In one respect Georgia fell short of the liberality which might have been expected from her founder; she was closed against “Papists,” although, as regarded the Jews, Oglethorpe was more enlightened than the English trustees of the colony. Among the earlier settlers, a company of Jews coming over, the trustees wrote somewhat in perplexity, that “they had no intention of making Georgia a Jews’ colony,” and requested Oglethorpe, therefore, “to give these Israelites no encouragement.” If he did not encourage them, neither did he discourage them, for they settled at Savannah, opened a synagogue, and the descendants of many of them remain to this day among the most worthy citizens of the place.
With all his noble virtues, Oglethorpe belonged more to the old institutions than to the new; and hence somewhat of feudal usages had been introduced, which led to long-continued discontent. Another cause of discontent was the prohibition of slave-labour. Gradually, therefore, this was relaxed; slavers from Africa visited Savannah, and the laws against them were not enforced; in vain the Moravians opposed slavery as contrary to the Gospel; their religious teachers in Germany, as well as Whitfield, the great apostle of the colonies, “trusted that God would overrule slavery to the Christianising of the slave,” and the Moravians after long opposition yielded. Slaves were at first hired from Carolina for a short period, or during life, and a sum equal to the value of the slave paid in advance. Thus by degrees Georgia became a planting state, with slave-labour like Carolina.[[35]]
In 1752, the trustees wearied with the many complaints which still continued against even their amended form of government, resigned their charter to the king, and Georgia became a royal government. The liberties and privileges enjoyed by Carolina were now conferred on Georgia; but the colony did not assume a really flourishing condition until the close of the French and Indian war, when Florida was surrendered to England, and security was thus insured to her frontiers.
In 1737, the eastern boundary of Maine was settled; so also was the southern boundary of New Hampshire, though somewhat to the disadvantage of Massachusetts, who not being greatly in favour with the English parliament in consequence of her pertinacity with regard to the salaries of Burnett and Belcher, had but little countenance to expect from that quarter. Nor was another boundary dispute settled more to her satisfaction in 1741, when the country conquered in the old times from Philip and the Wampanoags, and claimed by Massachusetts under the Plymouth grant, was ceded to Rhode Island after having been a subject of contention between the two states for about 100 years.
We have already related that the Treaty of Utrecht conferred upon a company of English merchants the monopoly of supplying slaves to the Spanish colonies. Whilst this was the case on one hand, the African company of independent traders, on the other, were conveying over thousands of negro slaves to the British colonies. England, says Bancroft, valued Africa as returning for her manufactures abundant labourers for her colonies. The African coast for thirty degrees in extent was traversed for the supply of the human cargo; Africans above thirty and under fourteen were rejected, and very few women in proportion were taken; the English slave-ships were laden with the youth of Africa. Of the horrors of the middle passage we will not speak; suffice it to say, that the loss of life on the voyage is computed to have been, on an average, fifteen per cent.
The number of slaves in the northern provinces was small in proportion to the whites; but in the lowlands of South Carolina and Virginia they constituted the great majority. It is not easy to calculate the number imported into the colonies. In the northern and middle states the negro slaves were employed as domestic servants and agricultural labourers. In New York they amounted to one-sixth of the population, and the slave code of that province was as severe as those of South Carolina and Virginia. In Georgia, as we have said, slavery obtained powerful advocates in Whitfield and his associate Habersham, who, however, soon turned trader. It was on the plea of Christianising the heathen that they founded their argument, and the heart of the poor slaves even in those early days seems to have been a ready recipient of the consolations of religion. There were Uncle Toms even then; for Habersham says exultingly, “Many of the poor slaves of America have already been made freemen of the heavenly Jerusalem.” One circumstance must, however, be observed; slavery was only permitted in Georgia on Whitfield’s argument, and the masters were compelled, by fine, to oblige their slaves “to attend at some time in the Lord’s-day for religious instruction.” And hence, says Hildreth, may doubtless be ascribed the peculiarly religious character of the negroes in and about Savannah. Nor has the old humane spirit of Georgia ceased to exist. Miss Bremer, speaking of this state, says: “I augur most favourably from the freer and happier life of the negroes of Savannah; from the permission which is given them to have their own churches, and where they themselves preach. Besides this, much is done in Georgia for the instruction of the negro slaves in Christianity, for their emancipation and their colonisation at Liberia.”
Christianity, however, could not enfranchise the slave; he might become a freeman of the heavenly Jerusalem, but a human thrall he remained in the earthly America, spite of all that early philanthropists, “enthusiasts,” and abolitionists could say and do; and as regarded the slave-trade, the colonies had no power. England alone must bear the burden of this shame and guilt. The English slave-trade received its greatest impetus from the Assiento treaty. From 1680 to 1700, about 300,000 negroes were shipped from the coast of Africa; from 1700 to 1750, about 2,000,000. The English manufacturers advocated and supported the trade, because it opened to them the African market. In the reign of William and Mary, parliament legislated for the better supply of negroes to the plantations; “and again it declared its opinion in 1695, that the slave-trade is highly beneficial and advantageous to the kingdom and her colonies.” Queen Anne was so decided a patron of the slave-trade, that she herself, as we have said, became a slave-trader, and boasted to her parliament that she had secured to Englishmen a new market for slaves in Spanish America. George II. favoured it; and lastly, in 1749, in order to give the utmost activity to the trade, all monopoly was removed, and free-trade in slaves laid open to English competition; “the slave-trade being,” according to the words of the statute, “very advantageous to Great Britain.” To the credit of Horace Walpole, he saw the iniquity of this traffic, while parliament was throwing it open to the rejoicing manufacturers and merchants; and, according to his account, the English trader at that time conveyed 46,000 slaves every year to the British American colonies alone. So determined was England to thrust this trade upon the colonies, that when any of them endeavoured to check the importation, they were severely reproved. The reason of this was obvious. The colonies were already becoming too independent. “The African slave-trade,” it was asserted by a British merchant in 1745, “was the great pillar and support of the British plantation trade in America.” “If,” argued he, “it were possible for white men to answer the end of negroes in planting, our colonies would interfere with the manufactures of these kingdoms. In such case, indeed, we might have reason to dread the prosperity of our colonies; but while we can supply them abundantly with negroes, we need be under no such apprehension.” And again: “Negro labour will keep our British colonies in a due subserviency to the interests of their mother-country; for while our plantations depend only on planting by negroes, our colonies can never prove injurious to British manufacturers, never become independent of their kingdom.”
So reasoned the England of that day, in the spirit of an arbitrary and utterly selfish policy; and the colonies had no power of resistance.
Before concluding this portion of our history, which may be considered as the early dawn of that day which saw ascend, through suffering and blood, the sun of American independence, a few remarks may be welcome on the life and manners of the colonies.
America could already boast of names which were an ornament to the age. “America may look,” says Willson, “upon the scientific discoveries of Franklin; upon Godfrey’s invention of the quadrant; upon the researches of Bartram, a Pennsylvanian Quaker and farmer, whom Linnæus called the greatest natural botanist in the world; upon the mathematical and astronomical inventions of Rittenhouse, and upon the metaphysical and theological writings of Jonathan Edwards with the greater pride, when it is considered that these eminent men owed their attainments to no fostering care which Britain ever showed for the cultivation of science and literature in her colonies; that these men were their own instructors, and that their celebrity is wholly of American origin.”