Georgia – U.S. to 1877

September 18, 2013

Carolina on My Mind (and Georgia and Chesapeake too)

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As the 17^th century progressed, the map of the United States was becoming more and more complete as people from all over Europe came to the New World to settle the land. Out of all these countries, England emerged as the dominant colonizing force. Starting with the colonization of Roanoke in 1585, the English gradually took control of the majority of the eastern United States by the end of the 17^th century.

Chapter 7 and 11 of Alan Taylor’s American Colonies discusses the English colonization of Chesapeake Bay, the Carolinas and Georgia. The chapters almost read like a coming-of-age story for English settlers, who finally learned how to effectively and efficiently settle American land. The ultimate testament to this is how Taylor discusses the settlement of Georgia, the final colony discovered by the English. He uses three pages at the end of discussing the settlement of the Carolinas, not even giving the colony its own chapter. This is due to the fact that colonization there was significantly less arduous than at other locations, where there was no major quarrel with the local Indians or disastrous experiments in running the local economy. Taylor describes James Oglethrope and the Georgia Trustees as “powerful and distant elites (242)” and even “dictatorial (242)” in their approach to successful management. Initially after reading the chapter I felt unsatisfied with Taylor’s overview of Georgia’s founding, but when Georgia students in the class spoke of how dry the history of their own state was, I felt fulfilled.

In reading Taylor’s work, it is interesting to see how each colony makes use of its unique environment to create an agricultural-based economy, and the Carolinas were no different. As a Canadian and being inexperienced with American history, while I was aware of the Virginia tobacco plantations, I was unaware of the significance that rice played in the economy of the Carolinas. Taylor writes how rice “thrived in the wet lowlands of Carolina (237)” and that annual exports reached 43 million pounds in 1740, “comprising over 60% of the total exports from Carolina (237).” While their economy was dependent on a different resource than other colonies, the means by which the Carolinians exploited the available rice was through the same method of other settlements: slavery. As echoed in the blog posts made by JANEWTOWN and ROMANGONE, and in Taylor’s own words, the treatment of slaves in Carolina was among the worst on the entire continent. “Desperate to suppress the rebellion (240),” Taylor writes, the Carolinians clearly took no chances with their slaves.

One aspects of the reading on Chesapeake Bay that stuck with me was Taylor’s description of the social hierarchy that mirrored the traditional English model of king, provincial government, court and household. For a group of settlers that were desperate to escape from the overpopulation and underemployed English cities, they still retained many of the same elements of society they left with.

September 18, 2013

Gradual Racialization of Slavery

Tuesday’s reading revealed the nature of slavery in the Chesapeake and the Carolinas. For some reason, I was under the impression that slavery, especially in the South, had been racialized from the beginning. However, as the reading revealed, the development of white supremacy and racialized slavery actually happened in steps.

Long before the division between black and white, there existed a stark class divide. A sense of “otherness” was thrust upon the common white planters. Wealth inequality was the first existing divide between the inhabitants of the Chesapeake and Carolina colonies. It was very surprising to find that before the commodification of black slaves around 1670, there were black people who actually enjoyed freedom and legal privileges such as property, land, and even slaves or servants of their own after they had finished their terms as indentured servants (154).

When white indentured servants declined, African slaves were the solution to the lack of labor. I thought solidarity had always existed between all white people in the colonies due to their common ancestry, but it wasn’t until the planter elite began to worry for their safety at the growing portion of the population that consisted of slaves that this sense was forged. They relied on the common white men to muster up a sense of racial pride in order to protect the colonists from uprisings (156). In the process, the issues of wealth inequality and social stratification within the white community were put on the back burner while a preoccupation on racial superiority flourished.

Ultimately, after reading these Taylor chapters it became evident that the discrimination created by the planter elite wasn’t motivated by principle. They were neither particularly against common folk nor black people. Rather, they did whatever was economically beneficial to retaining their wealth and status.

September 18, 2013

The Users AKA Carolinians

The Carolinas were granted to eight politicians who had been favorites of the King of England. The colony quickly became a plantation colony, but they chose to leave the declining profits of tobacco and look at other crops to grow. They looked into raising livestock, which was relatively different from the past colonies, and they cultivated rice at “over 60% of the total exports from Carolina as measured by value.” They also took a major part in the slave trade as they took in so many slaves that the colonist felt threatened by the chance of a slave revolt. This was helpful as they looked to stay away from the Chesapeake’s problem of too much work for few people.

The Carolina colonists were also smart about how they took care of any types of attacks on their people. They had a regular pattern of using other bodies before taking the risks of hurting themselves. The chapter speaks of how slaves were used to kill the Spanish when the colony had problems with attackers from Florida and slaves were rewarded if they killed some of the adversaries. They also used the Indians with the “gun trade.” In this trade the Carolina colonists used the Indian’s numbers and knowledge of the land to find other natives and bring them to back as slaves. Taylor even adds that “colonists paid far more for a slave than for deerskins” which influenced the natives to take the weapons they were provided with and bring back their own kind in order to please the colonists.

The chapter also briefly goes into Georgia and how the Carolinas used that area to their advantage also. As stated in a classmates post (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/the-carolinas-and-the-purpose-of-georgia/) Georgia was mainly a border state to keep distance from the Spanish. Georgia also made it less likely for runaway slaves to make it to the Spaniards, who took runaway slaves in, before being caught by the colonists. Georgia denied the slave system itself but took no part in keeping others from slavery.

