negro insurrection in South Carolina-both incited by Spanish emissaries. He first penetrated Florida with a small force, and captured some outposts, early in 1740. In May he marched into Florida with six hundred of his regular troops, four hundred Carolina militia, and a large body of friendly Indians. He was before St. Augustine in June, after capturing two little forts, one within twenty miles of the city, and the other only two miles distant. A demand was made for the instant surrender of the fortress and garrison. It was defiantly refused. Oglethorpe determined to starve the garrison by a close investment. He surrounded the town, and with a little squadron blockaded the harbor. For awhile supplies for the fort were cut off, and the English were promised success, but very soon swift-sailing galleys ran the weak blockade and placed ample supplies in the fort. Oglethorpe had no cannon wherewith to batter and breach the fortress. Warned by the increasing heats of summer and the approach of the sickly season, whose malaria had already invaded his camp, the general raised the siege and returned to Savannah. Hostilities were now suspended for almost two years, when the Spaniards determined to invade Georgia. With a fleet of thirty-six vessels from Cuba and a land force about three thousand strong, they entered the harbor of St. Simons in July, 1742. The vigilant Oglethorpe, who had been informed of the expedition, was there before them, but with less than a thousand men including Indians. The governor of South Carolina had failed to furnish men or supplies, and upon the Georgians devolved the task of defending both provinces from invasion. The intrepid general, when he saw the white sails of the Spanish ships in the distance, went on board one of his own little vessels, and addressing the seamen, said: "We must protect Carolina and the rest of the colonies from destruction, or die in the attempt. For myself, I am prepared for all dangers. I know the enemy are far more numerous than we; but I rely on the valor of our men, and by God's help, I believe we will be victorious.” When the fleet passed the English batteries at the southern end of the island, Oglethorpe saw that resistance would be vain. He ordered his vessels to run up to Frederica, while he spiked his guns at St. Simons and retreated to the same place with his troops. There he waited for reinforcements from Carolina, but they did not come. Spanish detachments annoyed him with frequent attacks, but he always repulsed them. At length Oglethorpe resolved to act on the offensive, and make a stealthy night attack upon the Spanish encampment near St. Simons. He moved cautiously along a road which he had constructed, with a dense liveoak forest draped with Spanish moss on one side, and a deep morass on the CHAP. XIV. A NOVEL WAY OF PUNISHMENT. 481 other. When he was near the camp, a Frenchman in his little army ran ahead, fired his musket, and deserted to the enemy. The Spaniards were aroused, and Oglethorpe fell back to Frederica. The general punished the deserter in a novel way. He employed a Spanish prisoner to carry a letter to him, secretly, in which Oglethorpe addressed him as a spy in the enemy's camp. He told him to represent the Georgians as very weak in numbers and arms, and advise the Spaniards to attack them at once; and if they would not do so, to try and persuade them to remain at St. Simons three days longer, for within that time a British fleet with two thousand land troops would arrive to attack St. Augustine. The bearer of the letter, as Oglethorpe expected and hoped he would, carried it to the Spanish commander. It produced a great commotion in camp. The Frenchman was arrested and put in irons, and afterward hanged A council of war was called, and while it was in session some vessels from Carolina were seen at sea. They were mistaken for the British fleet alluded to, and the Spaniards determined to attack Oglethorpe immediately, and then hasten to the defence of St. Augustine. as a spy. An advanced division moved immediately on Frederica. On the narrow road flanked by the forest and the morass, within a mile of the fort, they were assailed by Oglethorpe and his Highlanders, who lay in ambush. Almost the whole party of the invaders were killed or captured. A second party pressing forward to their relief, met the fate of the first. The Spaniards retreated in confusion, leaving about two hundred of their companions dead on the field. They fled to their ships and hastened to St. Augustine, only to find that they had been outgeneraled by the governor of Georgia. The place of the battle has been called "The Bloody Marsh" to this day. The stratagem of Oglethorpe had worked such disaster to the Spanish expedition that its commander, Don Manuel de Monteano, was dismissed from the service. That stratagem probably saved Georgia and South Carolina from utter ruin. Oglethorpe had settled, colonized and defended Georgia with rare courage, energy and skill, not for personal glory and worldly gain, but for a great and benevolent purpose. Having firmly established the colony, he returned to England in 1743, where, after performing good military service for his king against the "Young Pretender," he retired