United States History Student Edition

clothes, working tools, and other necessaries; and by giving refuge to . . . persecuted Protestants, the power of Britain, as a reward for its hospitality, will be encreased by the addition of so many religious and industrious subjects. ” — from A Brief Account of the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia by Gen. James Oglethorpe, 1733 The British also hoped Georgia would block any Spanish attack on the colonies from Florida. Oglethorpe and his settlers built forts and the town of Savannah to discourage such attacks. Georgia did not develop as Oglethorpe planned. Hundreds of poor people came from Britain, but few debtors settled there. Religious refugees from central Europe and a small group of Jews also arrived. Many settlers complained about Oglethorpe’s rules, especially the limits on landholding and the bans on rum and slave labor. Georgia was the only colony of the original 13 to ban slavery, at least temporarily. A frustrated Oglethorpe finally agreed to their demands. Disappointed with the colony’s slow growth, he gave up and turned Georgia over to the king in 1751. By that time, the British had been in eastern North America for almost 150 years. They had lined the Atlantic Coast with colonies. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING Explaining How did geography affect the economy of the Carolinas? LESSON ACTIVITIES 1. Argumentative Writing Read this passage from John Locke’s constitution for Carolina: “Every man has a property in his own person. . . . The labour of his body, and the work of his hands . . . are properly his.” Write a short essay explaining how that part of the colony’s constitution conflicts with the use of slavery in the colony. 2. Collaborating With a partner, create a five- or six-panel graphic narrative that tells the causes and the outcomes of Bacon’s Rebellion. Use dialogue and captions as well as illustrations to tell the story.

James Oglethorpe (1696–1785) received a charter for the Georgia colony in 1732. He arrived with settlers in 1733 and remained in America for 10 years. This portrait was created sometime before 1757.

Georgia Georgia, founded in 1733, was the last British colony set up in America. James Oglethorpe received a charter from George II for a colony where debtors and poor people could make a fresh start. In Britain, debtors (DEH•tuhrs)—those who had debts—could be imprisoned if they were unable to pay what they owed. Oglethorpe explained: “ By such a Colony, many families, who would otherwise starve, will be provided for, and made masters of houses and lands; the people in Great Britain to whom these [poor] families were a [burden], will be relieved; numbers of manufacturers will be here employed, for supplying them with

debtor one who owes money

refugee one who flees his or her home to seek refuge or safety from some danger or ill

PHOTO: Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo; TEXT: (bl)Oglethorpe, James. “A Brief Account of the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia Under James Oglethorpe, February 1, 1733,” in Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to the Origin, Settlement, and Progress of the Colonies in North America from the Discovery of the Country to the Year 1776; Peter Force, ed. Washington: Peter Force, 1886. (br) Locke, John. Two Treatises on Civil Government. 2nd ed. London: George Routledge and Son, 1887.

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