpetually growing out upon the
sturdy oak of history, slowly robbing it of its life and truth.
American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol. 1st, pages 455, 458, 459,460.
GEN. ELIJAH CLARK. 41
were to descend the Ohio arid Mississippi in boats to meet
and cooperate with the French squadron that was held out
as expected to come to their aid by sea.*
But all this elaborate scheming and ado ended in total
failure, never ripening into such action as was contemplated,
never reaching the stage at which General Clark was to
stand forth, truncheon in hand, conspicuous and avowed as.
the leader of the enterprise. Washington's administration
was too strong, vigilant and active for Genet and the French
party. Our obligations of neutrality toward Spain were
fully maintained, and all attempts against her within our
bounds were effectually suppressed. The most decided steps
were taken against Genet personally. His recall was de-
manded, and every proper means used to impair in the mean-
while his ability for mischief. But soon his actual recall
and the coming of his successor, the citizen Fauchet, in the
Spring of 1794, broke down his influence and dashed all the
plans arid prospects of those who had become connected with
him. The consequences were disastrous to Gen. Clark. He
was left standing blank, resourceless, aimless, in the wilder-
ness, with a few troops here and there on the Indian side of
the line, whom the power of his name had brought together,
but whose destined field of employment was now abruptly
taken away. There they were on his hands, awaiting his
orders and expecting the fulfillment of his promises, and
the desperate fortunes and wreckless character of most of
them strongly appealed to him to engage them in some
other career in lieu of that just closed against them, even
though it should be one still more irregular and exception-
able.
It was under these untoward circumstances consequent on
the sudden wreck and abandonment, in the South at least,
of the Genet scheme, that Gen. Clark and his men in May,
1794, began to turn their thoughts upon the Indian territory
* Picket fs History of Alabama, Vol. 2, p. lf/2, 153 ; Foreign Relations, Vol.
I. 455, !">*, -I-)'.).
42 GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
where already they saw themselves quartered in arms. Nor
did they think long before they took the overstrong resolu-
tion of seizing upon the country and setting up for them-
selves there, with an independent Government of their own
creation, the rich Indian lands being the tempting prize
011 which they relied to attract the needful men and means to
their standard. In taking this step they were sensible of no
patriotic scruples or impediments ; for, to a man, they
regarded the country as already lost to Georgia by the per-
petual national guarantee that had in the New York treaty
been made of it to her Indian enemies, and by the State's
seemingly settled acquiescense in that guarantee. Thus
acquitted to their own minds, they proceeded gravely and
with all due form in their new movement of government-
making, unabashed by the contrast between the grandeur of
the thing they were attempting, and the pettiness of their
numbers and resources. A written constitution was adopted;
Gen. Clark was chosen civil and military chief, and the
members of a body politic under the name of '/The Com-
mittee of Safety" were chosen to exercise along with him law-
making and other sovereign functions. Whether any name,
or what name was bestowed on the infant State, or whether
it expired without baptism, no record or tradition remains
to tell. Nor is there any copy of the Constitution now to
be found. But in the 1st volume of the American State
Papers, on Indian Affairs, there is preserved a letter of Gen.
Clark's, to the Committee of Safety, dated at Fort Advance,
the 5th day of September, 1794, which places beyond doubt,
the adoption of the Constitution and the other facts of
organization as above stated.*
Thus ended Gen. Clark's connection with Genet's project
for the invasion of the Spanish provinces ; and thus it
became changed into a suddenly conceived scheme of seizing
on the Indian lands, on which he found himself quartered,
and erecting there a new trans-Oconee State of his own and
*Jlmerican State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. \,pp. 500-501.
GEN. ELIJAH CLARK. 43
his men's. It is clear that in pursuing this course he acted
under strong duress. The French impulse arid support un-
der which he had thus far been proceeding, had all at once
failed him ; French means, to which he had all along heen
beholden, had stopped and were no longer at his bidding.
