Volume 2, Chapter 25, Georgia, The Humanitarian Colony
The South Carolinians, in agitating for a shift from proprietary rule, found it advantageous
to scare the Crown about alleged French and Spanish pressures. This propaganda, as well
as the Yamasee War, focused the attention of Great Britain on South Carolina and its
The Spanish had settled North Florida in what is now the Georgia coast in the mid-1560s,
with their center at the great port of St. Augustine. Settlement had extended as far
north as Santa Alina, now Port Royal, South Carolina, where the Spanish destroyed a recently
settled French Huguenot colony. The Spaniards, who concentrated on missionary activities
In the late 19th century, a large number of countries among the Indians, particularly by the Franciscan order, named the Georgia coast the Gualais Mission Province, and established missions and posts on the coast.
Attacks by Guale Indians forced abandonment of the Mission Posts at the turn of the 17th century,
but the defeat of the Indians opened the way for renewed and expanded Mission Posts during the century.
Attacks by the West Toe Indians in the mid-1650s forced the Spaniards to retreat to below the Savannah River,
thus paving the way for the English settlements in South Carolina.
Hardly had settlement begun in the 1670s when the South Carolinians formented trouble among the Indians.
They soon became notorious in the colonies for their zeal in enslaving Indians,
while the cattle of white settlers often destroyed Indian crops.
Moreover, the colonists were eager for war against the Indians in order to gain a considerable supply of slaves
The Practice had begun as early as 1671 when the English colonists used a vague charge of conspiracy with the Spaniards as an excuse to make war upon the Cuso Indians and turn them into slaves.
Eager to repeat this success, South Carolina launched a war upon the Westo Indians in 1680,
thereby going against the proprietary policy of peaceful Trade and friendship with the Westos.
The proprietors, however, maintained a monopoly of the Westo trade, so that this furnished
an incentive for the disgruntled colonists to make war upon the Westos rather than remain
in Peace. A bloody struggle ensued. After three years, South Carolina, with the help
of the Savannah tribe, annihilated the Westo Indians. The Savannas settled near the Savannah
River, replacing the slaughtered Westos. There they and South Carolina made a mutually profitable
deal. The whites supplied the Savannas with arms, and the Savannas, in turn, made war
The Spaniards had made one fatal mistake in occupying Guale. They sent missionaries to their Indian allies instead of arms.
Beginning in 1680, South Carolina incited a series of Indian attacks against the unarmed Spanish Indians and mission posts.
By the end of the Westo War, the aggressive policy of South Carolina had driven the Spanish mission stations
The Spanish Indians also fled, and the powerful Yamasee Indians attracted by a winner moved from Florida to South Carolina.
With the crushing of the Yamasees and other Indians in the Yamasee War, the old Guale region was now open for settlement and penetration.
The Carolina Proprietors agreed in 1717 to a fantastic scheme to establish a feudal magravate of Azilia in the Guale region.
The Proprietors were to grant the region to the promoters in exchange for quid-rent of a penny per acre occupied.
The main Azilia promoters were Sir Robert Montgomery, a Scottish baronet, and the poet Aaron Hill.
Montgomery and Hill wrote promotional monographs, glowingly puffing the land as Our Future Eden.
A myriad of elaborate townships were projected to be spaced in concentric zones with the Margrave's Palace in the exact center.
But like many other wild schemes, the plan collapsed with the ending in 1720 of the inflationary and speculative South Sea Bubble on the London stock market.
One of the first acts of the new royal government in South Carolina was to build Fort King George at the mouth of the Altamaha River, the first English establishment in the Georgia region.
The fort was to serve as a standing outpost against the French in the west and the Spanish in the south.
The South Carolina Assembly resented paying for a new garrison, but the new governor,
Francis Nicholson, was able to drive through the sizable appropriations.
Not only was the erection of the fort on former Spanish territory an insult and a threat to
Spain, but soon the fort was being used to incite the Indians to raid Spanish settlements
in Florida.
