The Spanish frontier.
The mention of Georgia serves to introduce the statement that, with the growth of civilization on the South Carolina coast, the need for a buffer against the Spaniards began to be more and more strongly felt. We have seen how the vexatious Yamassee war of 1715 was brought on by Spanish intrigues. After the overthrow of the Yamassees the troubles did not entirely cease. For some years the Indians continued to be a source of annoyance, and in their misdeeds the secret hand of Spain was discernible. The multitude of slaves, too, in regions accessible to Spanish influence, greatly increased the danger.
James Oglethorpe.
Beginnings of Georgia.
In 1732 the state of affairs on the South Carolina frontier attracted the attention of a gallant English soldier whose name deserves a very high place among the heroes of early American history. James Oglethorpe, an officer who in youth had served with distinction under Prince Eugene against the Turks,[301] conceived the plan of freeing the insolvent debtors who crowded English prisons by carrying them over to America and establishing a colony which might serve as a strong military outpost against the Spaniards. The scheme was an opportune one, as the South Sea Bubble and other wild projects had ruined hundreds of English families. The land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, with the strip starting between their two main sources and running westward to the Pacific Ocean,[302] was made over to a board of trustees, and was named Georgia, in honour of the king, George II. The charter created a kind of proprietary government, but with powers less plenary and extensive than had been granted to the proprietors of Maryland, Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Oglethorpe was appointed governor; German Protestants and Highlanders from Scotland were brought over in large numbers; and a few people from New England joined in the enterprise, and founded the town of Sunbury. All laws were to be made by the trustees, and the settlers were at first to have no representative assembly and no voice in making the government. But this despotic arrangement was merely temporary and provisional; it was intended that after the lapse of one-and-twenty years the colony should be held to have come of age, and should choose its own government. Military drill was to be rigidly enforced. Slave-labour was absolutely prohibited, as was also the sale of intoxicating liquors; so that Maine cannot rightfully claim the doubtful honour of having been the first American commonwealth to try the experiment of a “Maine Law.” Such were the beginnings of Georgia, and in the Spanish war of 1739 it quite justified the foresight of its founder. The valour of the Highlanders and the admirable generalship of Oglethorpe were an efficient bulwark for the older colonies. In 1742 the Spaniards were at last decisively defeated at Frederica, and from that time forth until the Revolution the frontier was more quiet. But proprietary government in Georgia fared no better than in the Carolinas. In 1752, one year before the coming of age, the government by trustees was abandoned. Georgia was made a crown colony, and a representative government was introduced simultaneously with negro slavery and Jamaica rum.
The social condition of colonial Georgia does not present many distinctive or striking features. In 1770 the population numbered about 50,000, of which perhaps one half were slaves. There was no town life. Rice and indigo were the principal crops, and there was a large export of lumber. Near Savannah there were a few extensive plantations, with fine houses, after the Virginia pattern; but most of the estates were small, and their owners poor. The Church of England was supported by the government, but the clergy had little influence. The condition of the slaves differed but slightly, if at all, from their condition in South Carolina. There were a good many “mean whites,” and there was, perhaps, more crime and lawlessness than in the older colonies. The roads were mere Indian trails, and there were neither schools, nor mails, nor any kind of literature. Colonial Georgia, in short, with many of the characteristics of a “wild West,” stood in relation to South Carolina somewhat as North Carolina to Virginia. It was essentially a frontier community, though the activity of Savannah as a seaport somewhat qualified the situation.
Cavaliers and Puritans once more.
A comparative survey of Old Virginia’s neighbours shows how extremely loose and inaccurate is the common habit of alluding to the old Cavalier society of England as if it were characteristic of the southern states in general. Equally loose and ignorant is the habit of alluding to Puritanism as if it were peculiar to New England. In point of fact the Cavalier society was reproduced nowhere save on Chesapeake Bay. On the other hand, the English or Independent phase of Puritanism was by no means confined to the New England colonies. Three fourths of the people of Maryland were Puritans; English Puritanism, with the closely kindred French Calvinism, swayed South Carolina; and in our concluding chapter we shall see how the Scotch or Presbyterian phase of Puritanism extended throughout the whole length of the Appalachian region, from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and has exercised in the southwest an influence always great and often predominant. In the South to-day there is much more Puritanism surviving than in New England.
But before we join in the westward progress from tidewater to the peaks of the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky range, we must look back upon the ocean for a moment and see how it came to be infested with buccaneers and pirates, and what effects they wrought upon our coasts.