Causton. “Everybody must go to the war and fight for his own safety, and if you will not join the army the townspeople will burn down your house, and will kill you all.”
Toeltschig. “That may happen, but we can not help it, it is against our conscience to fight.”
Causton. “If you do not mean to fight you had better go and hide in the woods, out of sight of the people, or it will be the worse for you; and you had better go before the enemy comes, for then it will be too late to escape, the townspeople will certainly kill you.”
Toeltschig. “You forget that Gen. Oglethorpe promised us exemption from military service, and we claim the liberty he pledged.”
Causton. “If the Count, and the Trustees and the King himself had agreed on that in London it would count for nothing here, if war comes it will be FIGHT OR DIE. If I were an officer on a march and met people who would not join me, I would shoot them with my own hand, and you can expect no other treatment from the officers here.”
Toeltschig. “We are all servants, and can not legally be impressed.”
Causton. “If the Count himself were here he would have to take his gun on his shoulder, and all his servants with him. If he were living on his estate at Old Fort it would make no difference, for the order of the Magistrates must be obeyed. If the English, to whom the country belongs must fight, shall others go free?”
Toeltschig finally yielded so far as to tell him the number of men in their company, “it could do no harm for we could be counted any day,” but their names were resolutely withheld, and service firmly refused.
Then the townspeople took up the cry. Should they fight for these strangers who would not do their share toward defending the land? They would mob and kill them first! They only injured the colony at any rate, for they worked so cheaply that they lowered the scale of wages; and besides they received money from many people, for their services, but spent none because they made everything they needed for themselves!
Still the Moravians stood firm in their position, indeed they could do nothing else without stultifying themselves. The instructions from Zinzendorf and the leaders of the Church at Herrnhut, with the approval of the lot, were definite,—they should take no part in military affairs, but might pay any fines incurred by refusal. To Oglethorpe and to the Trustees they had explained their scruples, making freedom of conscience an essential consideration of their settling in Georgia, and from them they had received assurances that only freeholders were liable to military duty. Therefore they had claimed no land as individuals, but had been content to live, and labor, and be called “servants”, paying each week for men to serve in the night watch, in place of the absent owners of the two town lots. In Savannah their views were well known, and to yield to orders from a Magistrate, who openly declared that promises made by the Trustees, who had put him in office, were not worth regarding, and who threatened them with mob violence, would have been to brand themselves as cowards, unworthy members of a Church which had outlived such dire persecution as that which overthrew the ancient Unitas Fratrum, and recreant to their own early faith, which had led them to abandon homes and kindred in Moravia, and seek liberty of conscience in another kingdom. That Georgia needed armed men to protect her from the Spaniards was true, but equally so she needed quiet courage, steady industry, strict honesty, and pious lives to develop her resources, keep peace with her Indian neighbors, and win the respect of the world, but these traits were hardly recognized as coin current by the frightened, jealous men who clamored against the Moravians.