An address delivered, November 17th, 1927, before the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New York / by T.W. Cunningham, Jr.

AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED, NOVEMBER 17th, 1927 BEFORE THE
SOCIETY OF COLONIAL WARS IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK
BY
T. M. CUNNINGHAM, Jr.

The most difficult thing about an address of this kind is the selection of an appropriate subject It occurred to me that a brief sketch of the Colony of Georgia, and its development might be interesting. I hasten to say that it is not my purpose to advertise the State from which I come, nor to paint in glowing colors its place in the sun. As I am speaking to a gathering of educated gentlemen I desire rather to speak of the things which I think will interest them.
Fifty-four years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, the Spanish had settled the seacoast of Georgia, which was known as the Spanish Province of Guale. Their first settlement was on St. Catherine's Island in 1566, and the Fran ciscan Friars taught in the province as early as 1595. There are interesting Spanish ruins on St. Simons' Island and at St. Mary's and Darien.
It took the English 130 years to start the Colony of Georgia. The original grant was to Lord Raleigh, whose property reverted to the Crown upon his attain der in 1603. Then George I granted it to Sir Robert Heath, who forfeited it for non user. Next George II granted it to the Lords Proprietors of South Caro lina, who farmed it out to Sir Robert Montgomery on condition that within the space of three years he would found a colony to be known as the "Margravate of Azilia." Although the advertisements of Sir Robert were as alluring and exaggerated as the proposed name, the wary settler was not enticed.
The Crown then acquired the title from the Lords, Proprietors of South Carolina, and George II granted a charter for a period of twenty years to a

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corporation by the name of "The Trustees for Estab lishing the Colony of Georgia in North America." The reasons given by the charter for the creation of the Colony were thus expressed, "to afford to impov erished persons an opportunity to earn in the free lands of the New World that livelihood which they could not find in the Old; to strengthen the Southern Colonies in America; and to especially interpose a barrier to the repetition of the Indian ravages recently committed in South Carolina."
The territory conveyed was the land between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers and westerly from the heads of these rivers to the South Seas. The States of Alabama and Mississippi were ultimately carved out of the Georgia territory, which yet left Georgia the largest state in area east of the Mississippi River.
The man whose brain conceived this enterprise, whose persistence wrested the charter from that par simonious and contentious Monarch, George II, and whose enthusiasm, courage and sagacity carried the enterprise to fruition was James Edward Oglethorpe. His noble sympathies had 'become enlisted in the cause of those unfortunates whom the rigors of the English Common Law had condemned to debtor's prisons. He had done much to ameliorate their hard condi tions in England, and the scheme for the coloniza tion of Georgia was inspired by his vision to afford for them an asylum in the New World. Thus the Colony of Georgia received its first impulse from a purely charitable design.
James Oglethorpe was one of the most remark able men of an age which was the most brilliant and

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the most corrupt in English History. Although he was a great administrator, his fame rests chiefly upon his career as a soldier. He fought with Prince Eugene in the wars against the Turks, and with con spicuous gallantry at the siege of Belgrade; and he fought with Malborough against the armies of Louis XIV. He was Commander-in-Chief of the English forces in South Carolina and Georgia, and he repelled the Spanish aggressions on the English colonies in America. His defence of the fortress of Frederica and the successful issue of the Battle of Bloody Marsh secured his military fame, and the southern colonies to the English Crown. After his return from Georgia he became a general in the English Army. When Gage was recalled from America, General Oglethorpe then over 70 years of age was offered the command of the English armies then operating against the revolutionists in America, but declined because he did not approve the policies of the English government.
He was an aristocrat and possessed of an ample fortune, which he spent lavishly on the Colony of Georgia. He was a member of Parliament for 32 years. Edmund Burke considered him "a more extraordinary person than any he had ever read of." He is mentioned frequently in Boswell's Biography, and in the letters of Hannah Moore and Sir Robert Walpole. Pope enshrined hmi in poetry. He was the friend of Samuel Johnson. His tact and fairness in his dealings with the Indians made of them his allies; and he won the friendship and esteem of Tomochichi, the great chief of the Yamacraws. He outlived all his contemporaries and died at the ad-

