After the CHAPTER had been fixed at first at $11,111 annually. II. peace, a resolution of the Continental Congress had re1790. duced this salary to $9000. It was in consequence of this reduction, so Jefferson states, that Franklin had insisted on his recall, that amount being insufficient to pay. his expenses. An allowance for outfit made by this act was probably a suggestion of Jefferson's, who had insist ed upon it in his own case as necessary and proper. An "act for regulating the military establishment" provided for a standing force of 1216 rank and file, to be organized into four battalions, three of infantry and one of artillery, the three infantry battalions to constitute a regiment. The Tonnage Bill was remodeled, but the duties remained the same. Madison made another attempt to impose discriminating tonnage duties on the vessels of nations not in treaty with us; but, though he carried this proposition through the House, it was again defeated in the Senate. A difference between the two houses as to the powers to be given to the Postmaster General defeated a bill for reorganizing that department. The Senate wished to give the Postmaster General a discretionary authority in the establishment of post-roads, but to this the House would not agree. The appropriations for the service of the year amounted to $723,399 68: viz., civil list, $141,492 73; foreign intercourse, $40,000; military establishment, $155,537 72; Revolutionary pensions, $96,979 72; contingencies, $10,000; light-houses, $147,139 54; old debts, $232,219 97. Among the private bills passed was one granting Baron Steuben an annuity of $2000 in consideration of his services. After a laborious sesAug. 12. sion of seven months, Congress finally adjourned to meet again in December. CHAPTER III. NEW CONSTITUTIONS OF GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND WHILE the national Legislature had been employed CHAPTER in putting the new federal government into operation, constitutional changes of considerable importance had 1789. been made in several of the states. In this business Georgia took the lead, a Constitutional Convention hav- May. ing been in session simultaneously with the first session October. of Congress. The effect of the Federal Constitution as a model, or of those political views which had determined the general cast of that instrument, was conspicuous in the new Constitution of Georgia. The legislative power, instead of being vested, as before, in a single assembly, was to be exercised jointly by a Senate and House of Representatives, the senators to be chosen for three years, one by each of the eleven counties. They were required to be twenty-eight years of age, and to be qualified, like the representatives under the first Constitution, by the possession of two hundred and fifty acres of land, or other property to the value of $1200. The qualification of members of the House, which body was to consist of thirty-five members, was the possession of two hundred acres of land, or other property to the value of $700. ΠΙ. CHAPTER No clergyman of any sect could be a member of either house. The test of Protestantism required by the first 1789. Constitution was dispensed with. The elective franchise was extended to all male tax-paying resident freemen, the former property qualification being dropped. The governor was to be chosen biennially, the House to nominate three persons as candidates, one of whom the Senate was to select; the candidates to be thirty years of age, the owners of five hundred acres of land within the state, and of other property to the value of $4444 44. The powers of the governor were considerably enlarged. He was to possess the pardoning power, except in cases of treason, the appointment of all militia officers, and a veto on all laws not repassed by a two thirds vote. The judges and other civil officers were to be chosen by the Assembly in the same way with the governor, the judges for three years. The same system of county courts was continued as before, to be held by the chief justice of the state, assisted by three local judges for each county; but the Assembly was authorized to constitute out of these judges a Court of Errors and Appeals, empowered to grant new trials. This Constitution, like the former one, prohibited entails, and provided, when there was no will, for an equal distribution of all estates, landed as well as personal, among all the children. All persons were to enjoy the free exercise of religion without being obliged to contribute to the support of any religious profession but their own. Georgia was rapidly increasing in population, and as further constitutional changes might soon become necessary, it was provided that a convention of three persons from each county should meet for that purpose at the end of five years. III. The part of Georgia to which, at this time, the In- CHAPTER dian title had been extinguished, and which had begun to be occupied by settlers, was limited to a tract along 1789. the Savannah for a considerable distance above Augusta, and extending westward to the Altamaha and its eastern branch the Oconee. The Indians had also ceded the seacoast between the Altamaha and St. Mary's, but this tract was almost destitute of inhabitants. By far the larger part of what now constitutes the state was in possession of the Creeks and Cherokees. The Georgians, however, claimed in sovereignty, with exclusive right of pre-emption from the Indians, not only the whole of the present state, but also the district west of the Chattahoochee, out of which the two states of Alabama and Mississippi have since been constituted. The migration from the older districts to new lands, which prevailing pecuniary embarrassments had occasioned, had given rise throughout the United States to a great spirit of land speculation. The very first Legislature of Georgia, which met under the new Constitution, undertook to sell out, to three private companies, the pre- Dec. 22. emption right to tracts of land beyond the Chattahoochee-five millions of acres to the South Carolina Yazoo Company for the sum of $66,964, seven millions. of acres to the Virginia Yazoo Company for $93,742, and three millions and a half of acres for $46,875, to the Tennessee Yazoo Company. It was one of the conditions of the sale that the money should be paid within two years; but, as the companies insisted upon paying, not in cash, but in the depreciated Georgia paper, a succeeding Legislature took advantage of that circumstance to declare the bargain at an end. All the purchasers did not assent to this view; but the controversy upon this subject was quite overshadowed by another, which CHAPTER sprang up a few years later, growing out of another sale III. of these same lands to other companies, and giving rise 1789. to the more famous Yazoo claims, of which we shall have occasion hereafter to speak. 1790. The new Legislature fixed the seat of government at Louisville, a new town west of Augusta, and pretty nearly a central point to the then inhabited territory. The Legislature of 1784, at the instance of Baldwin and Milledge, both distinguished in the history of the state, had granted forty thousand acres of wild lands toward the endowment of a college, and the next year a charter had been granted, and a board of trustees organized. But this land was situated on the northwestern frontier, and first the danger of Indian hostilities, and afterward the difficulty of disposing of the lands except by sale, which the charter prohibited, kept the fund for several years unavailable. At a later period, on the basis of this fund, the University of Georgia was organized at Athens. The example of Georgia in the adoption of a new Constitution was followed the next year by South Carolina. The first and second Constitutions of that state, those of 1776 and 1778, had been merely acts, the first of a Provincial Congress, the second of the State Assembly. The Constitution now formed, the one still in force, though since amended in some unimportant particulars, was the work of a Convention specially called for that June. purpose, which met at Columbia, a new town then recently laid out, near the center of the state, and adopted the preceding year as the seat of the state government. The right of suffrage was given, as in Georgia, to all free white tax-paying citizens, and even the necessity of paying taxes has since been dispensed with. In those states in which slavery prevails, the mere possession of |