The Spanish ambassador to London charged that the Floridians could not stir out of their
houses to cultivate their lands or turn out their cattle without apparent danger from
the sad Indians.
The Crown sent two letters to Nicholson ordering the end of the aggressive violence against
the Spanish settlements.
The great hope of Nicholson and South Carolina was to use Fort King George during the hoped-for
for Next Round of Wars as a Base to Seize St. Augustine. To the Spanish insistence that
the fort be dismantled, South Carolina, irrelevantly, kept turning to demands that runaway negro
slaves be forcibly returned by Spain. No one was more unhappy about maintaining the
fort than its own garrison. From 1725 to 1727 the soldiers disgruntled with a malarial
In the 1720s, while swamp and, with poor food, mutinied several times. A dozen soldiers defected to St. Augustine, and the garrison allowed a fire almost to destroy the fort. During the 1720s, the proprietors kept title to Carolina, including Georgia, lands, and insisted on keeping all new lands closed to settlement, while demanding collection of quit-rents or restoration of their own rule before they would consent to open the land.
In 1727, Spain launched a dulcetory siege of the British port of Gibraltar. During the short-lived war between England and Spain, the Carolinians withdrew from the exposed Fort King George.
Indeed, Indian tribes allied to Spain now raided frontier Carolina settlements.
The Carolinians withdrew from the exposed Fort King George. Indeed, Indian tribes allied
to Spain now raided frontier Carolina settlements. The Yamasee remnants, though reduced to three
villages near St. Augustine, eagerly sought revenge by leading these border raids, and
they were joined by Creeks and by runaway Negroes, anxious to exact some revenge for
for their years in slavery. The South Carolinians, for their part, took the occasion to launch
an expedition and to annihilate the Yemisee remnant. Going by sea, the South Carolinians
led by Colonel John Palmer, a member of the assembly, devastated and burned the Yemisee
towns, including the Catholic chapel near St. Augustine, and killed a number of Indians.
Some of the Yemisees found refuge in the great fort of St. Augustine, but the Yemisee prestige
had been irreparably injured.
So long as the proprietors who had closed off the unsettled land still held title to
Carolina and Georgia, the Crown could not open up the Georgia land to settlement.
But with the end of the proprietary claims in 1729, the crushing of the Yemisees and
At the end of the brief Anglo-Spanish War the path to settlement was now wide open. Furthermore,
the royal authorities were particularly anxious to encourage settlement in Georgia as a buffer
against the French, Spanish and Indians. It was at this time that the Guale region was
organized and settled on a unique basis. Here was neither a proprietary nor chartered company
The major founder of the new philanthropic colony was Colonel James E. Oglethorpe, a
The most widely trumpeted aim of the new colony was humanitarianism. Englishmen were called upon to contribute, with no hope of personal reward, to a new colony in Gwalei, to be called Georgia, in honor of King George II, which would colonize and help the poor and needy of England. Indeed, because of its humanitarian reputation, Georgia
received tremendous publicity in the English press. Meetings of the trustees were reported
in detail and Oglethorpe was welcomed as a hero, replete with odes from leading poets
such as Alexander Pope upon his return from trips to the new colony. Even on its face
it is a wonder that no one called the humanitarianism of this scheme into question. If one is so
Eager to Help the English Poor? Is it so humanitarian to ship them to a new and unsettled land bordered
by potential enemies? But apart from this, the workings of the new experiment revealed
the logical consequences of outright altruism. For if A is to act as his brother's keeper,
If he is to be in a position to do good to his fellow man, then he must be his brother's
keeper in more than one sense.
For how can A be truly responsible for, that is, keep, B, unless he be given power to tell
B what to do and what not to do, that is, B his keeper in the unpleasant sense of jailer?
On the simplest level, for example, how can A be responsible for B's health unless he
is in a position to dictate B's food consumption and to force him to wear rubbers in the rain?