vanced age of 96. A noble monument in bronze in Chippewa Square, Savannah, commemorates his ser vices to the Colony of Georgia.
The first settlers to the number of about 120, came out in the good ship "Anne" with Oglethorpe and landed February 1, 1733, on Yamacraw Bluff, which is now Savannah. Unlike the descendants of the "Pilgrim Fathers," no one claims descent from these first settlers. They were for the most part made up of insolvent debtors who were seeking asylum in an hospitable land. But they were an ineffective lot, unfitted to cope with a savage wilderness, and they soon succumbed. Since I have mentioned the "Pil grim Fathers," I must say that my sympathies have always been with the "Pilgrim Mothers." And since I saw "Plymouth Rock," which is but a mere pebble surrounded by an iron fence, and have checked up on the tonnage of the "Mayflower," I give the palm to the New England Historians.
Oglethorpe on his second expedition to Georgia in 1736 brought out a very different lot of colonists. They were composed in part of Scotch Highlanders and Salzburgers, and many of their descendants in Georgia can be identified by their original names.
Two very remarkable men came out with Ogle thorpe on his second expedition John Wesley and Charles Wesley. Charles came out in the capacity of Oglethorpe's secretary and John as Pastor to the Colonists. Charles Wesley originated the society at Oxford, which was nicknamed "Methodists," because of their methodical performance of their religious duties. John Wesley was the Master spirit of this society, and became the leader of the great religious

revival of the Eighteenth Century, and is accredited as the founder of Methodism. John Wesley was an ordained Episcopal Minister and organized the first Sunday School in the United States in the Parish of Christ Church in Savannah, and the Sunday School has continued with unbroken succession and is to-day in flourishing condition. Charles Wesley wrote the hymns which became the favorite poems of the Metho dists. Some of them are very familiar to us, as for instance: "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," "Christ the Lord Is Risen To-Day," "Jesus Lover of My Soul," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."
Upon the return of John Wesley to England there came out to Georgia to take his place George Whitfield who had been a member of the Society at Oxford. Whitfield was the greatest popular orator of his day. He preached literally to multitudes. He had a commanding presence and a most wonderful voice, said to be superior in volume and melody even to that of the great Irish orator O'Connell. Tradition has it that when he preached in Philadelphia on the shores of the Deleware his voice could be distinctly heard on the other shore in New Jersey. Whitfield abounded in good works and with the patronage of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, he founded the Orphanage for boys at Bethesda near Savannah, which was the first orphanage organized in the United States, and it is to-day doing a wonderful work. Whitfield is buried in the Church Yard of the "Old South Church" at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Slavery and rum were prohibited in the Colony. But the Trustees were reluctantly compelled to

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legalize slavery, and I suppose that prohibition of rum was about as successful then as it is now.
There were no lawyers in the Colony while it was administered by the Trustees. An old record states of the first Court organized in Georgia, "There were no pleaders of the law present, but some fine old Eng lish beer." The Salzburgers from their settlement of Ebenezer rejoiced that there were neither lawyers, courts, nor rum among them. It is one of the most curious facts of history that all of the colonies started their careers without lawyers. There was no lawyer among the founders of the Plymouth Colony or the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Lawyers were hated and feared and regarded with great disfavor by the early colonist. But the Colonial bar came in time to be the chief bulwark of Colonial liberty. There never was in any land, in any age, a bar which displayed greater learning, abilities and courage than did the Colonial bar at the time of the Revolution. A colonial lawyer wrote the Virginia Bill of Rights, the first written Constitution of a free state. A Colonial lawyer with his great courage, zeal and matchless eloquence struck the spark which kindled the fires of the Revolution. Another Colonial lawyer penned the Declaration of Independence. The prin cipal draftsman and expounder of the Federal Con stitution was a Colonial lawyer.
Georgia ceased to be a Trust Estate and became a royal province June 20, 1752. The colony had not flourished under the Trustees. There were about 1,500 inhabitants when it became a royal province. Under the administration of the Royal Governors, and particularly under Sir James Wrights's adminis-

