James Moore Wayne

“ Georgia yielded to the United States, almost gratuitously, the vast domain, which now constitutes the States of Alabama and Mississippi. She had a perfect right to prescribe the limits of her cession, and to consult her own convenience in determining them. But what is the inconvenience? It is said, it would be burdensome to the citizens of Alabama, to answer in the courts of Georgia for offences committed on the western margin of the Chattahoochee River. ”

“ The ultimate consequence was, that the king, in January, 1764, extended the limits of Georgia, including within them all that country which had been within the chartered limits of South Carolina, and limiting the south boundary of that colony by the northern stream of Savannah River, as far as the head of the same. The language of the letters-patent, granted to Sir James Wright, is, that the colony of Georgia shall be bounded on the north by the most northern stream of a river, then commonly called Savannah, as far as the head of the said river ”

“ The plaintiffs claimed the western high bank, including the whole river, the flats, and the inner face of that bank, and that this was the line defined in the act of cession made by the United States. If this claim was affirmed, the defendant in error was a trespasser, and this judgment could not have been rendered. It was disaffirmed, and so disaffirming it the court denied the validity of the act of cession, under which plaintiff claimed, or they gave a construction to those articles adverse to his claim, and in either case the appellate jurisdiction of this court is manifest. ”

“ It requires no scientific exploration to find or mark it out. The eye traces it in going either up or down a river, in any stage of water. With such an understanding of what a river is, as a whole, from its parts, there is no difficulty in fixing that boundary-line in question. Wherever that outer bed-line shall be, from its beginning on the bank, at the 31st degree of north latitude, to the mouth of the Uchee, on the western side, is the western boundary of Georgia on the bank and along the bank running up the River Chattahoochee. ”

“ It neither takes in overflowed land beyond the bank, nor includes swamps or low grounds liable to be overflowed, but reclaimable for meadows or agriculture, or which, being too low for reclamation, though not always covered with water, may be used for cattle to range upon, as natural or uninclosed pasture. But it may include spots lower than the bluff or bank, whether there is or is not a growth upon them, not forming a part of that land which, whether low or high, we know to be upland or fast lowland, if such spots are within the bed of the river. ”

“ In fact, admitting that the king's patent had been given, his treaty with the United States was a revocation of it, and Spain could not claim from its treaty with England any right to the extension, that having been a political act of the king of England for the benefit of his own subjects, when, by his proclamation of 1763, Florida, as it had been acquired from Spain, was for the first time erected into the two distinct governments of East and West Florida. ”

“ The matter in controversy was determined by this decision. The question of the extent of the boundary of Indiana was not necessarily involved in it. Any opinion upon it was therefore obiter, not binding upon the court, and open to examination by counsel. But it will not be necessary to exercise this privilege. The rights of plaintiffs in error will be protected from the influence of this opinion, by showing the diversity between the cases. ”

“ Nothing had occurred between 1764 and 1776, from which any contest concerning them could arise, and it was not until two years after the provisional treaty of peace between England and the United States was made, that South Carolina claimed any part of the unsettled territory of Georgia, within the limits defined by the king's patent of January, 1764. ”

“ On the other hand, white men in numbers, no longer under the influences of social life, or caring nothing for its restraints, hovered constantly on the borders of the Indians, exasperating them by depredations and misleading them into all the excesses of a corrupt civilization, or into feuds with each other or forays against the whites. ”

“ It was, however, a transfer of all the claim of South Carolina to unsettled land. North Carolina afterwards ceded to the United States its western lands. Georgia was the only remaining State which had not done so. ”

“ It may be well here to say, that the power of the king to alter, change, enlarge, or diminish the limits of his royal governments in America, cannot be denied. 'Those governments were of two kinds, royal and proprietary. In the former, the right of the soil and jurisdiction remained in the crown, and their boundaries, though described in letters-patent, were subject to alteration at its pleasure ”

“ Among others, a tract comprehending a part of what was subsequently declared by Congress to be the Mississippi Territory. The prices for some of these alienations were paid into the treasury of the State, and patents for them were issued by the governor. At the next session, however, of the General Assembly the act of 1795 was declared to be void on account of the fraud, bribery, and corruption by which it had been passed. ”