Consequently, French ends could no longer be consulted by
him, and the new turn he gave to things, far from being a
wanton, was a logical conduct on his part. It was the nat-
ural glancing in a new and unintended direction of a ball
that had been otherwise launched at first, but which by an
intervening obstacle had been thwarted and turned from its
original aim towards another object.
The development which has now been given of the course
and ending of the Genet affair in the South and of the
springing up of the so called Oconee rebellion therefrom, shows
how widely both those matters are misunderstood and mis-
told in Stevens' History of Georgia. In that work the facts
are strangely transposed and misarranged. The Oconee
affair is related as having preceded and led to Gen. Clark's
engaging in the French project, and this French project is
set forth not as having given birth to the Oconee attempt,
but as having been itself a misborn, profligate offspring
therefrom.* Such dislocation and misplacement of facts is
tantamount in the effect to gross misstatement and works
not less wrong to Gen. Clark than to chronology. For al-
though he cannot be pronounced free from blame for his
connection with those affairs, yet the difference is vast in
every point of view, moral, political, patriotic, between his
having become involved in them in the manner I have de-
tailed, and that charged by the historian, who represents the
Oconee part of his conduct as an orignal, wanton aggression
upon Indian rights and territory, carrying with it rebellion
towards Georgia and the United States, and the French part
of it as a lawless, fillibustering enterprise, into which he
had desperately flung himself after his character, fortunes
Stevens' History of Georgia, Vol. 2, . p440, 405, 406.
,
44 GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
and prospects had been already deeply damaged by tbe
Oconee criminality.
A very little attention to dates and the actual order of
events would have prevented this harsh, wrong treatment
of Gen. Clark. Let us see: Genet arrived in this country
in the Spring of 1793. He commenced his intrigues imme-
diately, and it was not long before we find Gen. Clark con-
nected with him, busied in fitting out and freighting boats
on the Ohio with warlike stores, in receiving and dispensing
French fuffds and commissions, and concentrating armed
men under the name of the French Legion beyond the Alta-
maha and Oconee on Indian soil ; the same being also
claimed as foreign soil, in order to give a pretext for saying
that the preparations there made were no violation of
the territory and neutrality of the United States.* Now
towards these lawless doings the authorities and people
of Georgia evinced no displeasure for many months,
none, indeed, so long as they wore only a French charac-
ter and were marked by only a French destination against
the Spanish provinces. But when, upon the miscarriage of
the Genet project in 1794, that character and destination
were exchanged for an aggressive seizure of Georgia's In-
dian territory, then for the first time popular feeling began
to rise against Gen. Clark. Gov. Matthews began then to
see there was something wrong in his proceedings, and be-
thought himself of interfering and of denouncing and ar-
resting what he was doing. The result was that before the
end of autumn the whole Oconee scheme was crushed by the
arm of Georgia, prompted and upheld by Washington, as
the French Genet scheme had monthvS before been defeated
by the arm of Washington alone.
And then upon the back of all and as a clinching disproof
if any were needed, comes the insuperable, silencing fact of
the poverty of Gen. Clark and his Oconee adherents. It is
notorious that they were poor, (as indeed were the people of
Georgia generally at that day, though far less so than now)
* American State Papers, Foreign Relations, Vol. 1 , p. 311.
(ii:\. ELIJAH CLARK. 45
altogether too poor to have made it possible for him and his
followers and supporters ever to have set on foot by any
means of their own such an enterprise as this wa.s ; an enter-
prise involving from the outset an Indian war and a heavy
outlav. Whence it is apparent from the very impossibility
of the thing, that it would not have been started at all but
for the French means and preparations that were on hand
for another very different purpose, and which, upon the
failure of that purpose, were readily convertible to this new
object.
