It was just after play-time, and I was compelled to stand by him and at intervals of ten minutes receive a dozen lashes, laid on with brawny Irish strength, until discharged with the school at night. To-day I bear the marks of that whipping upon my shoulders and in my heart. But Duffy was not alone in the strictness and severity of his rules and his punishments. Children were taught to believe that there could be no discipline in a school of boys and girls without the savage brutality of the lash, and the teacher who met his pupils with a caressing smile was considered unworthy his vocation. Learning must be thrashed into the tender mind; nothing was such a stimulus to the young memory as the lash and the vulgar, abusive reproof of the gentle and meritorious teacher.
There was great eccentricity of character in all the conduct and language of Duffy. He had his own method of prayer, and his own peculiar style of preaching, frequently calling out the names of persons in his audience whom it was his privilege to consider the chiefest of sinners, and to implore mercy for them in language offensive almost to decency. Sometimes, in the presence of persons inimical to each other, he would ask the Lord to convert the sinners and make the fools friends, first telling the Lord who they were by name, to the no small amusement of his most Christian audience; many of whom would in deep devotion respond with a sonorous "Amen."
From such a population sprang the present inhabitants of Georgia; and by such men were they taught, in their budding boyhood, the rudiments of an English education;—such, I mean, of the inhabitants who still live and remember Duffy, Cummings, and McLean. They are few, but the children of the departed remember traditionally these and their like, in the schoolmasters of Georgia from 1790 to 1815.
At the close of the war of 1812-15, a new impetus was given to everything throughout the South, and especially to education. The ambition for wealth seized upon her people, the high price of cotton favored its accumulation, and with it came new and more extravagant wants, new and more luxurious habits. The plain homespun jean coat gave way to the broad-cloth one; and the neat, Turkey-red striped Sunday frock of the belle yielded to the gaudy red calico one, and there was a sniff of aristocratic contempt in the upturned nose towards those who, from choice or necessity, continued in the old habits.
Material wealth augmented rapidly, and with it came all of its assumptions. The rich lands of Alabama were open to settlement. The formidable Indian had been humbled, and many of the wealthiest cultivators of the soil were commencing to emigrate to a newer and more fertile country, where smiling Fortune beckoned them.
The first to lead off in this exodus was the Bibb family, long distinguished for wealth and influence in the State. The Watkinses, the Sheroos, and Dearings followed: some to north, some to south Alabama. W.W. Bibb was appointed, by Mr. Madison, Territorial Governor of Alabama, and was followed to the new El Dorado by his brothers, Thomas, John Dandridge, and Benajah, all men of substance and character.
For a time this rage for a new country seemed to threaten Georgia and South Carolina with the loss of their best population. This probably would have been the result of the new acquisition, but, in its midst, the territory between the Ocmulgee and Chattahoochee was ceded by the Indians, and afforded a new field for settlement, which effectually arrested this emigration at its flood. The new territory added to the dominion of Georgia was acquired mainly through the energy and pertinacity of George M. Troup, at the time Governor of Georgia.
I have much to record of my memories concerning this new acquisition, but must reserve them for a new chapter.
THE GEORGIA COMPANY.