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They also captured a French
So the storm which appeared

killing or capturing almost three hundred men. vessel, with its crew. It was a complete victory. so suddenly and threatening, was dissipated in a day, and the sunshine of peace and prosperity again gladdened the colony.

A few years later, a more formidable tempest brooded over the colony, when a general Indian confederacy was secretly formed, to exterminate the white people by a single blow. Within forty days, in the spring of 1715, the Indian tribes from the Cape Fear to the St. Mary's, and back to the mountains, had coalesced in the conspiracy; and before the people of Charleston had any intimation of danger, one hundred white victims had been sacrificed in the remote settlements. The Creeks,' Yamasees, and Apalachians' on the south, confederated with the Cherokees,' Catawbas, and Congarees on the west, in all six thousand strong; while more than a thousand warriors issued from the Neuse region, to avenge their misfortunes in the wars of 1712-13.' It was a cloud of fearful portent that hung in the sky; and the people were filled with terror, for they knew not at what moment the consuming lightning might leap forth. At this fearful crisis, Governor Craven acted with the utmost wisdom and energy. He took measures to prevent men from leaving the colony; to secure all the arms and ammunition that could be found, and to arm faithful negroes to assist the white people. He declared the province to be under martial law,' and then, at the head of twelve hundred men, black and white, he marched to meet the foe who were advancing with the knife, hatchet, and torch, in fearful activity. The Indians were at first victorious, but after several bloody encounters, the Yamassees and their southern neighbors were driven across the Savannah [May, 1715], and halted not until they found refuge under Spanish guns at St. Augustine. The Cherokees and their northern neighbors had not yet engaged in the war, and they returned to their hunting grounds, deeply impressed with the strength and greatness of the white people.

And now the proprietary government of South Carolina was drawing to a close. The governors being independent of the people, were often haughty and exacting, and the inhabitants had borne the yoke of their rule for many years, with great impatience. While their labor was building up a prosperous State, the proprietors refused to assist them in times of danger, or to re-imburse their expenses in the protection of the province from invasion. The whole burden of debt incurred in the war with the Yamassees, was left upon the shoulders of the people. The proprietors not only refused to pay any portion of it, but enforced their claims for quit-rents with great severity. The people saw no hope in the future, but in royal rule and protection. So they met in convention; resolved to forswear all allegiance to the proprietors; and on Governor Johnson's refusal to act as chief magistrate, under the king, they

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Page 27.

Page 30. 2 Page 30. Note 3, page 168. 5 Page 26. This was a small tribe that inhabited the country in the vicinity of the present city of Columbia, in South Carolina. * Page 168.

Martial law may be proclaimed by rulers, in an emergency, and the civil law, for the time being, is made subservient to the military. The object is to allow immediate and energetic action for repelling invasions, or for other purposes.

appointed [December 21, 1719] Colonel Moore' governor of the colony. The matter was laid before the imperial government, when the colonists were sustained, and South Carolina became a royal province."

The people of North Carolina' also resolved on a change of government; and after a continued controversy for ten years, the proprietors, in 1729, sold to the king, for about eighty thousand dollars, all their claims to the soil and incomes in both provinces. North and South Carolina were then separated. George Burrington was appointed the first royal governor over the former, and Robert Johnson over the latter. From that period until the commencement of the French and Indian war, the general history of the CAROLINAS presents but few features of interest, except the efforts made for defending the colony against the Spaniards and the Indians. The people gained very little by a change of owners; and during forty-five years, until the revolution made the people independent, there was a succession of disputes with the royal governors.

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CHAPTER X.

GEORGIA. [1732.]

THE colony founded by Oglethorpe on the Savannah River rapidly increased in numbers, and within eight years, twenty-five hundred immigrants were sent over, at an expense to the trustees' of four hundred thousand dollars. Yet prosperity did not bless the enterprise. Many of the settlers were unaccustomed to habits of industry, and were mere drones; and as the use of slave labor was prohibited, tillage was neglected. Even the industrious Scotch, German, and Swiss families who came over previous to 1740, could not give that vitality to industrial pursuits, which was necessary to a development of the resources of the country. Anxious for the permanent growth of the colony, Oglethorpe went to England in 1734, and returned in 1736, with about three hundred immigrants. Among them were one hundred and fifty Highlanders, well skilled in military affairs. These constituted the first army of the colony during its early struggles. John Wesley, founder of the Methodist denomination, also came with Oglethorpe, to make Georgia a religious colony, and to spread the gospel among the Indians. He was unsuccessful; for his strict moral doctrines, his fearless denunciations of vice, and his rigid exercise of ecclesiastical authority made him quite unpopular among the great mass of the colonists, who winced at restraint. The eminent George Whitefield also visited Georgia in 1738, when only twenty-three years of age, and succeeded in establishing an orphan asylum near Savannah, which flourished many years, and

