"I think," he
says, writing to Miller, "you will be able to convince the CANDID
that this is quite a mistaken notion and them that WILL NOT
BELIEVE may be damn'd." Again, writing later to his friend Josiah
Stebbins in New England: "I have a set of the most Depraved
villains to combat and I might almost as well go to HELL in
search of HAPPINESS as apply to a Georgia Court for Justice." And
again: "You know I always believed in the 'DEPRAVITY OF HUMAN
NATURE.' I thought I was long ago sufficiently 'grounded and
stablished' in this Doctrine. But God Almighty is continually
pouring down cataracts of testimony upon me to convince me of
this fact. 'Lord I believe, help thou,' not 'mine unbelief,' but
me to overcome the rascality of mankind." His partner Miller, on
the other hand, is inclined to be more philosophical and suggests
to Whitney that "we take the affairs of this world patiently and
that the little dust which we may stir up about cotton may after
all not make much difference with our successors one hundred,
much less one thousand years hence." Miller, however, finally
concluded that, "the prospect of making anything by ginning in
this State [Georgia] is at an end. Surreptitious gins are being
erected in every part of the country; and the jurymen at Augusta
have come to an understanding among themselves, that they will
never give a verdict in our favor, let the merits of the case be
as they may.
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