A History of the American People

that a negro conspiracy was to blame and that the slaves were planning to take over the city.
Many blacks were arrested, eighteen were hanged, and eleven burned at the stake, though a
public prosecutor, Daniel Horsemanden, later admitted that there was no evidence such a
conspiracy ever existed. But in the Carolinas, especially towards the south and in the back-
country, security was much more fragile. Stability was not established until a first-class royal
governor, James Glen, took over in 1740. He was even able to get some action from the crown:
early in 1743 General James Oglethorpe, with a fierce body of Scottish Highlanders, as well as
local militia, thrashed a Spanish force four times its size at the Battle of Bloody Marsh.
James Oglethorpe (1696-1785) was a fascinating example of the bewildering cross-currents
and antagonisms which make early American history so confusing at first glance. He was a rich
English philanthropist and member of parliament, who came to America as a result of his
passionate interest in prison reform. He was particularly interested in helpless men imprisoned
for debt and believed they ought to be freed and allowed to work their way to solvency on
American land. In 1732, George II gave him a charter to found such a colony between the
Savannah and the Altama rivers, to be named Georgia after himself. Oglethorpe himself went out
with the first band of settlers in January 1733. This was another utopian venture, though with
humanitarian rather than strict religious objectives-an 18th-century rationalist as opposed to a
17th-century doctrinaire experiment. Oglethorpe and his supporters wanted to avoid extremes of
wealth, as in South Carolina, to attract victims of religious persecution and the penal system, and
to create a colony of small landowners, with total landholdings limited by law, and slavery
prohibited. He was also a military man and he intended, with British government backing, to set
up Georgia as a defended cordon sanitaire against Spanish troublemaking in the South. He built
forts, recruited a militia, and attracted fighting Highlanders for a defensive colony on the
Altamaha frontier, which they called New Inverness. His victory at Bloody Marsh not only put
an end to the Spanish threat but was a warning to the Indians too-though he made it clear his
approach to them was essentially friendly by setting up Augusta as an advance post for the
Indian trade. In every respect, Georgia was intended to be a model colony of the Age of
Enlightenment. Oglethorpe planned to introduce silk-production, and in Savannah, his new
capital, he even set up what was called the Trustees Garden, an experimental center for plants.
The colony itself prospered; but the experiment in reason, justice, and science failed. Just as in
North Carolina, attempts to ban slavery came up against the ugly facts of economic interest and
personal greed. Georgia was too near to the rambunctious but undoubtedly flourishing planter
economy of South Carolina to remain uncorrupted. Oglethorpe's regulations were defied. Slaves
were smuggled in. So was rum-another banned item. Then the Savannah assembly legitimized
widespread disobedience by changing the law. Rum was officially admitted from 1742. Five
years later the laws against slavery were suspended and in 1750 formally repealed. These
changes brought a flood of newcomers from north of the Savannah, including experienced
planters and their slaves, taking up Georgia's cheap land. The utopian colony was Carolined.
Oglethorpe was already in trouble with the English authorities for muddling the military
finances. So the man who, in the words of Alexander Pope, went to America `driven by strong
benevolence of soul,' returned to England disillusioned and disgusted, surrendering his charter in
1752.
By mid-century all the original Thirteen Colonies were in actual, though not always legal,
existence, and all were being rapidly transformed by unequal, sometimes patchy, but on the
whole overwhelming prosperity. It was already a region accustomed to dealing in millions-the
land of the endless noughts.' In 1746 a New Hampshire gentleman, John Mason, sold a tract of