CHAPTER XXXVI. BURTON GWINNETT-LYMAN HALL-GEORGE WALTON. Bold and fearless in the contest, BURTON GWINNETT was born in England, in 1732. The pecuniary means of his parents were limited, yet they managed to give him a good common education. He was apprenticed to a merchant in Bristol, and after completing his term of service, he married, and commenced business on his own account. Allured by the promises of wealth and distinction in America, he resolved to emigrate hither, and he arrived at Charleston, in South Carolina, in the year 1770. There he commenced mercantile business, and after pursuing it for two years, he sold out his stock, moved to Georgia, and purchased large tracts of land on St. Catherine's Island in that province. He purchased a number of slaves, and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits. Mr. Gwinnett favored the opposition of the Colonies to British oppression, to some degree; yet he was one of those cautious, doubting men at that time, who viewed the success of the Colonies in an open rupture with the home government, as highly problematical. Therefore, when, in 1774, Georgia was solicited to unite her voice with the other Colonies in a General Congress, Mr. Gwinnett looked upon the proposition with disfavor, as one fraught with danger and many evils. But falling in with Doctor Lyman Hall, and a few other decided patriots, his judgment became gradually convinced that some powerful movement was necessary; and at length he came out before the people, as one of the warmest advocates of unbending resistance to the British Crown. His cultivated mind and superior talents rendered him very popular with the people as soon as he espoused their cause, and every honor in their gift was speedily bestowed upon him. It was in the beginning of 1775, that Mr. Gwinnett openly espoused the cause of the patriots, and the parish of St. John elected him a delegate to the Continental Congress.* In February, 1776, he was again elected a delegate to that body by the General Assembly of Georgia, and under their instructions, and in accordance with his own strong inclinations, he voted for the Declaration of Independence, and signed it on the second of August following. He remained in Congress until 1777, when he was elected a member of the Convention of his State to form a Constitution, in accordance with the recommendation of Congress after the Declaration of Independence was made, and the grand outlines of that instrument are attributed to Mr. Gwinnett. Soon after the State Convention adjourned, Mr. Bullock, the president of At the early stage of the controversy with Great Britain, Georgia, sparsedly populated, seemed quite inactive, except in the district known as the parish of St. John. There all the patriotism of the provinc seems to have been concentrated. The General Assembly having refused to send delegates to the Congress of 1774, that parish separated from the province, and appointed a representative in the Continental Congress. The leaven, however, soon spread, and Georgia gave her vote, in 1776, for independence. the council, died, and Mr. Gwinnett was elected to that station, then the highest office in the gift of the people. The civil honors, so rapidly and lavishly bestowed upon him, excited his ambition, and while he was a representative in Congress, he aspired to the possession of military honors also. He offered himself as a candidate for the office of Brigadier-General, and his competitor was Colonel M'Intosh, a man highly esteemed for his manly bearing and courageous disposition. Mr. Gwinnett was defeated, and with mistaken views he looked upon his rival as a personal enemy. A decided alienation of their former friendship took place, and the breach was constantly widened by the continued irritations which Mr. Gwinnett experienced at the hands of Colonel M'Intosh and his friends. At length he was so excited by the conduct of his opposers, and goaded by the thoughts of having his fair fame tarnished in the eyes of the community, from whom he had received his laurels, that he listened to the suggestions of false honor, and challenged Colonel M'Intosh to single combat. They met with pistols, and at the first fire both were wounded, Mr. * * As we have elsewhere remarked, in the course of these memoirs, native-born Englishmen were in the habit of regarding the colonists as inferior to themselves, and they were apt to assume a bearing toward them highly offensive. In some degree Mr. Gwinnett was obnoxious to this charge, and he looked upon his rapid elevation in public life, as an acknowledgment of his superiority. These feelings were too thinly covered not to be seen by the people when he was president of the council, and it soon engendered among the natives a jealousy that was fully reciprocated by him. This was doubtless the prime cause of all the difficulties which surrounded him toward the close of his life, and brought him to his tragical death. Gwinnett mortally; and in the prime of life, at the early age of forty-five, his life terminated. He could well have said, in the language of the lamented Hamilton, when fatally wounded in a duel by Aaron Burr: "I have lived like a man, but I die like a fool." Mr. Gwinnett left a wife and several children, but they did not long survive him. LYMAN HALL was born in Connecticut in the year 1721. His father was possessed of a competent fortune, and he gave his son an opportunity for acquiring a good education. He placed him in Yale College, at the age of sixteen years, whence he graduated after four years' study. He chose the practice of medicine as a profession, and he entered upon the necessary studies with great ardor, and pursued them with perseverance. As soon as Mr. Hall had completed his professional studies, and was admitted to practice, with the title of M. D., he married and emigrated to South Carolina, in 1752. He first settled at Dorchester, but during the year he moved to Sunbury, in the district of Medway, in Georgia, whither about forty New England families, then in South Carolina, accompanied him. He was very successful in the practice of his profession; and by his intelligence, probity, and consistency of character, he won the unbounded esteem and confidence of his fellow-citizens. Doctor Hall was a close observer of the "signs of the times," and he was among the earliest of the southern patriots who lifted up their voices against British oppression and misrule. The community in which he lived was strongly imbued with the same feeling, for the people brought with them from New England the cherished principles of the Pilgrim Fathers-principles that would not brook attempts to enslave, or even to destroy a single prerogative of the Colonies. The older settlers of Georgia, many of whom were direct from Europe, had these principles of freedom inwoven with their character in a much less degree, and therefore the parish of St. John, wherein Doctor Hall resided, seemed, at the first cry of liberty, to have much of the patriotism of the province centred there. Early in 1774 Doctor Hall and a few kindred spirits, endeavored, by calling public meetings, to arouse the people of the province to make common cause with their brethren of the North; but these efforts seemed almost futile. Finally, a general meeting of all favorable to republicanism was called at Savannah, in July, 1774, but the measures adopted there were temporizing and non-committal in a great degree, and Doctor Hall almost despaired of success in persuading Georgia to send delegates to the General Congress, called to meet at Philadelphia in September. He returned to his constituents with a heavy heart, and his report filled them with disgust at the pusilanimity of the other representatives there. Fired with zeal for the cause, and deeply sympathizing with their brother patriots of New England, the people of the parish of St. John resolved to act in the matter, independent of the rest of the colony, and in March, 1775, they elected Doctor Hall a delegate to the General Congress, and he appeared there with his credentials on the thirteenth of May, following. Notwithstanding he was not an accredited delegate of a colony, Congress, by a unanimous vote, admitted him to a seat. During the summer, Georgia became sufficiently aroused to come out as a colony in favor of the republican cause, and |