USA > Georgia > A history of Georgia : from its first discovery by Europeans to the adoption of the present constitution in MDCCXCVIII. Vol. II > Part 2
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GEORGIA UNDER ROYAL GOVERNMENT.
timents ; that they were agreed upon the declarations to be made to the Indians; and desired them to pay attention to what Captain Stuart uttered, as they were the words of all the Governors." Accordingly, Captain Stuart began his talk to them as friends and brothers, assuring them, that " no conference was ever intended to be more general, none more friendly ;" for now, "at a time when he has nothing to apprehend from any of his enemies, the King of England opens his arms to receive his red children," doing it "the rather at this juncture, as he knows the insinuations and false- hoods which have been formerly circulated among you by the perfidious and cruel French." He then pro- ceeded to tell them that, having defeated and humbled that nation, as also the Spaniards, "the King had now given peace to both nations ; and to prevent the revival of such disturbances, by repetition of such dangerous proceedings, and for this purpose only, he insisted in the treaty of peace that the French and Spanish should be removed beyond the river Mississippi, that the In- dians and white people may hereafter live in peace and brotherly friendship. It will be your faults if this does not happen, for we are authorized by the great King to give you the most substantial proofs of our good intention and desire to live like brothers with you." He also assured them that all past offences should be buried in oblivion; that they should be plentifully supplied with goods; that justice should be done them on all occasions, and that the forts ceded to the English by the French and Spanish should be em- ployed for their protection, assistance, and convenience.
To this exposition of English views the Indians re- plied on the following Monday and Tuesday, and, after
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GOVERNOR JAMES WRIGHT.
mutual explanations and promises, a treaty for the preservation and continuance of a fair and perfect peace and friendship between his most sacred majesty George III and the several kings, head men, and war- riors of the Chickasaws, Upper and Lower Creeks, Choctaws, Cherokees, and Catawbas, was concluded on the 10th November, and the congress adjourned, under a salute from the guns of Fort Augusta.7
The results of this treaty were beneficial both to the Indians and to the colonists. It insured protection to the former, and tranquillity to the latter; and, by the further acquisition of territory, so enlarged the bound- aries of Georgia, as to afford ample tracts of land to the new settlers, who were now daily flocking to the colony.
Among the applicants for lands within the newly acquired territory, were Denys Rolles and the Earl of Eglintoun. The former gentleman was the brother of Lord Rolles, Baron of Stevenstone, one of the most distinguished families in Devonshire, and who sat in Parliament for the county of Devon.
In the beginning of 1764, this gentleman, in com- pany with William Reynolds, an Elder Brother of the Trinity House, Colonel George Buch, Captain John Buch, and Dr. Robert Willan, petitioned the Board of Trade for a tract of land, "from the Georgia line on the north to another line southward, to be drawn parallel to the equator, from two miles below the forks of the Apalachicola River to the Alatamaha, to be bounded
7 Journal of the Proceedings of the Southern Congress, at Augusta, in 1763. Printed at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1764; only fifty copies printed.
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on the west by the first, and on the east by the last of these rivers."8
They proposed to build a town on the south side of the Alatamaha, and a larger one, designed for the capi- tal, was to be erected on the Apalachicola. Their objects were to cultivate silk, indigo, and cotton; to collect ship timber, and especially knees of live-oak, and naval stores ; to open a more easy communication with the Creeks than by way of Augusta, and a freer access to the Gulf of Mexico than by the dangerous route round the keys of Florida. Mr. Rolles purposed to go over himself to superintend the first embarkation and planting of this new colony, and solicited that a regular government, with proper courts of justice, might be appointed; at first, to be supported by the crown, vesting the proper powers in the petitioners as proprietors, in the same way as was formerly done in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
This plan not meeting the approbation of the Board of Trade, the petitioners made a request to the Earl of Hillsborough, and the other Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, for the grant of Cumberland Island, on the coast of Georgia, "for the purpose of raising cotton, silk, oil and wine, and such other com- modities as may be hoped for in a warm climate." This also was denied; and the failure of such plans in their inception prevented the still deeper reverses and miscarriages, that must have attended the putting in operation schemes so ideal in their design, and so ex- pensive in their construction.
