SCOTT DOUGLAS GERBER: Georgia’s anti-slavery origins

Georgia figures prominently in the history of American slavery because of Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793 on Catharine Greene’s Mulberry Grove plantation near Savannah. Prior to that, Georgia stood alone among the original 13 colonies in having initially banned slavery via a 1735 statute entitled “An Act for Rendering the Colony of Georgia more Defensible by Prohibiting the Importation and use of Black Slaves or Negroes into the Same.” The 1735 statute was controversial from the beginning and resulted in years of acrimony between the trustees of colonial Georgia and the settlers.

Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe and named for King George II. It was the last and southernmost of the original 13 colonies to be established in British North America. The Georgia Charter of 1732 organized the trustees into a corporation with the authority to administer the colony for 21 years. The charter conferred upon the trustees the power to make law in Georgia in a manner not repugnant to the Crown.

Georgia was founded for three principal reasons: philanthropy, economic gain, and as a defensive buffer for South Carolina. The 1735 slavery ban resulted from all three.

Some settlers opposed slavery for moral reasons. For example, a Jan. 3, 1738/9 petition to the trustees from several Savannah inhabitants opposing a request to permit slavery in Georgia insisted that it was “shocking to human nature, that any race of mankind, and their posterity, should be sentenced to perpetual slavery.”

Oglethorpe himself opposed slavery in part because of the misery it would cause Africans denied their freedom. The Earl of Egmont was Georgia’s champion in Parliament, and next to Oglethorpe, he was the most important person in founding the Georgia colony. According to a Jan. 17, 1738/9 entry in the Earl of Egmont’s journal: “Col. Oglethorpe wrote again to the Trustees, to shew further inconveniences arising from the allowing the use of Negroes, viz. 1. That it is against the principles by which the Trustees associated together, which was to relieve the distressed, whereas we should occasion the misery of thousands in Africa, by setting men upon using arts to buy & bring into perpetual slavery the poor people, who now live free there.”

However, slavery was prohibited in Georgia primarily for economic and defense purposes. Economically, the concern was that slaves were cheaper than white labor, and they would out-compete the poor whites immigrating from Europe. It also was thought that slavery would lead to idleness among poor whites, which would adversely affect productivity and cultivation. Moreover, the production of silk and wine, which were Georgia’s primary exports, was believed to require more skill than slaves possessed.

With respect to military defense, the trustees feared slave insurrections and defections to Spain, who guaranteed their freedom. Another concern was that poor whites would mortgage their land to purchase slaves, which would result in forfeitures and land ownership by slave merchants. Slave merchants would not be cultivating the land, and there would be less men in Georgia to serve in the military and to make improvements to the land.

The slavery ban was the most controversial of the laws enacted by the trustees. The “Malcontents” — settlers strongly opposed to the trustees’ policies — fought hard to reverse the slavery ban, and they prevailed. Slavery, albeit under strict regulation, was permitted by the end of the Trustee Period.