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Show THE CEORCIA CrXcKER. Borne- Worda In lefenae of a Murh-Ma-llfCiied Type uf Kotif herner. There was once a (ioorgia Cracker, and we are his descendants, nays the Augusta (ia.. Chronicle. From tho blended strains of Knjjlish, Sulzbunrer and Scotch-Irish which came to this country, and which nettled ovor tho Savannah from Yamacraw to Petersburg Peters-burg there was evolved a cosmopolite who left his print upon history. He has carved out what (ion. Toombs used to call '-The State of Goorgy." Ho grw tobacco and indigo, he traded with tho Indian for his insltry; he beat back the Spanish into Florida and kept the savage off his claim. He stoutly fought the Hrititsh in the revolution, and under Troup and tho treaty he opposed op-posed old John Adams and tho general government. Ho helped to build the steamboat and invent tbo cotton gin; he reclaimed the swamps r.nd dug gold out of the hills; ho drilled in the mill- I tin. and pulled the gander's neck on holidays; he hated everything wrong and burned up the roeord of the Yazoo fraud; he paid his just debts and rounded the watermelon into perfection; he led the way to secession with his pike and furnished more troops than any other state; he was tho first one to revive after the war, reclaiming tho state and making tho best of a bad bargain. Ho builds up his cities, digs out his rivers and canals, lotids tho union in railway constructions and spins more cotton than any other southern commonwealth. com-monwealth. Ho is religious, patriotic, public-spirited, believes in prayer and keeps the powder dry in fact he is the brother-german to Undo Jonathan. He is called the southern Yankee; tho light of the new south, the hope of tho nation is this ( ieorgia Cracker. Judge Longstrcet wrote humorously, but tenderly ten-derly of him in thoso incomparable Georgia scenes. Col. Thompson pictured pic-tured him gallant and pieturesquo, in that Indescribable "courtship of Major Jones." Ready for a fight or a footrace, foot-race, high toned and reflective, full of provincialism, but never (lominiitcu oy prejudice; hospitable, helpful, tender, quaint and true, the (Jcoriii Cracker stands the peer of tho Knickerbocker on the Hudson or tho Carrolla of 'the Chesapeake. The Georgia Cracker was shrewd but full of principle. He could coin money out of the sunshine and tan riches from the fur of the gopher. Ho was not melancholy or liourbonish but full of the now. He didn't watch his roof thatch rot like the Arkansas settler he went to work and repaired it. He was willing to work his lands with or without slaves. His first char-tor char-tor prohibited serfdom as it birred out rum. He took his horn on Michaelmas with the lordly air of a Peter Stuyves-ant, Stuyves-ant, and kept the pledge all the rest of the year with the Btern stoicism of a Spartan. He worshiped Andrew Jackson Jack-son and yet believed in Troup. He sided with Joe Brown "agin the banks." He was a democrat by conviction a whig only by perversion. He regarded regard-ed Henry Clay's party as an aristocratic concern. He boycotted La Fayette for meddling with our institutions, just as he snubbed Jay Gould when he rode through the south in his palace car. Troup was a Georgia "Cracker,'" so was Alex. Stephens, with his pale face and bright eye; so was Ben Hill, as he left the plow handles in Jasper county to go to the State University; so was Sam Thurmond, of Watkinsville, as he sturdily fed the forge with one hand and turned the pages of Blackstone with the other; so are we all Georgia "Crackers" the descendants of God's people the plain yeomanry of an empire, em-pire, the thriftiest kindliest most helpful help-ful folks on earth. Sherman cut a swath forty miles wide and 300 miles long right in the heart and homes of the Georgia Cracker. One hundred millions of property was wiped out in eight months. Now the whole state from Dalton to Waycross blossoms like a rose. Iron and coal and granite are quarried from the base of the Kenne-saw, Kenne-saw, and the railroads which have given us Cordele and Americus and Brunswick have ligated the last wounds of war. Franco has not leapt into luxuriance more swirtiy man isoutn Georgia from pillage and devastation. Look what the Georgia Cracker is doing! There is one million of him. He is at work. His children are at school. He lives well, reads the papers pa-pers and thinks for himself. He is building an empire. There is nothing half so sweet to him as the red old hills of Georgia. Long may he live! May his tribe increase and his shadow never grow less! |