Posted on 08/20/2023 5:22:45 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
The original settlers in Georgia had outlawed slavery until James Habersham—Kemp’s ancestor...
Habersham’s reward for bringing the slave system to Georgia? He was appointed acting Governor under King George II.
Let’s be clear: Brian Kemp did not bring enslaved humans to Georgia. Nor is he responsible for the horrors perpetrated by his long-dead ancestors....
The Habershams imposed the enslaved labor plantation system over the fierce resistance of the small-scale farmers who objected that, once slavery is introduced, they too would be reduced to servitude. To these original Swiss-German freeholders, slavery was an abomination before God. The farmers of Darien, near Savannah, wrote a unanimous petition to the King’s counselor, stating, “It is shocking to nature that any race of mankind and their posterity should be sentenced to perpetual slavery.”
Few Americans know that Jefferson’s original Declaration included a long segment attacking the slave trade, a direct threat to the Habersham’s lucrative lock on the local slave auctions.The anti-slavery clause was the only part of Jefferson’s Declaration that was removed by the Continental Congress under pressure from the Georgia delegation headed by Joseph Habersham.
WIKI
The Georgia Experiment was the colonial-era policy prohibiting the ownership of slaves in the Georgia Colony. At the urging of Georgia’s proprietor, General James Oglethorpe, and his fellow colonial trustees, the British Parliament formally codified prohibition in 1735, two years after the colony’s founding. The ban remained in effect until 1751, when the diminution of the Spanish threat and economic pressure from Georgia’s emergent planter class forced Parliament to reverse itself.
The Spanish tactic of recruiting American slaves to military service in exchange for their emancipation buoyed Oglethorpe’s experiment by providing a strategic incentive to minimize the slave presence in Georgia.
in the interest of furthering their holdings into Georgia’s plentiful farmland, some South Carolinian plantation owners lobbied Georgians to flout the trustees’ wishes.
Sensing that he could not hold the ban in place through sheer force of will, Oglethorpe sought and received Parliamentary backing when the House of Commons passed legislation codifying the prohibition on slavery in Georgia in 1735.
The fiercest opponents of the Georgia Experiment were a group known as the Malcontents, led by Patrick Tailfer and Thomas Stephens. Unlike those rescued from the English debtors’ prison for the colonial proprietors, the Malcontents were overwhelmingly Scottish and received no financial assistance from the trustees to aid their relocation to Georgia.
In 1742, Oglethorpe won a resounding victory over the Spanish of the Battle of Bloody Marsh, effectively ending Spanish expansionism in North America. It was Oglethorpe’s greatest military victory that sealed the fate of his prized Georgia Experiment, as the removal of the Spanish threats substantially decreased incentive for the House of Commons to continue the promulgation of an increasingly unpopular ban on slavery. By 1750, the trustees acquiesced to Georgia’s demand for slave labor and in that year Parliament revised the act of 1735 to allow slavery as of January 1, 1751.
between 1751 and 1776, the colony’s population increase more than tenfold, to a total of about 33,000 (including 15,000 slaves).
However, not all white Georgians were unambiguous beneficiaries. Low-skilled white labor and white artisans commanded drastically reduced wages due to the competition of slave labor. The growing chasm between the ascendant planter class and a large contingent of small farmers, independent artisans, and unskilled white laborers sharply factionalized the colony both before and during the Revolutionary War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Experiment
“Obama’s maternal great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Duvall, also owned a pair of slaves listed in an 1850 census record. They were a 60-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman.
“In fact, the Duvalls were a wealthy family whose members were descended from a major landowner, Maureen Duvall, whose estate owned at least 18 slaves in the 17th century.”
WIKI
His advocacy for the economic benefits of slavery influenced a repeal on the ban of slavery.
After the ban on slavery in Georgia was lifted, his rice fields developed into a massive 15,000-acre plantation worked by 200 slaves.
As president of the upper house, he also assumed the position of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia during the 19-month absence of Governor James Wright from 1771 to 1772, who was in England. All three of his sons became supporters of the American Revolution, but Habersham pledged his loyalty to the Crown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Habersham
“A true and historical narrative of the colony of Georgia in America, from the first settlement thereof until this present period: containing the most authentick facts, matters and transactions therein; : together with His Majesty’s Charter, representations of the people, letters, &c. and a dedication to His Excellency General Oglethorpe”
By Pat. Tailfer, M.D. Hugh Anderson, M.A. Da. Douglas, and others, land-holders in Georgia, at present in Charles-Town in South-Carolina
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/n03913.0001.001/116:5?page=root;size=100;view=text
I read a few pages. Life was rough in early colonial Georgia.
And a similar fate awaits anyone pronouncing Whitemarsh like white marsh. It's pronounced Whitmarsh.
Don't say you weren't warned.
Similarly Effingham is pronounced like Effing'm, and Forsyth like F'syth not Forrrrr Syth.
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