History hides on Bay Street, only hinted at by a historical marker that briefly mentions the fact that 200 years ago, Augusta was Georgia's capital.
In fact, the marker pays tribute to the original site of the Academy of Richmond County, a building where the Georgia General Assembly met between 1786 and 1795, Augusta State University history professor Ed Cashin said.
The building is gone, having been vacated by the Legislature in 1795 and by the school itself three years later. No record exists that shows when the building was torn down. In its place stands an office building at Bay and Fourth streets.
``It was right on the water. You could see the river from the building,'' said Alethea Bigbie Nowell, a former Academy of Richmond County librarian who wrote a book about the school and its three sites, on Bay Street, then Telfair Street and its current location on Walton Way.
``It was a little one-room building. I call it `the little shack,''' Mrs. Nowell said.
What remains at Bay Street is rich history, actions both noble and disgraceful.
``That's where the United States Constitution was ratified (by Georgians) in January 1788,'' Dr. Cashin said. It was also the capital when President George Washington visited Augusta in May 1791.
The Legislature had been moved to Augusta from Savannah as a temporary measure. Savannah was deemed unsatisfactory as a capital because it was so difficult to reach from the state's frontier. Augusta, somewhat more centrally located, would be more convenient until the permanent capital was built in Louisville -- and later in Milledgeville and finally, Atlanta.
At the time of Mr. Washington's visit, Augusta had just been incorporated by the Legislature as a ``town'' -- a fact that insulted its 1,100 residents because Savannah had been incorporated as a ``city,'' according to Augusta, a history prepared in 1938 under the U.S. Works Progress Administration.
The federal researchers reported the town ``had an atmosphere of elegance and culture not found in the settlements of upper Georgia. There were, besides 250 dwellings, a church, a courthouse, an academy, a stone jail, a government house and three warehouses for tobacco.''
Augusta also was a seat of commerce and justice, being the center for one of the state's two Superior Court judges at the time.
``And that's also where the Legislature passed the infamous Yazoo Act,'' Dr. Cashin said.
The Yazoo Act was one of the first major scandals in Georgia. It involved a land transaction concerning 50 million acres from the Chattahoochee River to the Mississippi River, a vast expanse considered territory belonging to Georgia.
In 1795, the last year Augusta served as the state capital, four companies paid $500,000 to buy the land from the state with the Legislature's approval.
According to Dr. Cashin's book, The Story of Augusta, some prominent Augustans were deeply involved in the land purchase, including Thomas Cumming, Thomas Glascock, Wade Hampton, George Walker, Elijah Clark and Robert Walton.
But the purchase was fraught with scandal when people learned the four companies offered three shares of their stock to each legislator who agreed to support the land sale.
One legislator -- state Sen. James Jackson, who rejected the deal -- said he was offered 500,000 acres if he would support the sale.
The disclosures embroiled Georgia in an Augusta-centered scandal that rocked the state and the city for years. Defenders and opponents of the deal fought duels. In one instance, Ezekiel Harris and three friends were charged with lynching a Yazoo fraud defender; the grand jury and judge refused to indict the four.
By 1796 the capital was moved to Louisville, an action that had been planned for some time. And that year, the furor over the scandal forced the Legislature to repeal the act -- an action that deepened the scandal's scope.
Eventually, the U.S. government took control of Georgia's western lands and reimbursed people who had bought stock in the Yazoo companies.
By that time, though, the little schoolhouse that had been home to the Legislature had been abandoned.
The Academy of Richmond County's trustees decided in 1798 that the building was unfit for further occupancy, Mrs. Nowell said. They closed it and used money they had collected to build a replacement building at 540 Telfair St., which was replaced in 1926 by the current building.
All that remains on Bay Street is the marker -- and echoes from the past.
