Worth, Dooly, Wilcox, Pulaski, Houston, Macon, Marion, Chattahoochee, Sumter, Webster, Stewart, Quitman, Clay, Calhoun, Randolph, Terrell, and Dougherty.

Third District, Muscogee, Schley, Taylor, Talbot, Harris, Troup, Merriwether, Heard, Coweta, Fayette, Clayton, Carroll, Campbell, Harralson, and Paulding.

Fourth District,-Upson, Pike, Spaulding, Henry, Newton, Butts, Monroe, Crawford, Bibb, Twiggs, Wilkinson, Baldwin, Jones, Jasper, and Putnam.

Fifth District, Washington, Jefferson, Burke, Richmond, Glasscock, Hancock, Warren, Columbia, Lincoln, Wilkes, Talliaferro, Greene, Morgan, Oglethorpe, and Elbert.

Sixth District, · Milton, Gwinnett, Walton, Clarke, Jackson, Madison, Hart, Franklin, Bangs, Hall, Forsyth, Pickens, Dawson, Lumpkin, White, Habersham, Rabun, Towns, Union, Fannin, and Gilmer.

Seventh District, — DeKalb, Fulton, Cobb, Polk, Floyd, Bartow, Cherokee, Gordon, Chattooga, Walker, Whitfield, Murray, Catoosa, and Dade.

The Freedmen's Bureau was brought before the Convention by a message from the Provisional Governor, covering a letter from Brigadier-General Davis Tillson, State Commissioner, setting forth the necessity of having an agent of the bureau in each county, and stating that it was with the utmost difficulty that he had been able to get suitable officers for each section, even; and thereupon asking the Governor to authorize such of the county officers as the bureau might select, and as might be willing to serve, to act as its agents. This proposition the Governor indorsed_as likely, if accepted and executed in good faith, to tend much toward removing martial law. The message and documents were sent to the committee of sixteen.

During the pendency of the matter before the committee, General Tillson met the delegates at the hall one evening, and explained to them the purposes and desires of the government and the bureau in respect to the freed people. He was kindly received, and listened to with great attention.

On the following day the committee made a report, accepting "the wise and liberal proposition" of General Tillson, and authorizing any civil officer, or any citizen of the State, to act, by his appointment and under his direction and instructions, as agent of the bureau "in adjusting difficulties between the white and colored population of the State, in maintaining the police of the country, and in other similar matters."

This goes one step beyond the General's request, but not beyond his desire, in that it authorizes him to constitute any citizen as his agent. Simple as is the whole proposition, offering to the people a prospect that their own neighbors, instead of military officers, will, in many cases, be put in charge of the freedmen's interests, - their intense hatred of the bureau and the government led some men into opposition to this report.

Matthews, the inevitable, of Oglethorpe, thought he discovered terrible things in it. It was the entering wedge of nigger equality,-it legalized nigger testimony,-it savored of nigger suffrage, - it obliged a white man to stand beside a nigger in the witness-box, -it obliged every court in the State to admit nigger evidence, &c., &c., &c., — to all and several of which things he and his people were inflexibly opposed.

Several delegates endeavored to make him see the matter in its true light, but without avail; and the report was then adopted, with about twenty dissenting voices.

It should be borne in mind that these agents, whether county officers or mere civilians, will not be under the State laws, but under the instructions of the bureau, and their functions can at any time be suspended by the Assistant Commissioner. General Tillson is confident that he will be able to prove the practical wisdom of the proposed plan in a very short time.

XXXI.

THE

HOW REPUDIATION WAS ACCOMPLISHED.

MILLEDGEVILLE, November 7, 1865.

HE leading question before the South Carolina Convention was that respecting the prohibition of slavery. The leading question before the North Carolina Convention was that respecting the legality of the ordinance of secession. The leading question before the Georgia Convention was that respecting the assumption of the war debt.

Knowing very well what had been required of the conventions of Alabama and North Carolina, and seeing what would probably be required of the Legislatures of South Carolina and Mississippi, in respect to the debt, the delegates here were, to use a homely but expressive word, very touchy on the subject. They would talk calmly enough with an outsider on other questions; but as soon as conversation turned to that many of them became excited, not to say violent, in their language.

