Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

488 GEORGIA AND GEOEGIANS
On the annexation of Florida to the United States in 1821, President
Monroe commissioned Gen. Andrew Jackson as its first territorial gov
ernor. Jackson was the man to organize a stable government in Florida.
Moreover, the demands of poetic justice were satisfied by his appoint
ment; for whatever may be said in criticism of his course in 1818, it
was largely due to the drastic measures which he then adopted that
Spain was willing to relinquish the peninsula.
Governor Rabun's administration was signalized by important ces
sions of land obtained from the Indians. Great dissatisfaction having been
caused by the Treaty of Fort Jackson in 1814, due to its lack of result
ing benefits to Georgia, the government finally induced the Creeks, under
a treaty negotiated at the Creek Agency, January 22, 1818, to relinquish
1,500,000 acres of land, in two parcels, one between the Appalachee and
the Chattahoochee, out of which Gwinnett and Walton counties were
formed; the other constituting a neck of land between the Altamaha
River and the northern boundary of the cession of 1814.-
Two large bodies of land were also acquired from the Cherokees. In
1817 these Indians ceded to the United States Government all the lands
owned by them in Georgia east of the Chattahoochee River, out of which
were organized the counties of Hall and Habersham. In 1819, the
Cherokees made another cession, this time conveying a body of land
between the Chestatee and the Chattahoochee rivers, out of which Rabun
County was organized.
All the lands acquired from the Indians since the Treaty of Fort
Jackson in 1814, including the two cessions above mentioned from the
Cherokees, were distributed under the Lottery Act of 1820. Out of the
Cherokee lands five counties were organized, to wit: Walton, Gwin
nett, Hall, Habersham and Rabun. Out of the Creek lands three coun
ties were formed, to wit: Early, Appling and Irwin, but these counties
as originally formed were of vast area, and out of them other counties
were eventually created. Under the lottery of 1820 the lands of
Telfair County, in what was formerly a part of Wilkinson, were also
distributed.*
Commissioners from Georgia and Tennessee met in 1818, at a point
on Nickajack Creek, in the northwestern angle of the state, and, after
several weeks, succeeded in running a boundary line to the satisfaction
of all parties.
During this same year, the boundary line between Georgia and Flor
ida was surveyed by Wilson Lumpkin.
On March 25, 1818, while visiting friends at Dungeness, on Cumber
land Island, Gen. Henry Lee, the illustrious "Light-Horse Harry" of
the Revolution, breathed his last, after a lingering illness of several
weeks. General Lee was easily the foremost officer of cavalry in the
first war for independence; and to his gallant blade Georgia owes a debt
of gratitude which two centuries have not extinguished. At the head of
an independent legion lie took part in the siege of Augusta and became
an important factor, under General Greene, in the final expulsion of the
British from Georgia soil. Later he wrote an exhaustive account of his
operations in the Southern Department, a work of great value to his-
'Prince's Digest," p. 550.