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380 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
it must be said that when the proper time came he fully expected to
annex his republic to the State of Georgia.
General Clarke was weary of incessant troubles along the exposed
frontier. To put an effectual quietus upon the Indians and to solve by
the sword a problem which was dark with menace to the peace of thou
sands, became his fixed resolve; and, while it was born of a sudden
impulse, it gripped him with the power of a divine inspiration. Trained
in the use of weapons, he preferred, like a true frontiersman, to argue
a disputed point by resort to arms rather than by appeal to reason. Be
sides, during the unsettled period which followed the Revolution, force
was still a greater power than law.
But the entry of General Clarke upon the territory of the Indians
formed no part of his original intentions. He sought in the beginning
an altogether different object. "When the French emissary, Genet, came
to this country, in 1794, to arouse popular hostility toward Spain, he
found General Clarke a sympathetic listener. Moreover the latter, whose
hatred of the Spaniards amounted to an obsession, was easily prevailed
upon to accept a commission from France p.n a campaign, the declared
purpose of which was to seize Florida and to recover Louisiana. As it
happened, the resources granted him for this purpose were wholly in
adequate, and the scheme itself proved abortive; but, finding himself at
the head of an organized force, on the borders of Georgia, he east his
eyes toward the fertile lands beyond the Oconee River; and, into the
meshes thus invitingly spread by the tempter, General Clarke fell.
There was no thought of treason to Georgia involved in this scheme
of conquest. But he acted in an arbitrary manner, without consulting
the state authorities, and in bold defiance of treaty agreements. Col.
Absalom H. Chappell, an accurate historian, has given us a full account
of the whole affair; and, while he does not uphold the general's course,
he acquits him of- any wrongful intent. The following review of one of
the most dramatic episodes in the history of our state is summarized from
Colonel ChappelPs graphic account. After giving us a sketch of Alex
ander MeGillivray, the wily half-breed chief, who commanded the Creeks
at this time, he then turns to General Clarke. Says he:
"On the civilized side [i. e., of the Oconee War], there was also a
prominent representative character whom we should not overlook: a
nobly meritorious yet unhappily, before the end of his career, a some
what erring soldier and patriot—General Elijah Clarke. The very
military reputation which he had brought out of the Revolution made
him the man to whom all the upper new settlements looked as the most
competent of leaders and the most fearless of fighters. There never
failed to come trooping to him, at his bugle call, from field and forest,
bands of armed men, at the head of whom he would repel incursions
and pursue and punish the flying foe even in the distant recesses of his
wild woods. To be forward and valiant in defending the settlements
from the Indian tomahawk was, in those days, a sure road to lasting
gratitude and admiration.
'' But destiny, which had hitherto been his friend, began at length to
be his enemy and to impel General Clarke into improper and ill-starred
but not ill-meant courses. His first error was in lending himself to the
schemes of the mischief-making French minister, Genet; his next in