Talent and virtuous merit at that period was the passport to public confidence.  Had it continued to be, we should never have known the present deplorable condition of the country, with the Government sinking into ruin ere it has reached the ten o’clock of national life.

His Shibboleth was, that the disgrace of the State must be wiped out by the repeal of the Yazoo Act; and repeal rang from every mouth, from Savannah to the mountains.  Jackson resigned his seat in Congress, and was elected a member of the Legislature.  Immediately upon the assembling of this body, a bill was introduced repealing the odious Act, and ordering the records containing it to be burned.  This was carried out to the letter.  Jackson, heading the Legislature and the indignant public, proceeded in procession to the public square in Louisville, Jefferson County, where the law and the fagots were piled; when, addressing the assembled multitude, he denounced the men who had voted for the law as bribed villains—­those who had bribed them, and the Governor who had signed it; and declared that fire from heaven only could sanctify the indignation of God and man in consuming the condemned record of accursed crime.  Then, with a Promethean or convex glass condensing the sun’s rays, he kindled the flame which consumed the records containing the hated Yazoo Act.

Jackson was a man of ordinary height, slender, very erect in his carriage, with red hair and intensely blue eyes.  His manners were courteous, affable, and remarkable for a natural dignity which added greatly to his influence with the people.  He was the model from which was grown that chivalry and nobility of soul and high bearing so characteristic of the people of Southern Georgia.  In truth, the essence of his character seemed subtilly to pervade the entire circle in which he moved, inspiring a purity of character, a loftiness of honor, which rebuked with its presence alone everything that was low, little, or dishonest.  Subsequently he was elected Governor of the State, bringing all the qualities of his nature into the administration of the office; he gave it a dignity and respectability never subsequently degraded, until an unworthy son of South Carolina, the pus and corruption of unscrupulous party, was foisted into the position.  Strength of will, a ripe judgment, and purity of intention, were the great characteristics distinguishing him in public life, and these have endeared his name to the people of Georgia, where now remain many of his descendants, some of whom have filled high positions in the State and United States, and not one has ever soiled the honor or tarnished the name with an act unworthy a gentleman.