Georgia was once included in the territory of Carolina, and extended from the Savannah to the St. John’s River.  A corporate body, under the title of “The Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia,” was created by charter, bearing date of June 9, 1732.  The life of their trust was for the space of twenty-one years.  The rules by which the trustees sought to manage the infant were rather novel; but as a discussion of them would be irrelevant, mention can be made only of that part which related to slavery.  Georgia was the last colony—­the thirteenth—­planted in North America by the English government.  Special interest centred in it for several reasons, that will be explained farther on.

The trustees ruled out slavery altogether.  Gen. John Oglethorpe, a brilliant young English officer of gentle blood, the first governor of the colony, was identified with “the Royal African Company, which alone had the right of planting forts and trading on the coast of Africa.”  He said that “slavery is against the gospel, as well as the fundamental law of England.  We refused, as trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid crime.”  Another of the trustees, in a sermon preached on Sunday, Feb. 17, 1734, at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, London, declared, “Slavery, the misfortune, if not the dishonor, of other plantations, is absolutely proscribed.  Let avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of our own species as our wealth and possessions.”  Beautiful sentiments!  Eloquent testimony against the crime of the ages!  At first blush the student of history is apt to praise the sublime motives of the “trustees,” in placing a restriction against the slave-trade.  But the declaration of principles quoted above is not borne out by the facts of history.  On this point Dr. Stevens, the historian of Georgia, observes, “Yet in the official publications of that body [the trustees], its inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not on humane and liberal grounds, and even Oglethorpe owned a plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South Carolina, about forty miles above Savannah."[514] To this reliable opinion is added:—­

“The introduction of slaves was prohibited to the colony of Georgia for some years, not from motives of humanity, but for the reason it was encouraged elsewhere, to wit:  the interest of the mother country.  It was a favorite idea with the ‘mother country,’ to make Georgia a protecting blanket for the Carolinas, against the Spanish settlements south of her, and the principal Indian tribes to the west; to do this, a strong settlement of white men was sought to be built up, whose arms and interests would defend her northern plantations.  The introduction of slaves was held to be unfavorable to this scheme, and hence its prohibition.  During the time of the prohibition, Oglethorpe himself was a slave holder in Carolina."[515]

The reasons that led the trustees to prohibit slavery in the colony are put thus tersely.—­