1 Note 7, page 168.

The first governor, by royal appointment, was Francis Nicholson, who had been successively governor of New York [page 144], Maryland, Virginia, and Nova Scotia.

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Page 167.

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Page 179.

Page 100.

was a real blessing. The Christian efforts of those men, prosecuted with the most sincere desire for the good of their fellow-mortals, were not appreciated. Their seed fell upon stony ground, and after the death of Whitefield, in 1770, his "House of Mercy" in Georgia, deprived of his sustaining influence, became a desolation.

A cloud of trouble appeared in the Southern horizon. The rapid increase of the new colony excited the jealousy of the Spaniards at St. Augustine, and the vigilant Oglethorpe, expecting such a result, prepared to oppose any hostile movements against his settlement. He established a fort on the site of Augusta, as a defence against the Indians, and he erected fortifications at Darien, on Cumberland Island, at Frederica (St. Simon's Island), and on the north bank of the St. John, the southern boundary of the English claims. Spanish commissioners came from St. Augustine to protest against these preparations, and to demand the immediate evacuation of the whole of Georgia, and of all South Carolina below Port Royal.' Oglethorpe, of course, refused compliance, and the Spaniards threatened him with war. In the winter of 1736-7, Oglethorpe went to England to make preparations to meet the exigency. He returned in October following, bearing the commission of a brigadier, and leading a regiment of six hundred well-disciplined troops, for the defense of the whole southern frontier of the English possessions.' But for two years their services were not much needed; then war broke out between England and Spain [November, 1739], and Oglethorpe prepared an expedition against St. Augustine. In May, 1740, he entered Florida with four hundred of his best troops, some volunteers from South Carolina, and a large body of friendly Creek Indians; in all more than two thousand men. His first conquest was Fort Diego, twenty miles from St. Augustine. Then Fort Moosa, within two miles of the city, surrendered; but when he appeared before the town and fortress, and demanded instant submission, he was answered by a defiant refusal. A small fleet under Captain Price blockaded the harbor, and for a time cut off supplies from the Spaniards, but swift-winged galleys' passed through the blockading fleet, and supplied the garrison with several weeks' provisions. Oglethorpe had no artillery with which to attack the fortress, and being warned by the increasing heats of summer, and sickness in his camp, not to wait for their supplies to become exhausted, he raised the siege and returned to Savannah.

The ire of the Spaniards was aroused, and they, in turn, prepared to invade Georgia in the summer of 1742. An armament, fitted out at Havana and St. Augustine, and consisting of thirty-six vessels, with more than three thousand troops, entered the harbor of St. Simon's, and landed a little above the town of the same name, on the 16th of July, 1742, and erected a battery of twenty guns. Oglethorpe had been apprised of the intentions of the Spaniards, and

1 Note 5, page 166.

* His commission gave him the command of the militia of South Carolina also, and he stood as a guard between the English and Spanish possessions of the southern country. Page 30.

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A low built vessel propelled by both sails and oars. The war vessels of the ancients were all galleys. See Norman vessel, page 35.

