It’s 1732 and you live in the British colonies in North America . You just found out that a new colony has
been established called Georgia ,
and it’s apparently supposed to be a safe haven for debtors. That is really
good news for you since you are in huge debt. So you decide to pack up and head
south.
In this paper I will be talking about the Province of Georgia
and its development.
In April of 1732 General James Oglethorpe received a charter
from King George II to start a new colony. Then in June, Oglethorpe established
a colony and he called it Georgia .
He got the name for the colony from his King’s name which is George. Oglethorpe
originally started the colony as a safe haven for debtors.
When he was still in England , Oglethorpe’s best friend
was put in jail because he couldn’t pay his debts. Oglethorpe’s friend was put
in a jail cell with someone who had smallpox and he eventually died from that
disease. This angered Oglethorpe and he was determined to change the English
jails. He became known nation wide and eventually, with the help of his
friends, went to King George II to ask to start a new colony with a lot of the
debtors that were in jail, they received a charter for this new colony in 1732.
Thus the story of how Georgia
came to be.
Oglethorpe and his friends decided that their new colony
needed to have strict laws to keep everyone from being crazy. Oglethorpe’s colony
started to grow but very slowly. The strict laws that he put in place didn’t
settle well with the people. These were
some of his laws: No alcohol, no slaves, and Oglethorpe also didn’t want people
to have big plantations like the colonies farther north did. When he realized
that his strict laws were hindering the growth of his colony, Oglethorpe lifted
those laws and his colony started to grow.
Another reason Georgia
was established is because King George II wanted a barrier between the Spanish
colonized Florida
and the French colonized Louisiana and the rest
of the British colonies. So Georgia
was like the defender of the colonies from the Spanish or French trying to
invade the colonies.
This came in handy because in 1739 Spain and England started a conflict called
the War of Jenkins Ear. This led Oglethorpe to invade Florida . After he didn’t succeed in
defeating the Spanish, the Spanish leader in Florida
drew up plans to invade Georgia .
It was the perfect time to invade because after Oglethorpe’s defeat he was
going to need reinforcements. But there was no way he could get reinforcements
before Spain
would invade. So it was a perfect plan. In the first battle or skirmish the
Spanish were routed and had to retreat. In the next battle the Brits took the
Spanish by complete surprise and won that battle as well. Eventually Spain withdrew and went home to Florida . When the War of Jenkins Ear ended in 1748,
James Oglethorpe had left never to return and William Stevens became Governor
or President.