to his seat in Essex. When General Gage returned to England from America in 1775, he was offered the chief command of the British army in this country, though he was then almost eighty years of age. His benevolent ideas did not suit the temper of the British ministry then, and General William Howe received the appointment. When, at the close of the Revolution, John Adams went to England as American minister at the British court, Oglethorpe was among the first to congratulate him because of the independence of his country. The brave Founder of Georgia died the next year, at the age of almost ninety years, with all his mental faculties in full vigor. Oglethorpe was a benefactor in the higher sense of that term. For the good of his fellow-men, he had renounced ease of body and mind and the enjoyment of fortune and friends in his native land. He had encountered dangers in many forms unknown in England, not for the glory that leads a soldier to brave the perils of a strange land. He was gentle and good; merciful toward offenders and enemies; a father to the emigrants whom he led to the banks of the Savannah River; the warm friend of the Wesleys and kind guardian of the Moravians, with a missionary spirit ever anxious for the spiritual welfare and mental culture of the pagans around him; and it always gave him pleasure to relieve the poor and the weak of their burdens. Oglethorpe outlived most of the companions of his youth; but he was so loving and lovable that he made "troops of friends" on his long journey of life, who were to him in his vigorous old age like green branches nourished by his abounding virtues. Even in that old age, his person was spoken of as "the finest figure that ever was seen.” His prominent eyes retained their CHAP. XIV. GEORGIA BECOMES A ROYAL PROVINCE. 483 brightness undimmed, and his person, tall and straight, was like a vigorous pine until the close of his life. After the departure of Oglethorpe, Georgia enjoyed repose from conflicts with hostile neighbors. He left the country in a state of tranquillity. The same year it passed from the control of a mild military government to that of a civil organization, managed by a president and five councillors or assistants, under the supreme authority of the trustees, in England. Yet the colony languished for reasons already mentioned, and general discontent prevailed. The restrictive laws were generally relaxed and were generally evaded, especially those relating to slave-labor. Slaves were brought across the Savannah from South Carolina, and hired to the Georgia planters for a hundred years, the sum paid for such life-service being the market value of the slave. The transaction was practically the introduction of the slavelabor system into Georgia. It was not interfered with; and very soon ships laden with negroes from Africa came to Savannah, and men, women and children were offered for sale, in a way somewhat evasive of law, in the open market, by the auctioneer. In the year 1750, Georgia was really a slavelabor province. Then agriculture flourished, and the colony took its place as a planting State in an equal position by the side of its sister across the Savannah. In 1752, when the twenty-one years named in the charter had expired, the trustees gladly gave that instrument to the king, and Georgia became a royal province. So it remained until the old war for independence. CHAPTER XV. REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF DISCOVERIES-SETTLEMENTS AND COLONIZATION IN AMERICA- W E have now traced the history of our country from its discovery at near the close of the fifteenth century, until the time when European colonies planted here, were forming that political union for mutual defence which speedily crystallized into the grand form of an independent nation late in the eighteenth century. In the course of these investigations, we have noted how the allurements of science, human enterprise, a lust for dominion and power, and the greed of individuals, impelled men to spend fortunes and risk their lives in making voyages of discovery along the coasts of the American continent, from the regions of the frozen ocean to those under the equator; also among the islands that lie in American waters within the tropic of Cancer. We have seen how the monarchs and navigators of Spain, Portugal, France and England struggled for the honors and emoluments to be derived from such. discoveries; how the Spaniards extended their dominions by force over the islands and coasts of the western world in the space of a few years, by the help of the Roman Pontiff, and obtained the mastery over vast and fertile regions in the warm zone, while the French, English and Dutch discovered and took possession of extensive domains in the temperate zone and far toward the verge of the Arctic Circle. These great movements were made in the "fullness of time," as if in preparation for that expansion of the human intellect and those wonderful human achievements which had then begun in Europe. Geographical science was then a favorite study, and the cosmographers were enthusiasts in the field of speculative philosophy founded upon that science. Stimulated by the few revelations of the learning of the East which commerce |