In this series the resolutions
adopted in Washington County are notable especially for the tone of their
preamble. Mentioning the method recently followed in Mississippi only to
disapprove it, this preamble ran: "We would fain hope that the soil of
Georgia may never be reddened or her people disgraced by the arbitrary
shedding of human blood; for if the people allow themselves but one
participation in such lawless proceedings, no human sagacity can foretell
where the overwhelming deluge will be staid or what portions of our state
may feel its desolating ruin. This course of protection unhinges every tie
of social and civil society, dissolves those guards which the laws throw
around property and life, and leaves every individual, no matter how
innocent, at the sport of popular passion, the probable object of popular
indignation, and liable to an ignominious death. Therefore we would
recommend to our fellow-citizens that if any facts should be elicited
implicating either white men or negroes in any insurrectionary or abolition
movements, that they be apprehended and delivered over to the legal
tribunals of the country for full and fair judicial trial."[88] At
Clarksville, Tennessee, uneasiness among the citizens on the score of the
negroes employed in the iron works thereabout was such that they procured a
shipment of arms from the state capital in preparation for special guard at
the Christmas season.
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