To do good to another, the recipient must be made to sit still and accept the largesse.
And to be responsible for another, the humanitarian must have power over him.
This is why in the stark but telling phrase of the brilliant but neglected 20th century
political thinker Isabel Patterson, the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.
More fully, Patterson points out that the humanitarian wishes to be a prime mover in
the lives of others.
He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order by which men have the power to keep
themselves.
The Humanitarian puts himself in the place of God, but he is confronted by two awkward
facts.
First, that the competent do not need his assistance, and second, that the majority
of people, if un-perverted, positively do not want to be done good by the Humanitarians.
Shall A do what he thinks is good for B, and B do what he thinks is good for A?
Or shall A accept only what he thinks is good for B and vice versa?
But that is absurd.
Of course, what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks
is good for everybody.
It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.
If then one is to set up a humanitarian colony for the poor and unemployed, and as a corollary
the colony is not to be run by the supposedly evil motives of profit-making, then what are
the consequences?
The supposedly cold and impersonal motives of profit furnish a potent check-rain on irresponsible
actions.
To make profits, one's production must be economic.
Specifically, to build up a profitable colony, it is necessary to induce settlers to come
to that colony and to be productive and economic.
But the rejection of profit-making as a motive gave the proprietors almost unlimited reign
to exercise irresponsible and arbitrary power over their charges.
also gave them a chance to indulge in general and vague motives, the outcome of which might
be truly reprehensible, despite their superficial attraction for many people.
James Oglethorpe and his associates received a charter from King George II in 1732 for
a colony of Georgia with jurisdiction between the Savannah and the Altamaha rivers, now
by the Charter, the proprietors were a group of 21 trustees, the Georgia Trust, none of
whom was to be allowed to reap personal gain or profit from the colony. The Trust was to
run the colony for 21 years, after which the land would revert to the Crown. All laws of
Georgia were to be subject to the King's approval. Religious freedom was to be enjoyed
in the Colony by all except Catholics, who apparently did not come under any sort of
humanitarian jurisdiction. The conjunction of altruism and absolute power could be discerned
very early. The common council, a committee of trustees, was to have absolute power to
decree laws and regulations for the inhabitants of Georgia. From its very inception, here
Here was the only colony where the citizens had no representative assembly whatever, and
indeed little say over their own lives and actions.
Two myths soon surrounded the inception of the Georgia Colony, myths that were convenient
for Oglethorpe and the trustees to foster.
One was that the humanitarianism was virtually permeated with religion, and second, that
The first myth stems from the fact that the Georgia Trust grew out of a foundation called
the Associates of Dr. Bray, which consisted of those who had been followers of the aggressive
Anglican missionary and philanthropist, the Reverend Thomas Bray. Dr. Bray had been interested
in a humanitarian colony in Georgia but died in 1730, and religious influence proved to
be virtually non-existent in the colony. In fact, Thomas Coram, a close friend of Bray's,
soon broke with the Georgia experiment because of the absence of any religious influence.
The second myth arose because the bulk of Olgothorp's associates among the trustees
has been connected with him in parliamentary jail committees on the state of debtors and
others in prison.
But the historian Albert B. Say has shown that hardly any formerly imprisoned debtors
were among the early settlers of Georgia.
In fact, there were other motives than humanitarian ones in establishing Georgia.
These may be summed up in the advancement of the interests of the British ruling classes,
That is, the imperial bureaucracy and the merchants and manufacturers subsidized and
privileged by the state.
In short, it was a typically mercantilist venture, despite its unconventional trappings.
Specifically, the trustees and the Crown decided to people the Georgia frontier to serve as
a military buffer and striking point against the Indians and other European colonies.
In addition, it was expected that the settlers would supply the manufacturers of the mother
country with a plentiful and hence cheap source of hemp, flax, timber and even silk.