tration, the colony flourished until at the time of the Revolution it had about 15,000 inhabitants.
The criminal statutes of this period are interest ing and prove the great advance in our civilization. "Gouging and biting" was a familiar crime of the period. Misdemeanors were punished with the pil lory, the lash, and branding; and hanging without benefit of clergy was meted out to the counterfeiter, the forger, and the horse thief. The poor debtor who had escaped from his English prison found that he avoided Scylla but had run upon Charybdis. An Act passed in 1766 attested the necessity for a state of constant preparedness. It provided "If any male person should attend church without carrying with him a gun or a pair of pistols in good order and fit for service with at least six charges of powder and ball, or shall fail to take such gun or pistol with him to bis pew or seat, he shall be fined ten shillings."
There was no such thing as Religious Freedom. Everyone was required to attend divine worship. It was a crime to deny the existence of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments. It is not recorded that we burned any witches. As opposed to this reli gious intolerance, hear the ringing words of the pres ent Constitution of Georgia. "All men have the natural and inalienable right to worship God, each according to the dictates of his own conscience, and no human authority should in any case control or inter fere with such right of conscience." I would com mend this to those whose boast it is that they are one hundred per cent. Americans.
The first provincial President of Georgia and Commander-in-Chief of its military forces was Arch-

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bald Bulloch. One of his sons was a United States Senator, two of his grandsons were in the Confederate Navy one of them fitted out the Confederate cruiser Alabama, and his great grandson was President Roosevelt.
Savannah was taken and the State subjugated by the British in 1779. The French Fleet under D'Estaing laid seige to Savannah and in an assault on the City, D'Estaing was repulsed with sanguinary losses. In this assault Count Pulaski fell and so did Sergeant Jasper, both of whom are commemorated by fine monuments in the public squares in Savannah.
Georgia although the youngest of the thirteen original states was the fourth to ratify the Federal Constitution. In those days Georgia was a long way from Philadelphia, which was the place where the Constitutional Convention met. The three states which ratified before Georgia were the nearby states of Delaware, New Jersey and Connecticut. When Georgia ratified, the question of the adoption of the Constitution hung in the balance. Virginia ratified it by the narrow margin of a majority of 10 votes out of 168, and without Virginia's ratification the adoption of the Constitution would have been im practicable.
The State of Georgia was a great stickler for states' rights and was in constant conflict with the Federal Government over the subject. She denied the Appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States over her state courts and defied the judgments of the Supreme Court upholding the jurisdiction and made good her defiance until after the Civil War. It was not until 1872 that the

Supreme Court of the United States was able to en force a judgment of reversal in a Georgia case.
The litigation in which the State was involved in the Supreme Federal Court is interesting. The case of Georgia against Brailsford is interesting because is was tried in the Supreme Court of the United States before a jury, and the charge to the jury was delivered by Chief Justice Jay. It was the first reported case in the Supreme Court and the question involved was whether the statutes of Geor gia confiscating the estates of British subjects con flicted with our subsequent treaty with Great Britain. Georgia lost her case before the jury, and the prac tical result was that all her confiscation statutes went by the board.
Chisholm's Executor v. The State of Georgia was a celebrated case. It was instituted in the Supreme Court of the United States. The State of Georgia took the position before the Court that a sovereign state was not suable and instructed her counsel to decline to argue the merits of the case, but simply to insist upon the want of jurisdiction of the Court. The Court rendered judgment against the state and ordered the Marshal to enforce its judgment. The state through its Legislature promptly replied that if the Marshal set foot on Georgia soil he would be promptly ejected, and that the State would, if necessary, employ armed force to uphold its sovereignity. Shortly thereafter an amendment to the Constitution was proposed pro hibiting a suit against a state by citizens of another State or a foreign state. The amendment was promptly adopted. This is now the llth Amend-