September 18, 2013

The Carolinas and the Purpose of Georgia

Chapter 11 discuses the development of the southern colonies known collectively as the Carolinas. This land was granted to eight English aristocrats known as the Lords Proprietors. As pointed out by Mangone, in 1670 when Charles Town was founded the British were making a bold move in challenging the Spanish supremacy directly south of the colony. Thus colonists needed to be brought in quickly which the Lord Proprietors tried to attract with promises of religious toleration and grants of land. It was hard to attract colonist due to the relatively harsh living conditions especially in the Low Country of South Carolina with its, “hot, humid, and enervating summer replete with bitter insects,”. Although most colonist tolerated the conditions due to the abundance of fertile land to be exploited.

Weather was not the only concern of incoming colonists. The regions, being only recently settled, had native tribes who resisted the colonists’ expansion into their land. Although the Carolinas quickly dispatched of most of the native peoples and quickly expanded into the area. The Carolinas opened a trade relation and framed an alliance with the Westo to help deal with other tribes and bolster their profits only to ignore them when they were threatened by the Savannah. While there were skirmishes between the natives and colonist, most were relatively small and did not really affect colonial encroachment. Later there were, however, many raids on native villages such as Moore’s raid on Nooherooka, where they slaughtered hundreds. There was also the Carolina Indian rebels who tried to push back the Carolina colonist. They were unable to maintain their supplies and were forced to make peace due to the colonist superior firepower and their native allies.

The Carolinas’ plantation style of agriculture required more labor than was obtainable from the mother country thus they turned to slavery. The planters in the Carolinas had feared slave rebellions to the location, since it was a frontier colony they know that it would be easy for slaves to escape and form large groups to resist capture. Once such rebellion occurred in 1739 near the Stono River in Charles Town where runaway slaves obtained firearms, gained a fairly large following, killed whites and burned down multiple plantations. They were not entirely prejudice as they did spare an innkeeper who was not harsh to his slaves. After this rebellion and other minor ones, slave owners in the Carolinas feared slave rebellions so some would resort to brutal methods to keep the slave population in check. Although not all slave owners adopted this policy it was still a widespread issue in the Carolinas.

Georgia was founded mostly as a border colony to protect the recently very profitable Carolinas. As such the colony itself did not attract the attention of wealthy land owners wishing to expand their agriculture empire. The colony also rejected the slave system but did not show the need to emancipate slaves in other colonies. The colony was a refugee to slaves, criminals, and tax evaders. The colony also followed a plantation style of agriculture but on a smaller scale due to lack of labor.

September 17, 2013

Discussing British Aggression and the Overlooking of Georgia

A major theme in American Colonies in this week’s reading is England’s emergence as a major imperial power in the mid-17th century. Two of England’s earliest attempts at colonizing the “New World”, Jamestown and Roanoke, were relatively low risk endeavors and went widely unnoticed by the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch. Although Roanoke failed miserably, Jamestown’s survival followed by moderate success and establishment of additional settlements in Virginia officially marked England’s entrance into the “New World”. When compared to the empire the Spanish had forged in present day Mexico and Florida, England’s territory in Virginia and Massachusetts was diminutive. However, England’s confidence grew significantly as the 17th century drew onward and in 1670 they founded Charles Town on the mouth of the Ashley River in present day South Carolina. This was a bold statement by the English because it defied Spanish claims to the coast and was much closer to the major Spanish city of San Agustin than the English settlement of Jamestown.
As Taylor describes the Lords Proprietor that controlled the Carolina territory and their methods of attracting settlers and actually settling the massive amount of land they impulsively “claimed”, he portrays the English as these daring up-starts who are directly challenging the Spanish for superiority in the Americas. Taylor also depicts the English as a country determined to thrive in the Americas and through their relentless recruitment of Englishmen to the Carolina territory, they were able to construct a colony formidable enough to prevent the Spanish from continuing their attacks. I consider Taylor’s representation of the English’s sharp rise in aggressiveness toward claiming and settling land in the Americas relatively easy to comprehend and overall quite effective. However, I found Taylor’s section regarding the establishment of Georgia less than adequate.
I understand there is tremendous skill required to write concisely but I found Taylor’s section on the colony of Georgia to be lacking significant depth. Despite providing a history (even a brief one) of Native people and their experiences prior to European arrival in previous areas of focus, Taylor offered no information about Native people and their existence in Georgia before it became a British colony. Despite Taylor’s decision to leave Natives out, I did not find his section on Georgia completely distasteful. I appreciate the distinctions he made between Georgia and the rest of the British colonies. For example, he discussed the trustees’ decision to forbid the importation or possession of slaves until 1751. He also described the difference in crop cultivation, most colonies grew tobacco, indigo, or rice but Georgia produced hemp, flax, mulberry, and grapes during the early years of the colony. Perhaps the most noticeable difference he described was the colony of Georgia’s attempt to prohibit rum consumption on the grounds that it “deterred hard work and moral uplift”.
Lastly, I would like to comment on a Georgia’s role as a British colony in the 17th century. As my classmate Evan Farese mentioned, Carolina was initially intended as a buffer zone between Virginia and Florida. Following the economic success in the Carolinas, the crowned deemed it necessary to create Georgia as a buffer zone between the Carolinas and Spanish Florida. Although it was not a glamorous one at the start, Georgia did play a very important role in the English expansion in the Americas.