Thus, Oglethorpe, in the days of the inception of the Georgia scheme, told his chief ally,
Viscount Percival, that the Georgia plan was that the colonists should be settled altogether
and be subject to subordinate rulers, who should inspect their behavior and labor under one chief head, that in time they, with their families, would increase so fast as to become a security and defense of our possessions against the French and Indians of those parts, that they should be employed in cultivating flax and hemp, which being allowed to make into yarn will be returned to England, Ireland and greatly promoted.
The Promotional Literature of the Trustees also pointed out how the Roman Empire had
sent settlers to their frontiers. It was by this policy that they elbowed all the nations
around them. In short, the recipients of humanitarian law guess the very needy who needed to be
done good too were to be shipped to Georgia to live and work under the absolute power
Dependence upon charity, of course, are far more passive and susceptible to the orders of their masters and keepers than are independent and self-reliant workers and other citizens.
The liniments of power were becoming clearly discernible under the attractive trappings of altruism.
One interesting revelation of the trustees' intent was their policy in selecting colonists to emigrate to the new land.
An inescapable factor of nature is that largesse cannot be unlimited.
Hence, anyone who proposes such gifts must needs select and choose their recipients.
What were the trustees' criteria of selection? First, they were careful to select only the
needy. Clearly, those already earning their living at home would hardly prove docile or
grateful workers or soldiers. Another frankly expressed reason for this criterion was to
get some of the growing number of unsightly and annoying poor off the streets of London.
to carry off the numbers of poor that pester the streets of London.
However, far from concentrating on distressed debtors, the trustees made sure that the applicants
were virtuous and industrious, and detailed investigations were made of their moral character.
It would not do, obviously, to have an unruly and unproductive group settle in the colony.
Moreover, the trustees insisted that the populace be generally sturdy and able-bodied.
Here were not alms to the truly needy, but a careful insistence that the Georgians be
fit for the tasks to which the trustees meant to assign them.
One of the loudly proclaimed purposes of the new colony was to provide a haven for German
and other Protestant refugees, a commendable humanitarian aim, to be sure.
But we find that the trustees distrusted intensely religious refugees and agreed to accept only
applicants checked for their industry and sobriety.
The first colonist, numbering over 100, arrived in Georgia in early 1733, led by Oglethorpe
himself, and founded the city of Savannah at the mouth of the Savannah River.
Four colonists soon arrived, including Lutheran refugees from Salzburg in Austria, who founded
the town of Ebenezer.
The absolute dictatorship of humanitarians in power over their charges soon became manifest.
The trustees laid down a genuinely totalitarian system of planning, of rules and regulations
for the colonists.
The crucial regulations were imposed over land and ensured that no one had even a semblance
of private property in land. The size of individual holdings was strictly and arbitrarily limited
to a maximum of 500 acres, depending on the number of servants the settler brought over.
Each family was given 50 acres, which it was not allowed to sell, rent or divide. The larger
Their acreage allowed for servants and brought a rather wealthier element to the colony.
All settlers, however, including servants, were carefully selected and regulated by the
trustees.
Servitude proved impracticable in Georgia since the servants persisted in rebelling
against their masters, committing passive and active sabotage and running away to South
Carolina.
Each family only owned land in tail mail. The land could be inherited only by a son,
and then only if the son continued to work the land himself. If both of these conditions
did not obtain, the land then automatically reverted to the trustees. But 50 acres could
hardly support a family on Georgia land. Furthermore, since the land could not be sold or exchanged,
Which settler was frozen on a particular parcel of land, no matter how uneconomic or infertile
it proved to be? And why should a settler, without a son willing to keep working on the
particular assigned acres, have any incentive to improve or even maintain land that would
inevitably revert to the trustee government? Typical of the destructive nature of the trustee's
Oglothorp replied that if the people were allowed to move to better land, this would put dark desires in the hearts of all the people in the town.
The citizens of the town in 1738 complained that their assigned land was infertile pine land and petitioned to the trustees, who had complete charge of such matters, for better land in exchange.
