JOSEPH HABERSHAM.

COLONEL JOSEPH HABERSHAM Was born at Savannah, in Georgia, on the 28th of July, 1751. His father, James Habersham, was a native of Yorkshire, England, and accompanied his friend, the Rev. George Whitefield, to Georgia in the year 1738. There he soon became the President of the Orphan House, or Bethesda College, established by the exertions of Mr. Whitefield; for which charge he was well qualified, by his literary, as well as moral and religious character and habits. He was afterwards appointed one of the King's Council in the Colony, and subsequently its President and acting Governor, in the absence of Sir James Wright, in which situation he remained until his death, a few months before the expulsion of the Royal authority from Georgia, in the year 1776. Although foreign to our subject, it is but justice to the memory of President Habersham to remark, that, while in office, his letters pointed out to the ministry the grievances under which the Colony was laboring from the pernicious and oppressive acts of the British Parliament, the growing spirit of liberty among the people, and warned them of the consequences of perseverance in oppression. Faithful to his duties, but independent in their exercise, after a life devoted to the service and improvement of his adopted country, he was saved, by death, from seeing that country "made a desolation," his fair possessions wasted, and his sons denounced as traitors. Of these sons there were three, James, JOSEPH, and John, who all engaged with zeal in the Revolution; and, regardless of consequences, rejecting and despising all offers of Royal clemency, continued to the end the unflinching friends and active supporters of the republican cause.

JOSEPH, the second son, and subject of this notice, was educated at Princeton College, in New Jersey. Of quick and ardent temper, brave and chivalrous almost to excess, a pupil of Witherspoon, and with the independent spirit which he had inherited from his father, it seems to

have been almost a matter of course that he should have taken an early, active, and decided part in the excited feelings and deeply interesting movements of the times. Accordingly, on the 27th July, 1774, at the age of twenty-three, we find him a member of the first committee appointed by the friends of liberty in Georgia; which, in defiance of the proclamation of Governor Wright, continued to co-operate with similar committees in the northern Provinces, and to excite the people to resistance. When we recollect, in connexion with this fact, that his father was, at that moment, the second officer of the King in the Province, and high in favor, the prominent part which Colonel HABERSHAM took in these proceedings exhibits a deep devotion to the cause of his country, which no influence of others, or considerations of a personal nature, could restrain. In the following year, and while his father was still alive and in office, we again find his name recorded among those of a small party of the Republicans, who broke open the magazine, took out the powder, and sent a large portion of it to Beaufort, in South Carolina, for the use of the patriots. In the month of June of the same year he was appointed one of the council of safety; and in July, commanded a party of volunteers which went down the river in boats, captured a government ship which had just arrived with munitions of war for the royal troops, and took out the cargo, includ ing 15,000 pounds of powder, a portion of which was afterwards sent to the north and used by the American army before Boston. On the 18th day of January of the ever-memorable year 1776, Colonel HABERSHAM, who was at that time a member of the assembly, raised a party of volunteers, took Governor Wright prisoner, and confined him to his house under a guard. The Governor effected his escape, however, from this prison in a few weeks, took refuge on board of a British vessel of war then in the river, and never afterwards landed in Georgia.

Active hostilities were now fairly commenced in the province. By a resolution of the General Assembly the first battalion of Georgia Continental troops was raised; and on the 4th of February, 1776, Colonel, then Mr. HABERSHAM, was appointed Major of that battalion. In this command he did not remain idle; for, early in March, the British armed squadron came up the river Savannah to recover possession of the town, which attempt failed. In the defence, Colonel HABERSHAM, at the head of a company of riflemen, bore a distinguished part. In fact, he appears at this time to have been prominently engaged on every occasion in which danger was to be encountered, or the royal authority resisted.

