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388 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
On December 14, 1792, while the case was still pending, the Legis
lature passed a resolution declaring that litigation of this character
"would effectually destroy the retained sovereignty of the States and
would actually tend in its operations to annihilate the very shadow of
State governments and to render them but tributary corporations to the
government of the United States." To quote an eminent authority on
constitutional law: "Here for the first time was announced the prin
ciple that the primary allegiance of the citizen is to the State, not to
the nation, and that other principle, equally far-reaching, that the State
is the judge of the constitutionality of its own acts. These are the bases
upon which the theory of State Sovereignty is reared.'' * Governor Tel-
fair, in a message addressed by him to the Legislature, in the fall of
1793, used language as strong as that contained in the resolution of
1792. The idea of bringing suit against a sovereign state was not to be
tolerated.
Judgment was rendered against the State of Georgia at the Febru
ary term of the Supreme Court in 1794. But Georgia had fully made up
her mind to resist, realizing full well that no means of executing a
judgment against a state was known to administrative law. Time was
destined to vindicate her course.
The Federal Government did not seek to enforce its judgment. Mean
while a senator from Massachusetts introduced a bill into Congress for
a constitutional amendment; while the legislatures of Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Virginia all proposed amendments of a like character.
In due time an act was passed by Congress making this change in the
Constitution and its ratification was announced on January 8, 1798.
Thus the judgment rendered against this state by the Federal Su
preme Court, in the case of Chisholm versus.Georgia, lay unenforeed upon
the court records until all such questions were finally removed from the
cognizance of the court by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution
of the United States. Says MeElreath: "Thus Georgia won the first
great fight of the nation for State Rights and wrote her victory into the
fundamental law of the nation.'' f
But scarcely had the excitement incident to this litigation subsided
before the state was stirred by a much greater sensation, viz., the Yazoo
fraud. This issue was destined for years to disturb the peace of the
state and to bequeath its memories of bitterness to remote generations.
Governor Mathews had succeeded Governor Telfair at the executive
helm and, though at first opposed to the Yazoo purchase, the stout old
Federalist at length yielded to pressure, signed the bill alienating Geor
gia's western lands for a small sum of money and unloosed upon the
state a sea of troubles, from the effect of which it took her a quarter
of a century to recover.
Viewing the whole matter dispassionately and calmly at this late
day it seems to us that entirely too much has been made of the Yazoo
fraud, especially in its ethical aspects. But such was the odium which
came in time to be attached to the whole affair that the one thing needed
*"Fess: Political Theory and Party Organization in the United States," pp.
27-28, quoted in "MeElreath on the Constitution."
t "MeElreath on the Constitution," p. 90.