Georgia

Georgia was the last of the original 13 colonies to be settled by the British. The idea of a new colony south of South Carolina had been discussed in London during the late 1720s, and it eventually came to fruition due to the happy confluence of philanthropic ideals and imperial concerns. Leading British parliamentarians had become concerned about the plight of the poor, and those serving on the Parliamentary Gaols Committee saw at firsthand the treatment of criminals, many of whom had been jailed for debt. In an attempt to break the vicious circle of poverty, debt, and jail, the idea of a new American colony, one that would serve as a safe haven for the poor, became popular. At the same time, British government ministers were acutely aware of the vulnerability of their southern colonies in North America, with both the French in the Mississippi Valley and the Spanish in Florida capable of posing a threat to one of the most profitable parts of the empire. This threat was brought home during the Yamasee War of 1715, which caused great damage to many Carolina plantations. The new colony, it was thought, would be able to act as a buffer state and would enhance British territorial claims in the Southeast.

The job of creating the new colony was delegated to a group of 21 trustees, many of whom sat in Parliament and had access to the highest levels of government. Almost uniquely for a new colony, the British Parliament provided a substantial portion of the initial funding, ultimately amounting to several hundred thousand pounds. This was partly because Prime Minister Walpole often relied on the block votes of the trustees to pass important legislation in Parliament, but it was also confirmation that Georgia was not intended to be a commercial colony.

With a solid financial base the trustees chartered a ship, the Anne, and recruited 114 men, women, and children who, together with Trustee General James Edward Oglethorpe, would be entrusted with founding the new colony. The Anne sailed in November 1732 and arrived at the future site of Savannah in February 1733. After obtaining a formal cession of lands from local Indian leader Tomochichi, Oglethorpe had virgin forest cleared in order to lay out the new town of Savannah.

The first settlers in Georgia were a mixed group. Unlike many other southern colonies, whose initial populations consisted almost entirely of young white men, early Georgians were mixed in age, sex, class, and ethnicity. In the first decade of settlement, most arrived “on the charity,” meaning that the trustees paid their passage to the New World. These people were supposed to be the “worthy poor,” who merited the chance of a new beginning. Only after 1742, when parliamentary money began to dry up, did the number of free settlers paying their own passage begin to rise.

All early settlers shared the color of their skin: They were white. Because of the belief that slavery would make Georgia more difficult to defend from Spanish attacks and that it would not provide the working opportunities for ordinary poor white settlers that the trustees believed were vital, racial bondage was prohibited in Georgia in 1735. This experiment with free labor was unique in British North America, and it was an abject failure. From the outset settlers complained that the heat made work impossible for white people, that Georgia would not be able to compete with South Carolina for settlers due to the existence of slaves there, and that they were unable to exploit the natural resources fully because of a shortage of workers. A vocal group of malcontents emerged in Georgia consisting mainly of English and Lowland Scottish

A map of Savannah, Georgia, created in 1734 by Peter Gordon (University of Georgia Libraries)

Settlers who repeatedly pressed the trustees to permit slavery, but Highland Scots in the small town of Darien and the Salzburgers in Ebenezer urged the trustees to maintain the ban on racial bondage so that poor white people would not be economically disadvantaged. The malcontents then enlisted the help of Thomas Stephens, son of William Stephens, the trustees’ secretary in Georgia. He argued the proslavery case directly to those in power in London, forcing the trustees to publish several defenses of the colony.

The trustees could not escape the fact, however, that Georgia was not an economic success. Experiments with silk production, intended to make the colony self-financing, were constantly set back by poor weather and inexperienced workers. Indentured servants frequently fled to South Carolina, where they were welcomed and released from their remaining years of servitude. Many settlers who had paid their own passage also left for Carolina, knowing it offered better economic opportunities. After nearly 20 years of trustee control, Georgia remained a backwater. Its population was small, its contribution to the imperial economic system was negligible, and it remained a financial burden on the British government.

The decision to permit slavery, made effectively in the late 1740s but not enacted until 1751, was a major turning point in the history of Georgia. Planters from South Carolina, aware of the rice-producing potential of Georgia’s sea islands, invested in the colony. As the population grew, so did the demand for goods and services provided by ordinary people. When the trustees surrendered their charter to the British Crown in 1752, they passed on a colony that had a rosy future. By the time the first royal governor, John Reynolds, arrived in 1754, Georgia’s population had swelled to 7,000, with 2,000 slaves providing the backbone of the labor force.

Georgia’s population, unlike its neighbor South Carolina, retained a white majority, but Euro-Americans were concentrated in the backcountry. In the coastal parishes containing rice plantations, there were often nine slaves for every white person, many of whom were imported directly from Africa. Consequently, African elements of culture, language, religion, and familial relationships lingered in the sea islands far longer than elsewhere in British America. The planters who owned these slaves became the principal men in Georgia. Men such as James Habersham, Jonathan Bryan, and Noble Jones made their fortunes in Georgia and were able to dominate the colony socially, politically, and economically through the number of offices they held. Each justice of the peace, assembly member, and juror tended to be chosen from the same small group of elite white men.

Nevertheless, Georgia continued to be attractive to ordinary poor white families, especially in the later colonial years. The prospect of free lands enticed many from the Chesapeake area and Pennsylvania to move south. Nonslaveholding white people therefore constituted the largest social group in the colony, with some enjoying a comfortable sufficiency. Poverty still existed, however, especially for widows with children, and, lacking widespread public or private charitable help, many poor white people eked out a bare subsistence in conditions of terrible hardship.

Away from the coast the settlement of backcountry areas relied on the Indian trade. Unlike in other southern colonies, few Native American tribes in Georgia lived near the coast. The small and scattered Native groups that had settled in the low country, the most notable being the Yamacraw ruled by Tomochichi, did not possess sufficient trade goods to interest many traders. In order to access the true wealth of the Indian trade, the town of Augusta was founded in 1736, and traders from Georgia and South Carolina both used the town as the starting point for expeditions deep into Creek, Cherokee, and other Native American lands. Augusta occupied a strategic position on the Indian trails but also provided the highest point to which boats could navigate up the Savannah River. Despite being more than 130 miles from Savannah, merchants arriving at Augusta with furs and other goods could ship them easily to the coast; this, above all else, secured the economic future of the backcountry.

Discouraged by the struggling economy and by continuing conflict with the Spanish in Florida, the trustees gave Georgia to Parliament in 1752, a year before the charter was due to expire, and it became a royal colony. The first royal governor, John Reynolds (1754-57) proved inept in dealing with his own council and with Indians. He was replaced in 1757 by Henry Ellis, who maintained an important alliance with the Creek Indians, who rescued the colonists from the Cherokee Indians during the Seven Years’ War.

From the 1750s until the Revolution, Georgia developed steadily. Economic output rose phenomenally, from 500 barrels of rice in 1752 to 10,000 by 1756. The colony’s human population continued to grow, reaching 33,000 by 1773, including 15,000 slaves. Georgia also increased in size. Land cessions amounting to 5 million acres from the Creek in 1763 and 1773 saw Georgia expand south to the St. Marys River and northwest to the headwaters of the Savannah River. Of all the new colonies that Britain founded or conquered in the 18th century—a list that includes Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Quebec, and west and east Florida—only Georgia became fully integrated into the imperial mercantilist system, with a flourishing economy based on African slave labor. By the time of the Revolution, most visitors would have been hard pressed to identify a difference between Georgia and South Carolina.

Further reading: Harold E. Davis, The Fledgling Province: Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 17331776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976); Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983).

—Timothy James Lockley