On the first Monday in August, 1783, Governor Martin convened the Legislature in Savannah. Courts of Justice were re-established, commissioners of confiscated estates appointed, and measures adopted for the rehabilitation of the State. It was not, however, until the assembling of the Constitutional Convention on the first Monday in January, 1784, when Lyman Hall was appointed Governor, George Walton, Chief Justice; Samuel Stirk, Attorney General; John Milton, Secretary of State; John Martin, Treasurer, and Richard Call, Surveyor General, that the machinery of reconstruction was fully set in motion. With the incoming of peace many who had been absent in the army, and others who had sought, in South Carolina and elsewhere, temporary refuge from the devastations of the war, returned to their former homes in Sunbury and on the adjacent plantations, and entered with becoming spirit and energy upon the labor of rebuilding and repeopling the desolated region. For a season it seemed as if the prosperity of this seaport would be revived. Not a few of its inhabitants, however, having, during the continuance of hostilities, formed settlements elsewhere, determined to remain where they were, and so the ante bellum population was by no means regained. Others had died, and others still in their places of retreat found themselves so impoverished that they could not command the means requisite for a removal. The first session of the Superior Court of Liberty county was held at Sunbury on the 18th of November, 1783,—their Honors, Chief Justice George Walton, and Assistant Judge Benjamin Andrew, Senior, presiding. On the 20th, the Grand Jury being empanneled and sworn, the Chief Justice delivered a charge in which,—having alluded to the fact that good order and subordination had everywhere characterized the courts presided over by him on this his first riding since the close of the war, and assured them that nothing could so much contribute to confirm the blessings of peace as an observance of the laws which had for their sole object the general happiness of the people,—he spoke as follows: “I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the news of a definitive treaty of peace by which our freedom, sovereignty, and independence are secured. The war which produced it was one of necessity on our part. That we were enabled to prosecute it with firmness and perseverance to so glorious an issue, should be ascribed to the protecting influence of the Great Disposer of events, and be a subject of grateful praise and adoration. While the result of the contest is so honourable and advantageous to us and to posterity, it is to be lamented that those moral and religious duties so essential to the order of society and the permanent happiness of mankind, have been too much neglected. To recover them into practice, the life and conduct of every good man should be a constant example. Your temples, which the profane