But Oglethorpe replied that if the people were allowed to move to better land, this would put dark desires in the hearts of all their fellow Georgians to move to better land themselves.
The compulsory egalitarianism of placing a maximum limit on everyone's acreage was even more destructive than the practice of monopolizing land grants in other colonies.
The settlers soon saw and complained that there was no incentive to try to better their condition.
As one of the trustees' agents reported, there being many lazy fellows in the number and
others not able to work, those who work stoutly think it unreasonable the others should enjoy
the fruits of their labor, and when the land is cleared, have an equal share in chance
Another important grievance was the high quit-rent charged by the trustees. Yet, Oglethorpe stubbornly claimed that the complaints only came from the selfish and shiftless and from those stirred up by subversive land speculators from South Carolina.
Since the funds all came philanthropically to Georgia from abroad, the citizens paid
no taxes and had no right to protest. The trustees employed storekeepers in the colony,
and the storekeepers were instructed to dole out precisely fixed and detailed rations to
each of the settlers. The precisely detailed doles, as Professor Borsten comments, have
was more the ring of a well-run jail than of a colony of free men seeking their fortune in a new world.
Totalitarian regulation, of course, encompassed the sphere of alleged morality as well.
To preserve their charges against the evils of luxury and indolence,
the trustees prohibited the importation of any whiskey into Georgia.
All liquor found in the colony would be publicly destroyed and the sale of alcoholic beverages condemned as a crime.
The prohibition on rum imports, however, crippled trade with the West Indies, an important market for Georgia timber.
Slavery was also prohibited in the colony, but not at all from any humanitarian considerations toward the Negro.
On the contrary, free Negroes, as well as slaves, were barred from the colony, and the
main reason was the fear that Negroes would be the natural allies of possible Spanish
or French invaders.
Indeed, the humanitarian Oglethorpe himself owned a slave plantation in South Carolina
and invested heavily in the African slave trade.
If the trustees could not profit personally from their absolute power over the people
of Georgia, their agents could and did, for their agents were empowered with the crucial
right to distribute all the subsidized stores in the colony.
Whenever there is monopoly privilege to distribute, it is almost an historical or sociological
law that the distributor will take steps to sell that privilege.
Thomas Costin, for example, the official storekeeper of the colony, had absolute power over all
supplies and hence virtually of life and death in the colony. In this capacity, he naturally
became the most hated man in Georgia. Once he trumpeted publicly that the Georgian had
neither lands, rights or possessions that the trustees gave and that the trustees could
and, of course, everyone knew that Costin himself was the trustees surrogate in the
colony.
And Costin sold the privileges at his disposal, engaging in profiteering, bribery, short and
spoiled rations, and so forth.
As agent of the trustees, Costin was the government, and thus immune to legal prosecution.
The proudest and most cherished of the trustees' plans was the promotion of the expensive growth
of silk in the Georgia colony. The projectors had high hopes, totally ungrounded in economic
reality, of Georgia becoming a center of silk culture. For one thing, the trustees had not
yet realized that the mulberry trees of Georgia were completely unsuited for silk culture.
The trustees proceeded blithely to force and cajole silk production. On the one hand, they
established a guaranteed inflated buying price for all silk grown, as well as subsidies and
prizes for silk exported to England. On the other, they required each hapless settler,
as a necessary condition of his claim, to plant at least fifty mulberry trees on every
The Silk Scheme proved to be a fiasco in economic planning, despite large-scale propaganda campaigns
in behalf of Georgia's silk. Silk worms could not flourish there, and it was uneconomic
for labor to be applied to this commodity. The humanitarian trustees had absolute confidence
in the Merits of Their Dictatorial Power. The Board itself will always do what is right
– it had the gall to resolve unanimously in 1735 – and the people should have confidence
in us. But somehow the settlers proved to be ingrates and continually complained of
their food, land and equipment. Since they were placed in a position of forced dependence
One contemporary writer explained that, as it is the nature of mankind in general, and
of the common sort in particular, more eagerly to desire, and more immoderately to use those
and other things which are most restrained from them, such was the case with respect to RUM in Georgia.
