In a report submitted to Congress by the Hon. Charles Lee, attorney-general of the United States (Philadelphia, 1796), will be found a valuable collection of charters, treaties, and documents explanatory of the original cession to the “Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia in America,” and of the modifications and enlargements to which the same was later subjected. The territory which, in 1733, became the Province of Georgia at an earlier day formed a part of ancient Florida, which stretched in the Spanish conception from the Gulf of Mexico to the far north and westward to the Mississippi and indefinitely beyond.
It has fallen to the lot of another writer in the present work to mention the authorities on the primitive peoples of this region; and by still another an enumeration is made of the archæological traces of their life.[844]
The project of Sir Robert Mountgomery for planting a colony in the territory subsequently ceded to the Georgia Trustees is fully unfolded in his Discourse concerning the design’d Establishment of a New Colony to the South of Carolina in the most delightful Country of the Universe, London, 1717.[845] Accompanying this Discourse is an engraved “plan representing the Form of Settling the Districts or County Divisions in the Margravate of Azilia.”[846] Although extensively advertised, this scheme failed to attract the favor of the public, and ended in disappointment.
The true story of the mission of Sir Alexander Cuming, of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to establish a trade with the Cherokees, and confirm them in their friendship with and allegiance to the British crown, has been well told by Samuel G. Drake in his Early History of Georgia, embracing the Embassy of Sir Alexander Cuming to the Country of the Cherokees in the year 1730, Boston, 1872. A reproduction of the rare print giving the portraits of the Indians who accompanied Sir Alexander on his return to London might have been advantageously employed in lending additional attraction to this publication.[847]
HANDWRITING OF OGLETHORPE.
Of the memoirs of Oglethorpe,—whose life Dr. Johnson desired to write, and whom Edmund Burke regarded as the most extraordinary person of whom he had read, because he founded a province and lived to see it severed from the empire which created it and erected into an independent State,—those best known are A Sketch of the Life of General James Oglethorpe, presented to the Georgia Historical Society by Thomas Spalding, Esq., resident member of the same, printed in 1840; Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe, Founder of the Colony of Georgia in North America, by Thaddeus Mason Harris, D. D., Boston, 1841;[848] Life of James Oglethorpe, the Founder of Georgia, by William B. O. Peabody, constituting a part of volume ii. of the second series of The Library of American Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks, Boston, 1847, and based mainly upon Dr. Harris’ work; and A Memoir of General James Oglethorpe, one of the earliest Reformers of Prison Discipline in England and the Founder of Georgia in America, by Robert Wright, London, 1867. The advantages enjoyed by Mr. Wright were exceptionally good, and until the appearance of his memoir that by Dr. Harris was justly regarded as the best.[849]
That the public might be advised of the benevolent character and scope of the undertaking, and might be made acquainted with the designs of the Trustees with regard to the proposed colonization of Georgia, two tracts were published with their sanction: one of them, prepared by Oglethorpe, entitled A New and Accurate Account of the Provinces of South Carolina and Georgia, with many curious and useful Observations on the Trade, Navigation, and Plantations of Great Britain compared with her most powerful Maritime Neighbors in ancient and modern Times, printed in London in 1732;[850] and the other, written by Benjamin Martyn, Secretary of the Board, entitled Reasons for establishing the Colony of Georgia with regard to the Trade of Great Britain, the Increase of our People, and the Employment and Support it will afford to great numbers of our own Poor as well as Foreign persecuted Protestants, with some account of the Country and the Designs of the Trustees, London, 1733.[851] Well considered and widely circulated, these tracts were productive of results most beneficial to the Trust.[852]