Having set forth thus fully the manner of Gen. Clark's
becoming involved in these, the only reprehensible affairs of
his life, we feel warranted in pronouncing it such as must
greatly soften censure, and conciliate kindly feelings towards
him. And more especially in relation to that part of his
conduct in which he was implicated with Genet and his
schemes, may it be claimed that the bare statement of the
facts is all that his case needs. To add any elaborate apology
and vindication would be idle and supererogatory. For in
that whole matter he but acted in sympathy and accordance
with a powerful and certainly not discreditable national feel-
ing of his day ; a feeling fiercely inflamed against despotism
and in favor of liberty and France. And into whatever
of mistake or fault he and his abetting countrymen may
have fallen, it was error rather of degree than of principle.
The undue lengths to which they allowed themselves to be
transported were but the pardonable result of the over-
ardent French enthusiasm then prevalent, and have long
since been condoned by the freedom-loving part of mankind
as belonging to that class of things in which, although
Governments are obliged to frown and fulminate, yet history
and opinion delight to be gracious and hasten to acquit,
propitiated by the nobleness and magnanimity of which
they savor and which shed a tinge of honor on human
nature even in its lapses and misdeeds.
46 ' GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
SECTION III.
But as no such proud palliation, closely akin to praise
itself, can be pleaded for his Oconee doings, it behooves us
to give them some further attention, from whence it will be
seen that his memory so far from suffering by a strict scru-
tiny here will, on the contrary, come out therefrom cleared
of much of obloquy and misconception, cleared sufficiently
at least to save from historic blight the rich wreath of honor,
fame and public gratitude with which a life of heroic, self-
sacrificing services to his country had entwined his brow.
I will not here insist again on the casual and almost coer-
cive, involuntary manner in which he was led into that
Oconee fault. Enough has been said on that topic enough
to show that the way and manner were such as greatly to
lighten whatever blame there was. But somewhat else re-
mains that makes in his favor; other facts and considerations
there are which, although perhaps only apologetic in their
nature, nevertheless weigh strongly for him. Let us look
at them as they have come down to us and in the light of
the times in which they occurred, rather than in the altered
hue which the changing circumstances and opinions of four-
score years may have imparted to them.
Then, as we have already shown in the preceding articles,
violent animosity had long prevailed between the Creek In-
dians and Georgia. They became during the Revolutionary
war our bitter enemies and the allies of the British. Van-
quished in that great conflict, they entered at its close into
a treaty of peace, friendship and territorial cession with us
at Augusta in 1783, whereby we became the absolute owners
of the Oconee country, which, however, we were not allowed
to enjoy in peace. For they kept no faith, and during the
very next year, not only raised the warwhoop again, but
rushed into a Spanish alliance in order to strengthen them-
selves in their hostilities. Further, also, we have seen
that in the course of another year they composed this war
by entering into another treaty, that of Galphinton, by
GEN. ELIJAH CLARK. 47
which another large cession of land being made, the Tallas-
see country became ours. Both at Augusta and Galphinton
General Clark was one of the commissioners on the part of
the State, and as such was a negotiator and signer of both
these highly important treaties. In seeking and obtaining
the Tallassee cession, he and our other leading men who
cooperated with him, were less actuated by the prevailing
land-greed of that period than by a sagacious statemanship ,
that looked to the means of a permanent preservation of
peace with the Indians, which they knew could only be
effected by cutting them off by a wide interval of territory,
from Spanish neighborhood and instigation. Long after-
wards, at the treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814, Gen. Jackson
avowed himself governed by precisely the same policy in
forcing the conquered Creeks to surrender a wide strip em-
bracing this very Tallassee region, and stretching from
Wayne and Camden counties to the Chattahoochee, all along
the line of what was then still the Spanish province of East
Florida. But that very policy of isolation from Spanish in-
fluence which Gen. Clark and all Georgia had so much at
heart in 1785, and which made the Tallassee cession so im-
portant in their eyes, rendered it at the same time extremely
obnoxious to the Spaniards, who consequently exerted their
influence to make it odious to the Indians and to stimulate
them to fiercer warfare than ever against us, indeed, to make
it impossible there ever should be peace without the retro-
cession of that country. And so, notwithstanding the Gal-