however, was personal, not political, and could never secure to him any political distinction.  He was ambitious of a seat in the United States Senate, a distinction to which he more than once aspired; but here the grinning ghost of Federalism always met him, frightening from his support even the nearest of his social friends.  Mr. Crawford’s wishes controlled the State, through the instrumentality of those he had distinguished with his countenance.  None doubted the patriotism or capacity of Dooly for the position; but he was a Federalist, and the friend of many of the prime movers of the Yazoo fraud; and these were unpardonable sins with Crawford and his friends.  No one ever charged upon Dooly the sin of a participation in this speculation, or the frauds through which it became a fixed fact, as a law of the State, by legislative act.  But it was, for a very long time, fatal to the political aspirations of every one known to be personally friendly to any man in any way concerned in the matter.  They were pariahs in the land, without friends or caste.

Of all the men prominent in his day, George M. Troup was the most uncompromising in his hostility to those engaged in this speculation.  It certainly was the work of a few persons only, and did not embrace one out of fifty of the Georgia Company.  All, or nearly all of these, honestly embarked in the speculation, not doubting but that the State had the power to sell, and knowing her pecuniary condition required that she should have money.  Had they known that it required bribery to pass the measure, they would have scorned to become parties to such corruption; nevertheless they were inculpated, and had to share the infamy of the guilty few who thus accomplished the purchase, as they shared the profits arising therefrom.  But it did not stop with the participants.  Their personal friends suffered, and no one individual so fatally as Dooly.  He asserted the power of the Legislature to sell—­he was sustained by the decision of the Supreme Court—­he was not a stockholder—­he afforded no aid with his personal influence; yet the public clamor made him a Yazoo-man, and Troup was foremost in his denunciation of him.  On this account it was that, upon a memorable occasion, Dooly declared that Troup’s mouth was formed by nature to pronounce the word Yazoo.  It had been proposed to Dooly, at the time Forsyth abandoned the Federal party, to follow his example; but he refused to part with his first love, and clung to her, and shaded, without a murmur, her fortunes and her fate, which condemned him to a comparative obscurity for all the future.