“We are afraid, sir, from what you have wrote in relation to negroes, that he Honourable Trustees have been misinformed as to our conduct relating thereto; for we can with great assurance assert, that this Board has always acted an uniform part in discouraging the use of negroes in this colony, well knowing it to be disagreeable to the Trustees, as well as contrary to an act existing for the prohibition of them, and always give it in charge to those whom we had put in possession of lands, not to attempt the introduction or use of negroes.  But notwithstanding our great caution, some people from Carolina, soon after settling lands on the Little Ogeechee, found means of bringing and employing a few negroes on the said lands, some time before it was discovered to us, upon which they thought it high time to withdraw them, for fear of being seized, and soon after withdrew themselves and families out of the colony, which appeals to us at present to be the resolution of divers others."[518]

It was charged that the law-officers knew of the presence of Negroes in Georgia; that their standing and constant toast was, “the one thing needful” (Negroes); and that they themselves had surreptitiously aided in the procurement of Negroes for the colony.  The supporters of the colonists grew less powerful as the struggle went forward.  The most active grew taciturn and conservative.  The advocates of Negro labor became bolder, and more acrimonious in debate; and at length the champions of exclusive white labor shrank into silence, appalled at the desperation of then opponents.  The Rev. Martin Bolzius, one of the most active supporters of the trustees, wrote those gentlemen on May 3, 1748:—­

     “Things being now in such a melancholy state, I must humbly
     beseech your honors, not to regard any more our of our
     friend’s petitions against negroes.”

The Rev. George Whitefield and James Habersham used their utmost influence upon the trustees to obtain a modification of the prohibition against “the use of negroes.”  On the 6th of December, 1748, Rev. Whitefield, speaking of a plantation and Negroes he had purchased, wrote the trustees:—­

“Upwards of five thousand pounds have been expended in that undertaking, and yet very little proficiency made in the cultivation of my tract of land, and that entirely owing to the necessity I lay under of making use of white hands.  Had a negro been allowed, I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans, without expending above half the sum which has been laid out.  An unwillingness to let so good a design drop, and having a rational conviction that it must necessarily, if some other method was not fixed upon to prevent it—­these two considerations, honoured gentlemen, prevailed on me about two years ago, through the bounty of my good friends, to purchase a plantation in South Carolina, where negroes are allowed.  Blessed be God,