Not six months after the application of Mr. Rolles,
8 Board of Trade, x, 68.
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GOVERNOR JAMES WRIGHT.
Alexander Montgomerie, the tenth Earl of Eglintoun, with others, presented a petition to the King in coun- cil, setting forth,9 that "your petitioners, Alexander, Earl of Eglintoun, and others, are willing to introduce into these provinces 100,000 settlers, viz .: 10,000 the first five years, and 18,000 every five years after, till the whole is completed, at their own expense, for the property of the soil only, the crown reserving the entire jurisdiction, with power to order and direct the proprietors to give what grants your majesty shall be pleased to signify to them by your Secretary of State or the Lords of Trade and Plantations.
" 1st. We most humbly beg that one of the royal family will be graciously pleased to be at the head of this great and expensive undertaking.
" 2d. We are willing to oblige ourselves to comply with the terms of your majesty's late proclamation for encouraging the settlement of that country.
" 3d. We desire our legal grants of lands already inade in these countries may be confirmed, and that the proprietors may be restrained from making grants to any one person exceeding five hundred acres (except to such as have greater allowance by your majesty's proclamation), which grants to contain in- dispensable terms and conditions of cultivation, and to subject the new settlers to no higher quit-rents than what is at present paid in those provinces.
"4th. We will give full and sufficient security to pay into your majesty's exchequer, free of all charges and deductions, one shilling per annum for every one hundred acres that is already and may be hereafter
9 Board of Trade, x, 137.
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granted away : provided, such quit-rents be not ex- acted or payable till fifteen years from the date of the respective grants.
" And all these conditions we will be obliged to per- form, upon a penalty of the resumption of the grants, and the loss of whatever we may have laid out pre- vious to the forfeiture, together with any other security that may be judged necessary for the performance of this task, particularly against a monopoly of the lands, by being subject to such directions respecting grants as your majesty shall from time to time signify to us by your Secretary of State and Lords of Trade and Plantations, whereby we shall be as much under the control of your majesty's Government as the present Governors and Councils of those provinces, or any other part of the Continent of America, who are now vested with a power of granting lands under your majesty's commissions and instructions; and we are also ready to submit to any other measures for the true and reasonable interest of the colony and mother country, which can be contrived so as to make the one grow and flourish under the protection and superin- tendency of the other."
This strange petition succeeded no better than those of Mr. Rolles. Had the request been granted, the scheme could never have been carried out, as it em- braced conditions which it was next to impossible to fulfil. The tragical death of the Earl shortly after put a sudden termination to a plan as Utopian as it was impracticable.
The extension of boundaries by the recent treaties made it necessary to revoke the former letters patent to Mr. Wright as Captain-General and Governor-in-
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GOVERNOR JAMES WRIGHT.
Chief of Georgia, and accordingly a new commission to him received the great seal at Westminster, on the 20th January, 1764, extending his authority over the new territory included within the extended limits of the colony.
Relieved now from the maraudings of the French and the Spaniards; in peace and amity with most of the adjacent Indian tribes ; its boundaries enlarged on the one side to the Mississippi, and on the other to the St. Mary's, and protected on the south by two new English colonies, Georgia occupied a position which it had never before attained. Its population, though small, was substantial and industrious; its agricultural resources were rapidly increasing; its commerce called into requisition several thousand tons of shipping; its Indian trade was large and productive, and it was pre- sided over by a Governor who knew its best interests and who closely studied to advance its welfare. The province rose in importance day by day, and was fast becoming what its founder intended it should be, noble, vigorous, and flourishing.
But just as Georgia had attained this longed for position, and was beginning to realize the benefits for which its wise Governor had so diligently striven; just as the clouds which had hung round its morning hours broke away, and the sun of peace and prosperity shone out with its gladdening light; another and a darker cloud rose in the opposite horizon, small indeed at the first, as that which the prophet saw from the top of Carmel, but one which was destined to cover the colo- nial firmament with blackness, and pour forth the storms of revolution and civil war.