As early as 1738, the trustees were beginning to realize that the whole experiment was proving to be an abject failure.
Their plans were going awry, the colony was stagnant rather than expanding,
and only rising complaints and protests were greeting their unselfish benevolence.
Their humanitarianism strained to the breaking point, the trustees soon concluded that the poor, who had been useless in England, were inclined to be useless in Georgia likewise.
Slowly, grudgingly, the trustees began to relax their power and their fixed dictatorial plans for the colonists.
In 1738, they commenced lessening their absurd land regulations.
Females were now permitted to inherit land. In the succeeding years childless farmers were permitted to bequeath their lands. Leases were allowed and the maximum size of holdings was increased to 2,000 acres. Furthermore, quit rents were reduced and soon abolished and free exchange of land began to be allowed.
But complete private property in land, including complete freedom to exchange or bequeath,
was not permitted until 1750, when the trustees were preparing to abandon the colony.
To the last, Oglethorpe insisted on the wisdom of the land regulations.
Similarly, in 1742, the trustees, recognizing reality, managed to repeal the prohibition
In 1750, the trustees submitted to popular pressure, in turn stimulated by South Carolina slave traders, and permitted Negro slavery in the colony.
But the trustees persisted in their silk folly virtually to the end.
In 1751, the trustees at last allowed a representative assembly,
But only to make suggestions to the trustees, and promptly required that no one could serve on the assembly who did not have at least 100 mulberry trees on every 50 acres of his land, and at least one female member of his family instructing others in silk reeling, or who did not produce at least 15 pounds of silk on each of his 50 acres.
Also, every slave owner was required to own at least one negros skilled in silk raising to every four male negros.
The trustees mounting concessions to the people's rights did not, however, still the tide of petitions and protests in Georgia.
Furthermore, many Georgians were deserting the colony for the far freer atmosphere and opportunities
of the Carolinas and the other American colonies.
Over against the rising and unquenchable tide of popular protest,
English philanthropic support was dwindling steadily.
At first, the English public contributed handsome sums
for the supposed Georgia charity.
In the first eight years, voluntary subscriptions totaled 18,000 pounds.
But the great bulk of contributions came from Parliament.
The government contributing over 130,000 pounds in the years of the Georgia Proprietary.
By the end of the 1740s, English interest was dwindling rapidly, and Oglethorpe, the
sole of the Proprietary, was in disgrace.
Finally, in 1751, the trustees announced their intention to relinquish Georgia a bit
and the transfer of Georgia to the Crown was effected the following year.
But the trustees did not, as one might have hoped, learn the lesson of the disastrous
failure of the humanitarian in power.
On the contrary, they remained smugly self-righteous to the last, Lord Percival complaining that
it is a melancholy thing to see how zeal for a good thing abates when the novelty is over.
And they drew from the silk fiasco only the lament that they did not have more money to
pour into silk culture in Georgia.
At the end of two decades of humanitarianism and central planning, Georgia, the settlers
charged saw her original settlers scattered over the face of the earth, her plantations
a wild, her towns a desert, her villages in rubbish, her improvements a byword, and her
Liberties, a jest. If the trustees failed dismally in their plans for the Georgia colony,
they did manage to pursue energetically the policy of using Georgia as a military and
border weapon against foreign colonies. As soon as Oglethorpe arrived, he began to sink
funds in a series of military posts. In Parliament, Oglethorpe had persistently called for a more
War-like policy towards Spain. Now he exalted in daring to build a chain of forts south
of the Altamaha boundary. This brazen encroachment on Spanish territory centered on the Fort
of Frederica, just south of the Altamaha, and extended as far south as Fort St. George
on the St. John's River in Florida. Naturally, the Spanish government bitterly protested
and also demanded the recall of Oglethorpe, but to no avail.