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ment. This Amendment nullified the decision of Chisholm v. Georgia as was subsequently decided in Hollingsworth v. Virginia.
In 1795 the Legislature of Georgia authorized the Governor to sell certain portions of its western lands to four named companies, and letters patent were accordingly issued by the Governor to these com panies. The transaction came to be known as the "Yazoo Fraud." It was a wanton dissipation of public property, and generally believed to have been corruptly obtained. Many public men became in volved and the clamors aroused thereby shook the nation from center to circumference. The next Legislature repealed the Act and burned it so that "no trace of so infamous a transaction should remain in the public offices of the State." This gave rise to the case of Fletcher v. Peck (6 Cranch 87), which went to the Supreme Court from Massachu setts. Peck had bought some of these Yazoo lands from Fletcher, who had covenanted that the state's title was good and was not constitutionally or legally impaired by any subsequent legislation of the state. The Supreme Court of the United States decided that the grant of the lands by the state was a contract and that the state could not impair the obligation of the contract when rights had vested thereunder. This was the first decision of the Supreme Court which nullified a state Act which impaired the obligation of a contract. The subsequent case of Darmouth Col lege v. Woodward (4 Wheat 519) is cited as the lead ing case, because it was illumined by the great argu ments of Webster and of Wirt, but Chief Justice Marshall had previously decided the identical ques tion in Fletcher v. Peck.

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In 1802 Georgia ceeded to the United States aU of her lands west of the Chattahoochee River, out of which were subsequently erected the states of Alabama and Mississippi. One of the considerations for the grant was that the United States would extinguish the Indian titles. There were a large number of Indians in the State Creeks and Cherokees. The Creeks were removed without difficulty to the western territory, but the Cherokees who were numerous in the northern part of the state undertook to set up a separate and independent state.
This brought on a conflict between the Cherokees and the State of Georgia. Eventually the Cherokee Nation brought an injunction suit against the State of Georgia in the Supreme Court of the United States. The Cherokees rested their right to sue on the assertion that they were a foreign nation. The State of Georgia disdained to appear in the suit. When the suit came on for a hearing the Court through Chief Justice Marshall decided that the Cherokees were neither a foreign nation nor a state, and the suit was dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
In the meantime, an Indian named George Tas sels was tried and convicted in Hall County for a murder committed within the Cherokee Territory. His contention was that the Cherokees were a sovereign nation, and that Georgia had no right to punish an Indian for a crime committed in the Cherokee Terri tory. Tassels appealed his case to the Supreme Court of the United States. The State of Georgia ignored the writ of error issued by the Supreme Court, and took a belligerent attitude. Much heat was devel oped over the case and it became a sectional question,

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and while the discussion was at its height the sheriff of Hall County hanged the prisoner and thus ended the case. Another Indian, James Groves, who was convicted of murder in Murray County was hanged by the Sheriff while his case was pending in the Supreme Court.
Worcester and Butler, two missionaries to the Cherokees, were tried and convicted in the state courts; they appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States; their appeal was sustained. These cases engendered much ill-feeling between the North and the South. President Andrew Jackson sympa thized with the position of the State of Georgia in the Indian question. The State flaunted the mandate of the Supreme Court and was upheld by the Presi dent, Jackson said: "John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it."
The first iron vessel ever seen in American waters was financed by Gazaway B. Lamar, a Savannah Merchant, and was riveted and launched in Savannah in 1894, the plates for which were constructed by John Laird of England, who afterwards built the Confed erate cruiser "Alabama." The first steamship which ever crossed the Atlantic was named "Savannah," and sailed from Savannah for Liverpool May 22, 1819.
Of all the Southern states, Georgia recuperated quickest from the effects of the War between the States and the reconstruction era. Benjamin H. Hill, the great Senator from Georgia, and Henry W. Grady did much, perhaps more than any other two men in the South to heal the breach between the two sections. Two generations of young men have grown up in the South since the Civil War,