Fortunate was it for Georgia that it had thus been VOL. II.
3
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GEORGIA UNDER ROYAL GOVERNMENT.
consolidated and strengthened by these flanking colo- nies, and by this Indian treaty : but for these, it must necessarily have been swept away in the first irruption of the invader; for there was no subsequent period, prior to the Revolution, when the colony could have thus girded up its strength, because dissension in council, opposition in politics, uneasiness among the people, and rebellion to government, soon absorbed the public mind and engaged the energies of the people. It was a fortunate thing, also, for all the colonies, that before they were called upon to enter into contest with the mother country, the other enemies on their fron- tiers had been silenced and removed ; and, furthermore, that in the very treaties which removed them, were contained germs of dissatisfaction with Great Britain, which, when the war of the Revolution did come, caused the Indians to rank themselves as our friends and allies, against the power which had stripped them to such an extent of their American possessions.
1131797
CHAPTER V.
THE STAMP ACT IN GEORGIA.
THE colony of Georgia presents itself to the his- torian under two aspects : one, as it respects its own internal affairs, and the other, in its relation to the other colonies and to the parent state. Up to this time, we have considered Georgia as a province by itself, and have confined ourselves to its history alone; we must now look at its other aspect, and examine its historical connections with its sister colonies and the mother country. Hitherto, the only ties which bound it to the provinces which skirted the Atlantic coast were those of continental interest, and the derivation of governmental powers through the same common source, the King and Parliament of Great Britain. But other links were soon forged, which were to bring into yet closer union the leading colonies of North America, and to exhibit these it is necessary to merge, for a time, the narrative of Georgia in the common history of our American confederacy. The liberty which we now enjoy was not the sudden disen- thralment of a nation from monarchical rule, effected in the heat of political excitement, by men acting under the impulses of fevered passion. The seeds of that liberty had been brought by the colonists from
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GEORGIA UNDER ROYAL GOVERNMENT.
their fatherland-they had been scattered broadcast from the Kennebec to the Alatamaha-they had taken root and sprung up, and the Revolution was the fruit of their long but effective germination.
It would not come within the province of this his- tory to trace the progress of free principles in America, yet a brief review of their development is necessary to a full understanding of the revolutionary history of Georgia.
It is not saying too much to declare, that the fun- damental doctrines of civil and religious freedom were better understood in the American colonies than in any other portion of the globe. Their several charters conferred upon them rights and immunities which they cherished with peculiar tenacity, and which strength- ened them in that spirit of liberty which manifested itself so often during their colonial existence. From the time that the Virginians, under the wise adminis- tration of Sir George Yeardly, in 1619, gave the New World the first example of representative legislation, onward to the eventful epoch of American independ- ence, the leading principles of political liberty were boldly proclaimed and firmly supported. Of these principles, that which recognized resistance to taxation without representation, was the first developed, and the soonest tested.
When Virginia capitulated to the commonwealth of Cromwell, in 1652, it was expressly stated in the deed of surrender, that no taxes or customs should be levied, except by their own representatives.
When the " West India Company" attempted to tax the inhabitants of New Netherlands (now New York), the province drew up a remonstrance, which declared,
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THE STAMP ACT IN GEORGIA.
" We, who have transformed the wilderness into fruitful farms, demand that no new laws shall be enacted, but with consent of the people;" and they refused to pay them.
When the tyrannical Lovelace insisted upon taxing the people of New York, even for the ostensive pur- pose of defence, seven villages entered their protest to an act which took from them the rights and privileges of Englishmen; and, though the votes of these towns against this arbitrary decree of the Governor were, by his order, publicly burned in the streets of New York, yet the spirit which cast them remained unchecked.
The efforts of Sir Edmund Andros, in 1688-9, to levy a tax at the pleasure of himself and council, though seconded by imprisonment and fines, resulted in a revolution which overthrew his government, and reinstated on its ruins their old and equitable charter rights.
Not only did the attempt to tax the colonists with- out representation provoke resistance, but legislative enactments were passed, declaring, with all the em- phasis which charters and laws could give, that taxa- tion without representation was contrary to the rights and privileges of Englishmen, and subversive of the liberties of the people.