Instead, the English prepared for war, and Oglethorpe in 1737 was named Commander-in-Chief of all the royal forces in Georgia and South Carolina.
Oglethorpe also acted to bolster alliances among the Indians.
He had already constructed Fort Augusta, upriver on the savanna, to promote trade and alliance
with the natives.
In the fall of 1739, England launched an aggressive war against Spain, and this was all the signal
needed by Georgia, or the Spaniards, eager to repulse the Oglethorpe thrust.
Characteristically, the first mass attack was launched in 1740 by General Oglethorpe,
in an attempt to conquer the chief Spanish fort of St. Augustine. Commanding South Carolinian
and Indian forces and bolstered by the huge cash subsidy of £120,000 granted by South
Carolina, Oglethorpe besieged St. Augustine by land and sea. The siege, however, failed
completely and Oglethorpe ungratefully and characteristically sought to use South Carolina
As a scapegoat for his own failure, Oglethorpe's bitter charges naturally provoked retaliation
in South Carolina and Carolinian charges of incompetence hit far closer to the mark.
Two years later, the Spaniards retaliated and landed in expedition of several thousand
men against Frederica, but were repulsed in a cleverly executed ambush by the heavily
outnumbered Oglethorpe. But the result of this battle of Bloody Marsh was owing far
more to Spanish incompetence than to the excellence of Oglethorpe's defense. For his part, after
failing to gain English aid by arousing hysteria in England about the supposedly imminent attack
from Florida, Oglethorpe struck out on his own in the spring of 1743 to try once again
to Capture St. Augustine, but the Spanish repulsed the attack. The new result of the
various military clashes between Georgia and Florida was a stalemate and a maintenance
of the status quo. With the aggressive Oglethorpe having returned to England, the war with Spanish
Florida was now at an end. The humanitarian Oglethorpe had been most anxious to use his
George's charges for military fodder, stringent military training and discipline had, from
the beginning, been imposed upon the colonists. Among the hundreds of German immigrants to
Georgia was a group of Protestant Moravians. This pacifist sect resisted military training
and non-exemption from such conscription. When the war with Spain began, Georgia renewed
it's demand upon the Moravians who courageously replied that they could not in conscience
fight and if expected to do so they must leave the country. This they promptly proceeded
to do and migrated to the far more hospitable valley of Pennsylvania. Another religious
group that arrived during the trustee period were several scores of Jews who landed in
in July 1733. Three of the wealthiest Shephardic Jews of Spanish-Portuguese descent in London
were hired as fundraisers to collect charitable sums for the Georgia Project. The three agents
were, of course, supposed to turn over the funds to the trustees. Instead, they blithely
used the money to finance the emigration of two groups of Jews to Georgia. The more notable
The federal group consisted of 40 Shepardic Jews, while the other party was made up of much poorer folk from Germany.
The trustees were understandably embittered at this chicanery and ordered Oglethorpe to eject the Jews from the colony.
Particularly bitter and alarmed was the religiously-oriented Thomas Corm, who warned the trustees that Georgia would soon become a Jewish colony,
with only Christian laborers, those whom the Jews find most necessary and useful, allowed to remain in the country.
Oglethorpe, however, was greatly impressed with the way that a Jewish physician, Dr. Samuel Nunez-Riverio,
was able to stop a severe epidemic and allowed them to stay.
The Jews settled in Savannah, but in a few years the bulk of them had migrated to Charleston.
The handful of Jews in the colonies, largely Sephardim and merchants, were concentrated
in the cities of Newport, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston.
After a royal government replaced the hated proprietary in 1752, Georgia swiftly became
very much like the other royal colonies in America.
The end of proprietary planning led to rapid growth of the colony, with rice and indigo
In 1758, Georgia joined the other southern
of the Colonies in Establishing the Anglican Church. Dissenters continued to flourish in the colony, but soon attendance at public religious services was made compulsory.