after unsuccessfully applying to the governor of South Carolina for troops and supplies, he marched to St. Simon's, and made his head-quarters at his princifortress at Frederica.' He was at Fort Simon, near the landing place of the invaders, with less than eight hundred men, exclusive of Indians, when the enemy appeared. He immediately spiked the guns of the fort, destroyed his stores, and retreated to Frederica. There he anxiously awaited hoped-for reinforcements and supplies from Carolina, and then he successfully repulsed several detachments of the Spaniards, who attacked him. He finally resolved to make a night assault upon the enemy's battery, at St. Simon's. A deserter (a French soldier) defeated his plan; but the sagacity of Oglethorpe caused the miscreant to be instrumental in driving the invaders from the coast. He bribed a Spanish prisoner to carry a letter to the deserter, which contained information. respecting a British fleet that was about to attack St. Augustine. Of course the letter was handed to the Spanish commander, and the Frenchman was arrested as a spy. The intelligence in Oglethorpe's letter alarmed the enemy; and while the officers were holding a council, some Carolina vessels, with supplies for the garrison at Frederica, appeared in the distance. Believing them to be part of the British fleet alluded to, the Spaniards determined to attack the Georgians immediately, and then hasten to St. Augustine. On their march. to assail Frederica, they were ambuscaded in a swamp. Great slaughter of the invaders ensued, and the place is still called Bloody Marsh. The survivors retreated in confusion to their vessels, and sailed immediately to St. Augustine.' On their way, they attacked the English fort at the southern extremity of Cumberland Island, on the 19th of July, but were repulsed with the loss of two galleys. The whole expedition was so disastrous to the Spaniards, that the commander (Don Manuel de Monteano) was dismissed from the service. Oglethorpe's stratagem saved Georgia, and, perhaps, South Carolina, from utter

ruin.

Having fairly established his colony, Oglethorpe went to England in 1743, and never returned to Georgia, where, for ten years, he had nobly labored to secure an attractive asylum for the oppressed. He left the province in a tranquil state. The mild military rule under which the people had lived, was changed to civil government in 1743, administered by a president and council, under the direction of the trustees, yet the colony continued to languish. Several causes combined to produce this condition. We have already alluded to the inefficiency of most of the earlier settlers, and the prohibition of slave labor. They were also deprived of the privileges of commerce and of traffic

The remains of Fort Frederica yet [1856] form a very picturesque ruin on the plantation of W. W. Hazzard, Esq., of St. Simon's Island.

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Oglethorpe addressed the Frenchman as if he was a spy of the English. He directed the deserter to represent the Georgians as in a weak condition, to advise the Spaniards to attack them immediately, and to persuade the Spaniards to remain three days longer, within which time six British men-of-war, and two thousand men, from Carolina, would probably enter the harbor of St. Augustine.

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They first burned Fort Simon, but in their haste they left several of their cannons and a quantity of provisions behind them.

Fort William. There was another small fort on the northern end of the island, called Fort Andrew.

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Page 100.

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with the Indians; and were not allowed the ownership, in fee, of the lands which they cultivated.' In consequence of these restrictions, there were no incentives to labor, except to supply daily wants. General discontent prevailed. They saw the Carolinians growing rich by the use of slaves, and by commerce with the West Indies. Gradually the restrictive laws were evaded. Slaves were brought from Carolina, and hired, first for a short period, and then for a hundred years, or for life. The price paid for life-service was the money value of the slave, and the transaction was, practically, a sale and purchase. Then slave-ships came to Savannah directly from Africa; slave labor was generally used in 1750, and Georgia became a planting State. planting State. In 1752, at the expiration of the twenty-one years named in the patent, the trustees gladly resigned the charter into the hands of the king, and from that time until the Revolution, Georgia remained a royal province.

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CHAPTER XI.

A RETROSPECT. [1492-1756.]

IN the preceding pages we have considered the principal events which occurred within the domain of our Republic from the time of first discoveries, in 1492, to the commencement of the last inter-colonial war between the English and French settlers, a period of about two hundred and sixty years. During that time, fifteen colonies were planted,' thirteen of which were commenced within the space of about fifty-six years-from 1607 to 1673. By the union of Plymouth and Massachusetts, and Connecticut and New Haven, the number of colonies was reduced to thirteen, and these were they which went into the revolutionary contest in 1775. The provinces of Canada and Nova Scotia, conquered by the English, remained loyal, and to this day they continue to be portions of the British empire.

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In the establishment of the several colonies, which eventually formed the thirteen United States of America, several European nations contributed vigorous materials; and people of opposite habits, tastes, and religious faith, became commingled, after making impressions of their distinctive characters where their influence was first felt. England furnished the largest proportion of colonists, and her children always maintained sway in the government and industry of the whole country; while Scotland, Ireland, Germany, Holland, France, Sweden, Denmark, and the Baltic region, contributed large quotas of people and other colonial instrumentalities. Churchmen and Dissenters, Roman Catholics and

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1 Page 116. Page 100. Virginia, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Haven, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Note 2, page 76.

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