The frequent agitation of these measures implanted in the minds of the colonists the clearest ideas of their rights as subjects and as men, and prepared the way for resisting, on a broader arena, the flagitious schemes of Parliament in 1765.
One of the results of the English Revolution of 1688, was the recognition of that principle which Magna Charta, signed at Runnymede nearly five hundred
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years before, had dimly shadowed forth, that property could not be taxed, but with the consent of its proper representatives; and the royal Assembly of New York, catching the spirit of this fundamental principle, re- solved, three years after, that no tax whatever shall be levied on his majesty's subjects in the province, or on their estates, on any pretence whatever, but by the act and consent of the representatives of the people in General Assembly convened. The act, indeed, was rejected by King William, and severe taskmasters were sent over to discipline them into obedience, but the very efforts to eradicate or coerce this spirit, only caused it to take deeper root and acquire greater strength.
In 1696, a pamphlet appeared in England, asserting the power of Parliament to tax the colonies, and re- commending the plan; but it was immediately an- swered from this side of the Atlantic by several replies, which denied the right and reprobated the design. It is indeed remarkable, when the tendency of the Americans to self-government was so early dis- covered, that a different course was not pursued, rather than those oppressive subjugating measures, which the common experience of humanity should have taught the Cabinet could only result in resistance and aliena- tion.
As far back as 1701, the Lords of Trade publicly declared, that "the independency the colonies thirst after is now notorious;" and in 1705, it was openly published in England, that " the colonists will, in pro- cess of time, cast off their allegiance, and set up a government of their own;" and yet that same year a memorial, urging a direct tax on the colonists, was
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THE STAMP ACT IN GEORGIA.
transmitted by a royalist to the Lords of Trade; but both the Board and the Ministry wisely suffered it to pass unnoticed. In 1728, Sir William Keith sug- gested to the King to extend the duties of stamps upon parchment and paper, already existing in Eng- land, to the plantations in America; but the plan of the ex-Governor, as also a similar suggestion made to Walpole in 1739, received no serious consideration from the high officers of state. Mr. Pitt, indeed, meditated a plan for the raising of a revenue from the Americans, and towards the close of 1759 wrote to Governor Fauquier, of Virginia, announcing his design ; but, on receiving the reply of the Governor, which represented the disturbance it would occasion, he was induced to relinquish his scheme.
At the ratification of peace, in 1763, the American colonies were all loyal provinces, reposing in peace and prosperity, under the guarantee of chartered rights and the plighted faith of the English government ; but their quietude was of short duration.
The late war, which Great Britain had engaged in principally at the solicitation of the colonies, and for their defence, had cost the nation over three hundred millions of dollars; which, added to its already over- grown debt, made the condition of its finances despe- rate. How to reduce this debt, and at the same time so to reduce it as not by new and large taxation to create alarm among the people, already laden with most onerous imposts, called for all the skill and ingenuity of the fiscal minister. Under the pressure of these circumstances, it was resolved to carry into effect what had so long remained a mere speculative scheme. The way for this had been already prepared, by the resolu-
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tion of the House of Commons, in March, 1764, by which the members determined, almost unanimously, that they had the right to tax America. The declara- tion of their right was soon followed by a vote de- claring that it was expedient, and the resolve of expe- diency was in a few days succeeded by an act carrying out the asserted right, commonly known as "The Sugar or Molasses Act."
The spirited remonstrances which this act and de- claration drew forth from the colonists did not deter the ministers from enlarging their plans for gathering a revenue from America; and accordingly, on the 22d March, 1765, George Grenville's bill, entitled “An Act for granting and applying stamp duties and other duties in the British Colonies and Plantations of Ame- rica,." etc., received the assent of the King.
