This was the last election of a Governor by the Legislature. The party of Clarke demanded that the election should be given to the people. This was done, and in 1825, Troup was re-elected over Clarke by a majority of some seven hundred votes. It was during this last contest that the violence and virulence of party reached its acme, and pervaded every family, creating animosities which neither time nor reflection ever healed.
CHAPTER X.
INDIAN TREATIES AND DIFFICULTIES.
THE CREEKS—JOHN QUINCY ADAMS—HOPOTHLAYOHOLA—INDIAN ORATORY—SULPHUR SPRING—TREATIES MADE AND BROKEN—AN INDEPENDENT GOVERNOR—COLONELS JOHN S. McINTOSH, DAVID EMANUEL TWIGGS, AND DUNCAN CLINCH—GENERAL GAINES—CHRISTIANIZING THE INDIANS—COTTON MATHER—EXPEDIENT AND PRINCIPLE—THE PURITANICAL SNAKE.
During the administration of Troup, a contest arose as to the true western boundary of the State, and the right of the State to the territory occupied by a portion of the Creek tribe of Indians. In the difficulty arising out of the sale by the Legislature of the lands belonging to the State bordering upon the Mississippi River, a compromise was effected by Congress with the company purchasing, and Georgia had sold to the United States her claim to all the lands in the original grant to General Oglethorpe and others by the English Government, west of the Chattahoochee River. A part of the consideration was that the United States should, at a convenient time, and for the benefit of Georgia, extinguish the title of the Indians, and remove them from the territory occupied by them, east of the Chattahoochee River, to a certain point upon that stream; and from this point, east of a line to run from it, directly to a point called Neckey Jack, on the Tennessee River. The war of 1812 with Great Britain found the Creek or Alabama portion of this tribe of Indians allies of England. They were by that war conquered, and their territory wrested from them. Those of the tribe under the influence of the celebrated chief William McIntosh remained friendly to the United States, and were active in assisting in the conquest of their hostile brethren. The conquered Indians were removed from their territory and homes, into the territory east of Line Creek, which was made the western boundary of the Creek Nation’s territory. Many of them came into the territory claimed by Georgia as her domain.