When the Convention came together I doubt if there were over seventy delegates out of the two hundred and ninety present who opposed the assumption of that debt. I think there were also at least one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five who favored its assumption at the face value of the bonds and notes in which it exists. The balance of those who favored its assumption would have been content to reduce it to a specie basis on the value of gold at the time the various bonds, &c., were issued. In a word, there were at least three, and quite likely four would be a more correct figure, at least three to one in favor of assuming that debt. The Comptroller-General of the State, Honorable Peterson Thweatt, in his report of the 16th of October, took

strong ground in favor of paying the debt, which he said "rested on the highest moral and legal considerations." A couple of paragraphs from that report will show his feeling and judgment on the question:

"What have the political questions of the war to do with this matter? Whether the war was right or wrong, was it not at the call of the State and by the coercion of the Confederate government that tens of thousands of our men went to battle, perilling health, limb, and life in a cause which they believed to be just, and leaving behind them wives and children and mothers, dependent upon the maternal care of the State? How could the State refuse to make provision for those men and their families? And how can the State now drive away from the door of her treasury the public creditors who enabled her to discharge so sacred a duty? If the State did her duty to the suffering soldier in the field and his famishing little ones at home, it was because public-spirited men furnished the provisions, clothing, and money, and took in exchange the treasury notes or bonds of the State. These treasury notes and bonds were issued with the unanimous assent of the representatives of the whole State; there was no division, no opposition, no objection from any quarter whatever to their issue, to meet the appropriations made, and thereby the promise to pay them was the solemn pledge of the whole people of the State; and can these creditors now, without infinite dishonor to Georgia, be sent away loaded down with repudiated paper?

"Should Georgia's good name and credit and fame go down, however, and she be held as a 'REPUDIATOR,' — should the good old State that gave me birth be charged with the violation of her most solemn promises and pledges in matters of dollars and cents,

should she be charged with having deliberately borrowed money of her banks, of her citizens, of her widows and orphans, and of others, by issuing bonds and treasury notes with solemn promises to pay the same, and then, without any default on the part of those who gave her their money and credit, deliberately refused to repay the same, or any part thereof, and that she did this, too, because there was no power to compel her to do justice, — should the good old State that we have all ever been so proud of be charged with thus treating her own citizens, (including helpless

women and children,) or any one else who trusted, alone, to her HONOR, and in consequence of the same, she shall never have the credit and high character she once possessed,—I desire to 'put it on record' that I had 'no part or lot' in thus placing her, but, that, as an officer of the State, and a true and loyal citizen, I contended, from the beginning to the end, for the INTEGRITY and HONOR OF GEORGIA!"

The Provisional Governor, on the other hand, took strong ground against paying the debt, as the following paragraph from the message delivered to the Convention on its organization will show:

Geor

"It is of no legal or moral obligation, because it was created to aid in the prosecution of a war of rebellion against the United States. The purpose sought to be accomplished was unconstitutional, and all who participated in any wise in the effort to sever the country were violators of law, and can therefore set up no claim, either legal or equitable, for money advanced or for services rendered. Furthermore, these contracts, from which a liability is said to result, were made with Georgia in revolt, — with Georgia as a member of the Confederate States government. The government to which she then belonged has been overthrown, and with its overthrow_all Confederate debts became extinct. gia, as a component part of it, no longer exists, and her debts men incurred have in like manner been extinguished. She is now no longer in revolt. She is one of the States of the Federal Union; and in her return to reconciliation her allegiance to the government requires that the act of secession be cancelled, and all other acts done and performed in aid of the Rebellion be declared void and of no effect. The ultimate redemption of the currency, both State and Confederate, was made dependent in fact and in terms upon the result of the fatal struggle. No one expected payment if finally defeated in our efforts to secure independence, and therefore no plighted faith is violated by a refusal on the part of Georgia to assume to pay an indebtedness dependent on the issue. The currency and the cause flourished together while in life; and now that the cause has no longer a being, the currency that sustained it may well be interred in the same grave. Let the record of your action on this subject discourage, in the future, all