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.