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 GEORGIA

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GEORGIA

grave in the Mississippi, camped for a while in 1540 near the present city of Augusta; a more unreliable tradition asserts that Sir Walter Raleigh, on his initial voyage, "landed at the mouth of Savannah River, and visited the bluff on which the city was afterwards built". For a century and a half the Uchees, Creeks, and Cherokees were left undisputed masters of their hunting-grounds — Lords of the Marches — between the English frontier to the north and the Spanish to the south. In the nat\ire of things this could not long en- dure. By the voyage of John Cabot, in 1497, England laid claim to the Atlantic seaboard; by the settlement of St. Augustine, in 15G5, Spain established its author- ity over the southern coast. The vastness of the new world deferred the inevitable clash of these overlap- ping claims until the settlement of South Carolina in 1670, when Spain, alarmed at this territorial expan- sion of the Protestant English colonies, began, by in- trigues with Indians and negro slaves, to harass the safety of the latter colony. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Parliament began to feel that a military colony on the southern frontier was impera- tive, and this conclusion was felicitously comple- mented by the belief that the mulberry and the vine could be successfully cultivated on the southern hills and savannas; while a third great philanthropic con- sideration contributed to the final adoption of tfie scheme. James Oglethorpe, who had followed up a brilliant military career as aide-de-camp to the Prince Eugene by a still more brilliant parliamentary career, had conceived the plan of settling a colony m the New World with worthy, though unfortunate and economi- cally unproductive, inmates of the wretched English prisons. With this threefold purpose in view, a peti- tion was presented and accepted by the Privy Coimcil and the Board of Trade, and the charter of the Colony of Georgia, named after the king and embracing the territory lying between the Savannah and the Alta- maha Rivers, received the great seal of England on 9 June, 1732. This charter created a board of trustees for twenty-one years, who were to possess entire rights in the governing and the financing of the project, but who were not to profit, either directly or indirectly, by the venture. The board thus created, composed of many leading noblemen, clergjinen, and members of Parliament of the day, met forthwith and drew up one of the most remarkable governmental documents in English colonial history. A military governor was appointed. Transportation, food, and land were given settlers for the feudal returns of labour and mili- tary service; but tenure of land was to descend only along the line of direct male issue. Other salient limitations in these by-la%vs were the prohibition of liquor, as well as that of negro slaves, and freedom of worship was to be granted to all prospective colo- nists "except papists". With this document and 126 passengers, carefully selected for the most part from the more worthy inmates of English prisons, Ogle- thorpe himself, who had been appointed "general" of the new colony, embarked on the "Anne," on 12 November, 1732, arrived at Charleston the following January, and in the spring of that year founded Sa- vannah, which took its name from that of the river above which the little cabins of the settlers were first reared.

During the twenty-one years of its proprietary gov- ernment, Georgia struggled along, rather in .spite of the remote designs and unpractical restrictions of its trus- tees than because of their indefatigable labour, ster- ling integrity, and single-minded jihilanthropy. As a frontier settlement against the Catholic colonies of Spain, Georgia speedily justified its existence. War between the rival countries was declared in 1739. Oglethorpe invaded Florida in 1740, and with an in- sufficient force unsuccessfully besieged St. Augustine. Two years later Spain retaliated, attempting by land and sea the complete annihilation of the English col-

ony. By a splendid bit of strategy on Oglethorpe's part the invasion was repulsed, and the last blow had been struck by Spain against the English colonies in the New World. Less successful was the attempt of the board of trustees to plant the mulberry and the vine in the new colony. The warfare with Spain, the lack of adequate skilled labour, and the general thrift- lessness of the colonists made the cultivation of such products practically impossible. The vine, which was to have supplied all the plantations, and to culti- vate which they had imported a Portuguese xngneron, resulted in only a few gallons and was then abandoned. The hemp and flax, which were to have sustained the linen manufactures of Great Britain and to have thrown the balance of trade with Russia into Eng- land's favour, never came to a single ship-load; and the cultivation of the mulberry seems to have expired with its crowning achievement when, on the occasion of Ilis Majesty's birthday in 1735, Queen Caroline ap- peared at the levee in a complete court dress of Georgia silk. Least successful of all was the philan- thropic attempt to colonize Georgia with non-produc- tive inmates from English prisons. It was this class that early began to cry for rum and slavery; and had it not been for the settlement of Ebenezer, in 1734, with industrious Salzburgers, expelled from Germany by reason of their religious beliefs; that of Fort Argyle, in 1735, with a colony of Swiss and Moravian immi- grants; and that of New Inverness, in 1736, with a hardy band of thrifty Scotch mountaineers, the phil- anthropic plans of Oglethorpe would have been speed- ily wrecked. As it was, the energies of the general were mainly directed towards placing Savannah upon an economically self-sufficient basis.

One of the restrictions that acted most forcibly against labour and thrift, the tenure of land along the line of male descent, was repealed in 1739. Another, the prohibition of slavery, a restriction which served to make restless and impermanent an unskilled and thriftless population settled so close to the slave-hold- ing settlements of South Carolina, was removed in 1747. Even the attempt to rouse up spiritual energy in Savannah proved too great a task for the Wesleys, although in 1738 the eloquent Whitefield seems to have won at least a hearing for his strenuous moral code. But neither an energetic general governor, a concessive board of trustees, nor the zealous bearers of a fresh and fiery spiritual code could establish the philanthropic or commercial success of the proprietary colony of Georgia. Mutiny was widespread. Ogle- thorpe's life was threatened and actually attempted. The trustees were disheartened. Letters of dissent and charges against Oglethorpe, written under the pseudonym of "The Plain Dealer", reached Parlia- ment. In 1743 Oglethorpe returned to England to face a general court martial on nineteen charges. He was entirely exonerated from charges, which were pronounced "false, malicious and without founda- tion". But he had done with the colony and never returned to Savannah; while the board of trustees, in 1751, at the expiration of their charter, formally and wearily surrendered their right of government to the Lords of the Council, and Georgia became a royal province.

In the generation before the Revolution Georgia steadily increased in population under royal governors. The cultivation of rice by slaves made the colony economically self-supporting. A better class of colo- nists were induced to immigrate to its woodlands and rice fields from England and the Carohnas. On 11 January, 1758, the Assembly passed an Act "for con- stituting the several Divisions and Districts of this Province into Parishes, and for establishing Religious Worship therein, according to the Rites and Cere- monies of the Church of England ". This was designed not to interfere with other classes of worshippers, but to provide by law for suppU'ing the settlements with