Note 271 — APPENDIX. ADVICE to STATESMEN;

Adair is here the advocate of the proposed Colony of Georgiana, which he mentions at least three times at various places in his book, pp. 251, 294, and here. He censures the policy of the English Government in restricting, by the king’s proclamation of 1763, settlements west of the Alleghany Mountains, and refusing to found or encourage colonies in the West, particularly on the Mississippi. A pamphlet appeared in London in 1772, entitled Political Essays Concerning the Present State of the British Empire, in which the establishment of a new colony east of the Mississippi between the thirty-third degree of latitude stretching to the Ohio River. This was the country of the Chickasaws. The following year another pamphlet appeared in advocacy of the undertaking as one already formulated. The scheme was, it seems, that of Gen. Phineas Lyman, revived. The location earlier or first sought was the territory between the Wolf River (Memphis) and the Illinois River, with an eastward extent of three hundred miles. It was then proposed to buy the Indian titles, which “could be easily obtained for a small price, as bringing them nearer home many conveniences that results from the neighborhood of Europeans.” The scheme was revived in 1772-3; and this time the promoters thought it wise to give the colony the name of the king, “Georgiana”; and to ask for less territory—that included in what is now North Mississippi, West Tennessee, and Western Kentucky—the exact domain of the Chickasaws. Was Adair, on visiting New York, or London, to bring out his book, approached to become one of the promoting syndicate to get the benefit of his influence with that tribe among whom he had resided so long? An inference in the affirmative is not a strained one. The Revolutionary War forced the scheme into a back eddy.