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Oglethorpe, Race, and Slavery 75 the idea of evading the ban on slavery. Second, Oglethorpe encour.. aged those settlers who, for whatever reason, supported or could be persuaded to support the continuing exclusion of slavery to make their views known to the Georgia Board. Finally, together with the other Trustees, but notably with Egmont, he consistently warned the mal.. contents of the difficulty, if not the sheer impossibility, of introducing into Georgia a modified version of South Carolina's slave society.3o By 1739 a propaganda war raged in Georgia and, more significantly, in London. The malcontents bombarded the Trustees and Members of Parliament with a range of literature in which they set out in often forthright language their analysis of the causes of and most appropriate remedies for the many ills that beset Georgia. They argued that Ogle.. thorpe would go to any lengths to protect his reputation and accused him of misleading the Georgia Board and thereby Parliament and the British people; they also accused him of bribery, coercion, and corrup.. tion.31 Their ploy was, quite simply, to discredit Oglethorpe and all those who sided with him. The Trustees' labor policy received significant support from two groups in Georgia: the Salzburgers at Ebenezer and the Highland Scots at Darien. Early in 1739, in response to the proslavery petition sent from Savannah in December 1738, both settlements dispatched counter.. representations to the Trustees.32 The malcontents argued that the Salzburger petition demonstrated the degree of spiritual and temporal tyranny exercised by Pastor Johann Martin Boltzius over his congre.. gation; they depicted the Darien petition as a prime example of the depths to which Oglethorpe would sink in order to get his way, in order to safeguard his reputation. What had persuaded the Highland Scots to "Act Inconsistent with their own or Posterity's Interest" by declaring their unequivocal opposi.. tion to chattel slavery? To the malcontents the answer was clear enough: Oglethorpe had bribed them with "the promise of a few cattle."33 In fact, as Harvey Jackson has argued, the Darien petition represented not so much a sordid bribe as a compromise between Oglethorpe and John Mackintosh Mohr that offered the hard..pressed Scots much needed economic assistance in exchange for an unambiguous declaration of their support for the ban on slavery. But had the Scots been coerced by Mohr and Oglethorpe? Although at least one of the petitioners claimed that this was the case, there is no conclusive evidence on this point. 76 Betty Wood But as Jackson has commented, "If coercion was involved, it was as much the coercion of circumstances and events as coercion by Mohr" and Oglethorpe.34 The Darien petition of 1739 reiterated what by that date were the thoroughly familiar military and economic reasons that had prompted the Trustees to outlaw slavery. But the unknown author of this docu.. ment opposed chattel slavery for reasons that, as one recent historian has noted, "would reverberate through the anti..slavery movement and culminate in Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address."35 The sinfulness of slaveholding was emphasized as were the natural rights of the African, including the right to freedom. As with all sins, sooner or later God would punish the sin of slaveholding, possibly through the device of a "bloody" rebellion. Here was an entirely new dimension to the de.. bate as to whether or not slavery should be permitted in Georgia. But who was responsible for penning these words? The possibility cannot be ruled out that even if he did not personally draft the Darien petition, Oglethorpe concurred with the sentiments it expressed. Although his main concern was with the implications of chattel slavery for Georgia's white society, by January 1739 Oglethorpe had gone further than any other Trustee in emphasizing the natural rights of the African and, of no little significance, the consequences of the slave trade for African society. By implication, he rejected the notion favored by George Whitefield, among others, that Africans benefited if not materially then certainly spiritually by their enforced removal from the heathen "darkness" of Africa to the Christian societies of the New World, and that this "benefit" in itself provided sufficient justification for their enslavement.36 Shortly after the Darien petition had been dispatched, Oglethorpe, who urged his fellow Trustees to stand firm against the malcontents, drew attention to the fact that the introduction of slavery into Georgia would "occasion the misery of thousands in Africa ... and bring into perpetual Slavery the poor people...

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