The following extract from the correspondence is a sufficient index of slaveholding civilization.
"ARTICLES OF BATTLE BETWEEN JOHN A. WILLEY AND W. WHIG HAZZARD.
"Condition 1. The parties to fight on the same day, and at the same place, (St. Simon's beach, near the lighthouse,) where the meeting between T.F. Hazzard and J.A. Willey will take place.
"Condition 2. The parties to fight with broad-swords in the right hand, and a dirk in the left.
"Condition 3. On the word "Charge," the parties to advance, and attack with the broadsword, or close with the dirk.
"Condition 4. THE HEAD OF THE VANQUISHED TO BE CUT OFF BY THE VICTOR, AND STUCK UPON A POLE ON THE FARM FIELD DAM, the original cause of dispute.
"Condition 5. Neither party to object to each other's weapons; and if a sword breaks, the contest to continue with the dirk.
"This Col. W. Whig Hazzard is one of the most prominent citizens in the southern part of Georgia, and previously signalized himself, as we learn from one of the letters in the correspondence, by "three deliberate rounds in a duel."
The Macon (Georgia) Telegraph of October 9, 1838, contains the following notice of two affrays in that place, in each of which an individual was killed, one on Tuesday and the other on Saturday of the same week. In publishing the case, the Macon editor remarks:
"We are compelled to remark on the inefficiency of our laws in bringing to the bar of public justice, persons committing capital offences. Under the present mode, a man has nothing more to do than to leave the state, or step over to Texas, or some other place not farther off, and he need entertain no fear of being apprehended. So long as such a state of things is permitted to exist, just so long will every man who has an enemy (and there are but few who have not) be in constant danger of being shot down in the streets."
To these remarks of the Macon editor, who is in the centre of the state, near the capital, the editor of the Darien Telegraph, two hundred miles distant, responds as follows, in his paper of October 30. 1838.
"The remarks of our contemporary are not without cause. They apply, with peculiar force, to this community. Murderers and rioters will never stand in need of a sanctuary as long as Darien is what it is."
It is a coincidence which carries a comment with it, that in less than a week after this Darien editor made these remarks, he was attacked in the street by "fourteen gentlemen" armed with bludgeons, knives, dirks, pistols, &c., and would doubtless have been butchered on the spot if he had not been rescued.
We give the following statement at length as the chief perpetrator of the outrages, Col. W.N. Bishop, was at the time a high functionary of the State of Georgia, and, as we learn from the Macon Messenger, still holds two public offices in the State, one of them from the direct appointment of the governor.
From the "Georgia Messenger" of August 25, 1837.