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 GEORGIA

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GEORGIA

the ministrations of religion, by which Act a salary of £25 per annum was allowed every clergyman of the Established Church. The law excluding Roman Cath- olic colonists was not, however, repealed ; a restriction which put to the test the loyalty of a t^eorgian Tory governor when four himdred Acadian refugees sought shelter at Savannah, bringing letters from the gover- nor of Nova Scotia to the eflect: "Tliat, for the better security of that province, and in consequence of a resolution of his Coimcil, he had sent these people to Georgia ". Governor Reynolds distributed them about the colony for the succeeding winter and maintained them at the pubUc expense. But in the spring, " by leave of the Governor, they built themselves a number of rude boats, and in March most of them left for South Carolina; two hundred of them in ten boats going off at one time, indulging the hope that they might thus work their way along to their native and beloved Acadie". No other form of civic or religious exclusiveness, liowever, hampered the steady growth of the colony. Aside from spasmodic Indian incursions, incited by the French, Georgia developed the arts of peace, immigrants continued to flock in, and between 1763 and 177.3 the exports of the colony increased from £27,000 to £121,600.

The preponderating Tory element in the colony at the outbreak of the Revolution, made up for the most part of a new generation of wealthy landowners and their 14,000 slaves, who spelt commercial ruin in revo- lution and who persuaded a second generation of parasitic idlers to share their views, allowed the British Parliament to boast throughout the Revolu- tion that Georgia was a royalist province. The dis- tance of the colony from the centre of operations, the blundering inaptitude of such provincial generals as Howe, the early capture and long retention by the British of both Savannah and Atlanta, and the hostil- ity of the Indians to the colonial cause gave some historical warrant to such a point of view. But if the fervour of the revolutionary spirit was restricted to but a few, it gained, in consequence, in expressive momentum. In spite of British military successes along the coast; in spite of the disheartening and dev- astating guerilla incursions of Indians and Florida Rangers to the south and west; in spite of Washing- ton's enforced neglect of the frontier colony's safety, the spirit of the Georgian Americans slumbered fiercely under an intense repression, bursting forth in sporadic flames of personal heroism and stoical fortitude. Nancy Hart is as heroic a heroine, if a coarser one, as Molly Pitcher, and Savannah is hallowed by the life- blood of Pulaski. Georgia served by waiting, and when at last Washington could assign Cireene and Lee to the army of the South, the recapture of Savannah followed closely upon that of Atlanta, and the last British post had been abandoned in the colony before the surrender at Yorktown.

In the meantime, in 1777, Georgia had passed its first State Constitution. A second was adopted in 1789 and a third in 1798, which, several times amended, endured up to the time of the passage of the ]iresent Constitution. The fifty-sLxth article of the (irst Constitution established religious toleration. The second Constitution closed the membership of both houses against clergymen, but the test of Protestant- ism, in respect to office-holding, required by the first Constitution, was dispensed with, and the elective franchise was extended to all male tax-paying free- men. On 2 June, 1788, the National Constitution was ratified, and Georgia was the fourth State to enter the Union. In the first thirty years of its statehood Georgia was embroiled in difficulties with the Indians, following the Yazoo land scandals and the treaty of 1S02, by which Georgia ceded all its claims to lands westward of i(s present limits, and the Creeks ceded to the United States a tract afterwards assigned to Georgia and now forming the south-western coun-

ties of the State. Triangular difficulties between a State jealous of its rights, a government jealous of its federal power, and Indians jealous of their tribal prop- erty rights resulted in much ill-feeling and bloodshed, with all but the extermination of the Creeks by Gen- eral Floyd's Georgian troops in the War of 1812. Indeed these difficulties were not finally settled until the removal of the Cherokees by the Union to a West- ern reservation in 1838, by which Georgia came into possession of the full quota of land she now holds.

The relation between State and Ciovernment in these Indian affairs during the first three decades of the century induced in Georgia, in particular, that spirited endeavour to safeguard the rights of local government which later characterized the State's Right doctrine of the entire South before the outbreak of the Civil War; and upon the election of Lincoln to the presidency of the nation, the politicians of Georgia took active measures towards accomplishing the se- cession of their State from the LTnion. The delegates to the Confederate convention at Montgomery, Ala- bama, were conspicuously energetic, and a Georgian, Alexander H. Stephens, was made Vice-President of the Confederacy. In the war that followed the State reaped a rich harvest of havoc and devastation, the culmination of its suffering being Sherman's March to the Sea, through its territory, in 1864. After the ter- mination of hostilities Georgia violated the Recon- struction Act by refusing to allow negroes, upon election, a seat in the Legislature; but the Supreme Court of the State decided that negroes were entitled to hold office; a new election was held; both houses were duly reorganized ; the requirements of Congress were acceded to, and by Act of 15 July, 1869, Georgia was readmitted to the Union. Since the close of the war the material development of Cieorgia has been re- markable, principally along the lines of manufactured industries. At present its cotton mills are among the largest in the world. The C'otton Exposition in 1881 and The Cotton States and International Exposition in 1895, both held in Atlanta, were eloquent of the fact that Cieorgia has been the first of the seceding States to recognize the spirit of the new commercial life of the South.

Religion. — Church History. — The Diocese of Sa- vannah, which comprises the State of Georgia, was established in 1850. As late as the period of the American Revolution there was scarcely a Catholic to be found in the colony or State of Georgia, nor was there a priest in the State for many years thereafter. Bishop England states that there were not twenty-five priests in all the colonies at that time. About 1793 a few Catholics from Maryland moved into Georgia and settled in the vicinity where the church of Locust Grove was subsequently built. Previous to their re- moval these earhest Georgian Catholics had applied for a clergyman to accompany them, but were unable to obtain their request. Shortly after the French Revolution, Catholic emigres from the French colony of Santo Domingo, then enduring the horrors of a negro revolution, settled at Augusta and Savannah. One of their priests began to discharge the duties of his ministry at Maryland, a little colony fifty miles above Augusta, a fact which is recorded as " the com- mencement of the Church in Georgia". In a few years this settlement was abandoned; Savannah be- came the fixed residence of a priest; the congregation was incorporated by the Legislature of the State; the city council gave a grant of land, and a wooden edifice with a small steeple was erected. In the j'ear 1810 the Legislature incorporated the Catholics of Augusta, an Augustinian friar. Rev. Robert Browne, became pastor, and the brick church of the Holy Trinity, fifty feet in length and twenty-five wide, was erected from fvmds raised by subscription. In 1820 Georgia and the Caroliuas were separated from the See of Baltimore, the Kev. Doctor ICnglaiul being appointed