next ensuing was elected pledged to repeal the odious Act; and upon
its convening, all made haste to manifest an ardent zeal in this work.

At the time of the passage of this Act, the Legislature sat in
Augusta, and the Governor who by the Act was empowered to make the
sale was George Mathews. Mathews was an Irishman by birth, and was
very illiterate, but a man of strong passions and indomitable will.
During the war of the Revolution he had, as a partisan officer, gained
some distinction, and in the upper counties exercised considerable
influence. Many anecdotes are related of his intrepidity and daring,
and quite as many of his extraordinary orthography. At the battle of
Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina, he was severely wounded, at the
moment when the Continental forces were retiring to a better position.
A British soldier, noticing some vestiges of a uniform upon him,
lifted his musket to stab him with the bayonet; his commander caught
the weapon, and angrily demanded, "Would you murder a wounded officer?
Forward, sir!" Mathews, turning upon his back, asked, "To whom do I
owe my life?" "If you consider it an obligation, sir, to me," answered
the lieutenant. Mathews saw the uniform was British, and furiously
replied, "Well, sir, I want you to know that I scorn a life saved by a
d----d Briton." The writer had the anecdote from a distinguished
citizen of Georgia, who was himself lying near by, severely wounded,
and who in one of his sons has given to Georgia a Governor.

General Wade Hampton, George Walker, William Longstreet, Zachariah
Cox, and Matthew McAllister were the parties most active in procuring
the passage of the Yazoo Act. That bribery was extensively practised,
there is no doubt, and the suspicion that it even extended to the
Executive gained credence as a fact, and was the cause of preventing
his name ever being given to a county in the State: and it is a