After the expulsion of Governor Wright, and of the British forces from Georgia, that Province enjoyed a few months of comparative quiet; during which, on the 19th of May, 1776, Colonel HABERSHAM married Isabella Rae, the daughter of Robert Rae, and sister-in-law of General Samuel Elbert. Upon the taking of Savannah, in the winter of 1778, and the re-establishment of the Royal Government in Georgia, Colonel HABERSHAM removed his family to Virginia for safety; but his zeal in the cause of his country did not permit him to retire from its service, and accordingly, upon the landing of Count De Estaing in Georgia, to co-operate with General Lincoln in the reduction of Savannah, he was selected as the officer to guide the French army from the sea-board, and was engaged in the combined attack upon his native city, so disastrous in its results. After the failure of this attack, and the retreat of the American and French armies from the State, Savannah, and nearly the whole of Georgia, remained in possession of the British, and so continued to the end of the war.

At the close of the Revolution, Colonel HABERSHAM returned to private life with a broken fortune, but rich in the respect and affection of a free and independent people. In the ever-memorable contest which had just closed, it would be invidious to claim for Colonel HABERSHAM either a peculiar strength of patriotism or of devotion to the cause of the Revolution; thousands, like him, had perilled life and fortune in that Revolution; but when we reflect that his father was high in office, and in the confidence of the King; that he himself, if the Royal authority was preserved, had every prospect of enjoying like confidence and distinction; that the very weakness of the Province gave, in the beginning, but little hope of effectual resistance; and that, in the event of failure, he would, from these very circumstances, become a marked object of Royal vengeance; surely we may be entitled to claim for him more than a common share of devoted patriotism and such was the portion awarded to him by his native State. In the year 1785 he was elected Speaker of the General As sembly; and in 1790 was again honored with the same distinction.

In the year 1795 Colonel HABERSHAM was called, by Washington, to the distinguished station of Post-Master-General of the United States; and we require no better proof of the able and faithful manner in which he discharged his duties, than the fact that he retained that office, not only to the close of the administration of Washington, but throughout that of the elder Adams. At a period when so many, from great and devoted service to the country, had claims to office ; and these claims, well-known and appreciated; and when the seler

tion was made by Washington, this appointment was the best evidence of his great merit, and the general estimation in which he was held. In this office, as has been already stated, he continued until the accession of Mr. Jefferson to the presidency; but he retained the office so long, by no cringing or truckling to the higher authorities; for the president, Mr. Adams, having told him that the post-office department was an Augean stable, and must be cleansed-meaning that the postmasters who were of the opposite party must be removed; Colonel HABERSHAM replied, that these officers had discharged their duty faithfully, and that, therefore, he would not remove them, but that the president could remove the post-master-general. This, however, Mr. Adams, it seems, did not think proper to do.

The principle, however, which Colonel HABERSHAM refused to act upon was soon after made to act upon him. When Mr. Jefferson became the president, a polite note was addressed to Colonel HABERSHAM, tendering to him the office of Treasurer of the United States. This offer was received as, no doubt, it was intended to be, an intimation to him to resign the office of post-master-general, which he immediately did, and returned to Georgia.

Upon the establishment of a branch of the old Bank of the United States in Savannah, Colonel HABERSHAM was appointed the President, which office he continued to hold until the expiration of the charter. The few remaining years of his life were devoted to honorable efforts to repair the ruins of that fortune which had been broken by the Revolution, and in preparation for the close of that life, the greater portion of which had been devoted to the service of his country. His death occurred in his native city, on the 17th day of November in the year 1815, and in the sixty-fifth year of his age.

We have said that Colonel HABERSHAM was quick and ardent in temper; but, although quick to take offence, he was ready and anxious to make atonement for the slightest wrong-kind and indulgent to his slaves, humane and liberal to the poor, strict in the performance of all his contracts; tenacious of his own, as he had been of the rights of his country. Allowing to others the same independent and frank expression of opinion which he always exercised for himself, he may with truth be pronounced to have been a fair specimen of that noble, generous, and chivalric race who achieved the liberty and independence of our happy country.