After Oglethorpe's departure, the forts south of the Altamaha were allowed to fall into decay, and the Crown refused to spend money to rebuild what could only serve as a standing challenge to Spain.
Unoccupied and free of the burdens of imposed sovereignty, the region south of the Altamaha
became a truly free land. Like Rhode Island and North Carolina in the mid-17th century,
it became in the 1750s an individualistic haven for those discontented with existing
governments. The most prominent dissident was Edmund Gray, a Quaker from Virginia. Gray
Gray had already become influential in Augusta for openly daring to parcel out land in the
public domain to himself and to his fellow settlers without bothering to worry about
governmental sanction. Running for the first royal assembly, meeting in early 1755, Gray
stirred up the people with eloquent pleas for liberty and economic opportunity, as well
as well as criticism of emerging royal rule. In the election, Gray won the assembly seat
from Augusta, and the head of the Gray forces in Savannah, the lawyer Charles Watson, was
elected from that city. Gray claimed that the defeat of two of his other allies in the
Savannah election was due to fraud. Not only did the assembly reject this claim, but it
It went on to expel two other followers of Gray. This arbitrary act precipitated a boycott
of the lower house by Gray, Watson and six other representatives, constituting almost
half of the total membership of the assembly. The assembly replied by expelling two more
of the absentees, who now issued a circular letter on January 15, to the freeholders of
of Georgia, calling upon all who regard the liberties of your country to flock to Savannah.
John Reynolds, the first royal governor, reacted to this crisis with a hysterical and coercive
crackdown on his opposition. He denounced the sedition, decreed the prohibition of all tumultuous
assemblies in nightly meetings, urged his subjects to defend the imperiled government,
and formed a counter-revolutionary armed association headed by the Council and the Rump Assembly.
Upon this demonstration of force majeure, Gray and Watson fled Savannah, and the Assembly
preemptorily expelled all of its seditious members. Disgusted with Georgia's arbitrary
actions, Gray and several hundred followers left Georgia to settle south of the Altamaha,
These dangerous people must be stamped out, lest their example be followed by others.
Furthermore, governments always abhor a vacuum, and Spain was trying to force Gray and his
followers to come under its jurisdiction.
Consequently, the Crown itself in 1758 ordered these free settlements crushed.
Officials from South Carolina and Georgia traveled there and successfully ordered them
to Disperse and Leave the Territory of No Government. The Haven from Government was
at an end. Gray, however, proved indomitable and re-established New Hanover with over seventy
families on Cumberland Island in 1761. During the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763, Spain
entered the war just long enough to be the loser on France's side. Consequently, at
the peace treaty of 1763, the Spanish were forced to cede all of Florida to England. Florida
was made a royal colony, and the Florida-Georgia border fixed at the St. Mary's River to the
chagrin of Georgia, which demanded the line of the St. John's. But, in any case, Georgia
Governor had now seized jurisdiction over the Trans-Altamaha region, and the land of
no government was finally no more. In the meanwhile, the ruling South Carolina oligarchy
had executed a brazen maneuver, claiming sovereignty over the Trans-Altamaha. Governor Thomas Boone
Eerily granted almost 350,000 acres of its land to the 200 leading planters of his colony including Henry Lawrence and Henry Middleton. Governor James Wright of Georgia promptly protested to the Crown over this arbitrary land grab. The engrossment by land speculators would shut off an expected flow of settlers. The sinew's wealth and strength of an infant
In 1765, Georgia decided, in eminently fair fashion, to confer land grants only to the
and Fatigue of Settling a New Colony. The Crown, however, proved reluctant to dispossess
the grantees, and this despite the fact that the peace treaty had granted the Trans-Altamaha
region to Georgia. In 1765, Georgia decided, in eminently fair fashion, to confer land
grants only to the extent that the land was cleared and settled, and the Crown finally
The Creek Indians were rewarded for their faithful alliance with the English against
the dangerous Cherokees by being forced to leave their lands in eastern Georgia.