ADDRESS OF THE CHURCH AND SOCIETY TO
PRESIDENT WASHINGTON, WHILST ON
A VISIT TO GEORGIA IN 1791
(Taken from White's Historical Collection, being missing
from the records.)
Sir: We feel ourselves happy in an opportunity of expressing our attachment to your Person, and our peculiar pleasure in your selection by the unanimous voice of your country to the Presidency of the United States.
Though situated in the extreme part of the Union, we have gratefully to acknowledge that we already experience the propitious influence of your wise and parental administration. To the troops stationed on your frontiers by your
order, and to the treaty lately concluded with the Creek Nation under your auspices, we are indebted, under Providence, for our present tranquility. The hatchet is now buried, and we smoke with our Indian neighbours the calumet
of peace. This, while it affords a happy presage of our future protection, gives, at the same time, a recent proof how justly you have earned, in your civil as well as military capacity, the glorious title of Father of your Country.
With the laurel, then, be pleased to accept the civic wreath of a grateful people.
We readily conceive how arduous must be the duties, how weighty and complicated the cares of office, in the government of so extensive a Republic as that over which you are called to preside. Impressed with a deep sense of this, we will not fail to implore the Divine blessing in your behalf.
May you continue to be directed by that wisdom from above which is necessary to the discharge of the duties of your high and important station; and may you long be preserved the favoured instrument of Heaven to secure to a free people those invaluable rights which you so eminently contributed to rescue from the hand of oppression. Distant as our situation is from the Seat of Government, permit us to assure you that our influence, however inconsiderable in the national scale, shall not be wanting in encouraging submission to the laws of the United States, and thus under God perpetuate the
blessings of an efficient Federal Government, now so happily established.
(Signed,) |
JAMES MAXWELL,
DANIEL STEWART,
A. HOLMES,
HENRY WOOD,
JOHN P. MANN,
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Committee in behalf of the
Church and Society.
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Midway, Liberty County, May 12, 1791.
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THE PRESIDENT'S ANSWER TO THE CONGREGA-
TIONAL CHURCH AND SOCIETY AT
MIDWAY, GEORGIA
Gentlemen: I learn with gratitude proportioned to the occasion, your attachment to my person, and the pleasure you express on my election to the Presidency of the United States. Your sentiments on the happy influence of our equal government impress me with the most sensible satisfaction. They vindicate the great cause of humanity. They reflect On the liberal minds that entertain them, and they promise the continuance and the improvement of that tranquility which is essential to the welfare of nations and the happiness of men.
You overrate my best exertions, when you ascribe to them the blessings which our country enjoys.
From the gallantry and fortitude of her citizens, under The auspices of Heaven, America has derived her independence. To their industry and the natural advantages of the Country, she is indebted for her prosperous situation. From their virtue she may expect long to share the protection of a free and equal government, which their wisdom has established, and which experience justifies, as admirabily adapted to our social wants and individual felicity.
Continue, my fellow-citizens, to cultivate the peace and harmony which now subsist between you and your Indian neighbors – the happy consequence is immediate – the reflec tion which arises on justice and benevolence will be everlastingly grateful. A knowledge of your happiness will lighten the cares of my station, and be among the most pleasing of their rewards.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
(Reprinted 1929 by W. N. Beckett, Mclntosh, Ga.)
Price 10 Cents
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