This plan was suggested to Mr. Grenville, it is said, by Mr. Huske, a native of New Hampshire, but who then represented the town of Malden in Essex, in the House of Commons, and who proposed by this means to raise £500,000 per annum from the colonies. This man, a nephew of the distinguished General Huske, is represented as "a flashy, superficial fellow, who, by stock-jobbing and servility to the Townshend family, raised himself from poverty and obscurity to a seat in Parliament ;" and the first use which he made of his position was to injure the country which gave him birth. But the idea is not altogether his own; for it has been asserted, by one1 who possessed great know- ledge of state secrets, that Grenville "adopted from Lord Bute a plan of taxation formed by Jenkinson,"
1 Walpole's George III, ii, 28.
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THE STAMP ACT IN GEORGIA.
the first Lord Liverpool. The plan, by whomsoever devised, was adopted by the Ministry, and George Grenville's bill, intituled "An Act for granting and applying stamp duties and other duties in the British Colonies and Plantations in America," etc., embracing fifty-five resolutions, received, on the 22d March, 1765, the assent of the King.
The Assembly of Virginia, the only provincial legis- lature in session when the news of the passage of the act arrived, immediately passed resolves, denying the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. Nearly every province echoed the sentiment of the Old Dominion.
The Assembly of Massachusetts, foreseeing the im- portance of union among the aggrieved colonies, ad- dressed a circular to each of the Assemblies, soliciting the formation of a general congress, to meet in New York, on the first Tuesday in October, 1765.
As soon as Mr. Wylly, the Speaker of the Commons House of Assembly, received the letter, he dispatched expresses to the members, and sixteen members- nearly two-thirds of the entire number-responded to his call, by convening in Savannah, on the 2d Septem- ber, 1765. This body replied to the Massachusetts resolutions, by a letter intimating their hearty co-ope- ration in every measure for the support of their com- mon rights; but, through the influence of Governor Wright, they were prevented from sending delegates to the proposed congress. How far he had succeeded in calming the excitement which began to appear con- cerning the Stamp Act, may be inferred from his as- sertion to the Earl of Halifax, under date September 20, 1765, "that everything in the province is well and doing well at present."
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GEORGIA UNDER ROYAL GOVERNMENT.
The Assembly met on the 22d October, and on the 28th, an order was made, requiring their Committee of Correspondence to lay before the house the commu- nications between their agent, William Knox, and themselves; and the result was, that the lower house " resolved to give instruction to their Committee of Correspondence to acquaint William Knox, agent for this province, that the province has no further occasion for his services." Not that they found aught objection- able in his correspondence, but they believed that he could not act independently for them, when he was at the same time Crown Agent for East Florida; and they took especial objection to his pamphlet, entitled "The Claims of the Colonies to an Exemption from Internal Taxes imposed by authority of Parliament examined;" in which he defended the proceedings of Parliament, and supported its most obnoxious measures. Had Mr. Knox considered what was due to the colony he represented, he certainly would not thus have ob- truded himself in a controversy, which, on the side he advocated, compromised the very privileges and liber- ties of Englishmen. But, like others in that day, he wrote for advancement, and his promotion, not long after, as "Under-Secretary of State," was doubtless the reward of his devotion to ministerial designs. John Campbell, Esq., the Crown Agent for Georgia, also published an octavo tract of over a hundred pages, on the " Regulations lately made concerning the Colo- nies, and the Taxes imposed upon them." From him nothing better was expected ; it was quite natural that he should kiss the hand that fed him; but that Mr. Knox, who had resided in Savannah, and held high offices in Georgia, and who was supposed to be devoted
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THE STAMP ACT IN GEORGIA.
to the interests of the colonies, should take the part he did, was not only unlooked for, but was regarded first with amazement, and then with indignation.
As the time drew near when this act was to take effect, the spirit of the people became more excited, and occasions were not long wanting, in which it was fully manifested.
On the 26th of October, the anniversary of his ma- jesty's accession, the Governor ordered a general muster in Savannah, which drew together a large concourse of people, and in the evening there was a great tumult, occasioned by burning the effigies of several obnoxious persons, having first paraded them through the streets with insulting mockery. The
Governor, by proclamation, condemned such proceed- ings ; and this, having no effect, was in a few days fol- lowed by another, " against riots and tumultuous and unlawful assemblies." This also was unheeded; and the Governor himself declared, that "from that time the spirit of faction and sedition increased."
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