Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

326 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
placent. She accordingly entered, a protest, claiming that Georgia origi
nally had been, carved out of South Carolina and that all lands to the
south of the Altamaha, not described in Georgia's charter, belonged not
to Georgia but to South Carolina, this property having never left her
possession. There was some basis in fact for this contention; but South
Carolina agreed to abandon her claim at a conference between the two
States, held at Beaufort, S. C., April 28, 1787.*
But what of Georgia's territory to the west of the Chattahooehee
River? When England, in 1763, acquired Florida from Spain, she
divided her new province into two parts: East Florida, embracing a
greater part of the peninsula, and West Florida, a strip extending along
the Gulf of Mexico to the Mississippi River and bounded on the north
by a line drawn from the Yazoo River eastward to the Chattahooehee.
The territory north of West Florida to a point corresponding with the
thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude was claimed by Georgia, under her
royal grant. However, the Floridas did not long remain in England's
possession.
Taking advantage of conditions created by the Revolution, Spain
sought to regain her lost possession. This she did; but only in part.
; For, in the treaty of peace, under which Florida was ceded back to Spain
in 1783, England fixed the northern boundary of this cession at the
thirty-first parallel of north latitude, in consequence of which all the
territory north of this line was ceded to the United States. But Spain
became dissatisfied and refused to acknowledge the title of this country
to the strip in dispute, embracing some two degrees of latitude in a strip
reaching from the Chattahooehee to the Mississippi. Georgia also put
in a claim to this territory, since it lay to the west of her own possessions,
a claim which accorded with the policy of all the states, in asserting
jurisdiction over lands to the west of them; but the United States
authorities disputed Georgia's claim on. the ground that said strip had
been acquired by the nation as a whole and that it belonged therefore to
the Federal Government.
Thus, for more than a decade subsequent to the Revolution, this West
Florida boundary line remained a subject of contention; but in 1795
Spain relinquished her claim to all territory north of the thirty-first
parallel of north latitude, and once more Georgia asserted her claim to
the entire region west of the Chattahooehee River. Matters were for a
time quieted; but Spain was always a most unpleasant neighbor, and
not until Florida was acquired by purchase from Spain in 1819 was the
southern boundary line of Georgia definitely and finally settled. But
when this time came she had already ceded her western lands to the
Federal Government.
Georgia, at the close of the Revolution, was left in a greatly impov
erished condition. All of the important towns of the state were in
ruins—Savannah, Augusta, Sunbury and Ebenezer. Her population
Avas scattered. Agriculture was languishing. There were few negroes
to till the fields, some having fled to other states, while not a few were
* "Marbury and Crawford's Digest," pp. 662-667. Georgia was represented at
this conference "by two commissioners, John Habersham and Lachlan Mclntosh.;
South Carolina by three commissioners, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Andrew
Piekens and Pierce Butler.