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and we have fought two foreign wars since. There is no section of the country which is so purely Amer ican as the State of Georgia. The percentage of foreign born persons hi the State of Georgia is very small. In Georgia more than 99 per cent, of the whites are native born of native parentage. We re gard the Constitution as the Constitution of our fore fathers. We rejoice that the bitterness of Civil War has passed and that in the fullness of time all sections of our common country are united.
The industrial recuperation of the South from the effects of the Civil War has been very slow. The loss of slaves regarded as so much property, and the other property losses entailed by the war while considerable were not the things which kept the South in a long state of industrial depression. At the beginning of the war the South was mainly agricultural, as it is even to-day. In the South physical manual labor was mostly performed by the slaves and therefore manual labor came to be a badge of inferiority. There was comparatively little industrial development in the State in consequence of which there were no trained skilled industrial workers. There was a wide gulf between the upper and lower strata of society. Before the war and for many years after the war no one was admitted into the upper strata of society if he were a tradesman or a manual laborer. Society was domi nated by the members of the liberal professions and the planters. Shortly after the war mechanical inven tions gave a great impetus to industrialism. The South was wholly unprepared to take advantage of the situation. It was not a question merely of capital; the South had no trained workers, no training schools

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for their education, and the young men of the South were wholly without industrial education. They knew nothing1 whatever about markets or mass pro duction, nor any of the secrets of modern industrial ism. Agriculture did not flourish in the South when compared with the West, because finally it rested upon the shoulders of the ignorant and the shiftless. The Southern white man would not till the soil, if he could hire a negro to do it for him. The consequence is that while the other sections of the country were growing prosperous, the South was stagnating. But as I have pointed out before, two generations have come on since the war. The South is rapidly learning. Technical schools are being established all over the South and many of them are nourishing. The young men of the South are specializing. We are rapidly building up trained workers both black and white. The ancient social barriers are breaking down. The South has wrested the leadership of cotton manu facturing from New England. This is neither the time nor the place to tell you of the marvelous indus trial progress of the South in the last two decades. The slogan was once "Go West, young man;" it is now, "Go South, young man." There unquestionably lies the door of opportunity.
The negro question has ceased to be altogether a Southern question. The diffusion of the negroes through the North and West has nationalized the question. I think the negro fares better industrially in the South than he does in the North. Theoreti cally his social statue is better in the North than in the South, but my observation is that this is mostly theory. We have no laws in Georgia which discrimi-

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nate against the political rights of the negro. In a large measure he simply refrains from voting because the issue has already 'been determined by a white prim ary, or he has not paid his poll tax in so many years that it is too expensive to vote, or like a great many of the white folks he is not interested in politics and regards the vote as a burden and not a privilege.
Race riots with us are comparatively rare. We have never had such race riots as occurred in Chicago and East St. Louis.
We recognize the undeniably unfortunate posi tion of the negro, and we have inter-racial committees all through the South composed of the best brains and character of both races, who are attacking the prob lem and who look the facts in the face. Amalgama tion, segregation, cultural equality, deportation such things are not discussed. In our State the negroes are 41.7 per cent, of the population. In Mississippi and South Carolina they constitute more than half of the population. Under such conditions we cannot indulge in theories, we must face the facts.
Communism and radicalism does not exist in the South. The agitation against the sentence of the Courts in the Sacco-Vanzetti case found no support in the South. The noise of the sentimentalists and the blatant anarchists found no echo here. I do not believe that our people would tolerate in their colleges either loose thinking or free thinking, radicalism or any of the other isms.
I think the sentiment among intelligent Southern men is that the South is handicapped by its political solidity. It will be difficult to break the solid South

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as long as the delegates from the South to the Repub lican National Conventions are recruited from the colored brethren. We also rather suspect that the political managers of the Republican party feel that there are certain political advantages in the status quo. But looking at the matter from a broad national viewpoint, I believe that it would be a good thing not only for the South but for the Nation, if the solid South could be broken. It would broaden the states manship of the Country and our political parties would divide more on fundamental principles. The real political cleavage of our people is along the lines of conservatism and radicalism. The South would be a stronghold of conservatism because its population is largely agricultural and native-born.
But whatever our sectional differences may be, our Country is substantially homogeneous. There is no equal extent of territory in the world (and there never has been since the history of the world began) inhabitated by such a mass of people who spoke the same language, had the same customs and whose hopes and aspirations were identical. It is this which makes our nation to-day the most powerful not only in material wealth but in potential influence. This is the great heritage which we must preserve and transmit to pos terity. We can best do that by the preservation of the ideals which animated our forefathers who founded this Government, and this I understand is the mission of the Society of Colonial Wars.
Felix Harriett Collection University of Georgia LibzoxiM