Not only is Georgia thus the geographical focus of our
Negro population, but in many other respects, both now and
yesterday, the Negro problems have seemed to be centered in
this State. No other State in the Union can count a million
Negroes among its citizens,--a population as large as the
slave population of the whole Union in 1800; no other State
fought so long and strenuously to gather this host of Africans.
Oglethorpe thought slavery against law and gospel; but the
circumstances which gave Georgia its first inhabitants were
not calculated to furnish citizens over-nice in their ideas about
rum and slaves. Despite the prohibitions of the trustees, these
Georgians, like some of their descendants, proceeded to take
the law into their own hands; and so pliant were the judges,
and so flagrant the smuggling, and so earnest were the
prayers of Whitefield, that by the middle of the eighteenth
century all restrictions were swept away, and the slave-trade
went merrily on for fifty years and more.
Down in Darien, where the Delegal riots took place some
summers ago, there used to come a strong protest against
slavery from the Scotch Highlanders; and the Moravians of
Ebenezer did not like the system.
Pages:
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155