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plete gift to men who had lost, or perhaps had scarcely ever possessed, the faculty of earning their own maintenance. Oglethorpe devised how he might carry these unfortunate men to a place where, under happier auspices, they might open a fresh career. He obtained from King George II. a charter by which the country between the Savannah and the Altamaha, and stretching westward to the Pacific, was erected into the province of Georgia. It was to be a refuge for the deserving poor, and next to them for Protestants suffering persecution. Parliament voted £10,000 in aid of the humane enterprise, and many benevolent persons were liberal with their gifts. In November the first exodus of the insolvent took place. Oglethorpe sailed with one hundred and twenty emigrants, mainly selected from the prisons, penniless, but of good repute. He surveyed the coasts of Georgia, and chose a site for the capital of his new State. He pitched his tent where Savannah now stands, and at once proceeded to mark out the line of streets and squares. The Indians welcomed him with surprise and delight, and he was equally astonished and pleased at some of the fantastic ceremonies with which they first approached him. One of the Indian chiefs presented him with a buffalo skin adorned with the feathers of an eagle. "The feathers," he said, "signify love; the buffalo skin means protection: love and protect our families.”

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Next year the colony was joined by about a hundred German Protestants, who were then under persecution for their beliefs. The colonists received this addition to their numbers with joy. A place of residence had been chosen for them, which the devout and thankful strangers named Ebenezer. They were charmed with their new abode. The river and the hills, they said, reminded them of home. They applied themselves with steady industry to the cultivation of indigo and silk, and they prospered.

The fame of Oglethorpe's enterprise spread over Europe.

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1736.

The Wesleys in Georgia.

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All struggling men, against whom the battle of life went hard, looked to Georgia as a land of promise. They were the men who most urgently required to emigrate; but they were not always the men best fitted to conquer the difficulties of the emigrant's life. The progress of the colony was slow. The poor persons of whom it was originally composed were honest but ineffective, and could not in Georgia more than in England find out the way to become self-supporting. Encouragements were given which drew from Germany, from Switzerland, and from the highlands of Scotland, men of firmer texture of mind, better fitted to subdue the wilderness and bring forth its treasures.

With Oglethorpe there went out, on his second expedition to Georgia, the two brothers, John and Charles Wesley. Charles went as secretary to the Governor. John was even then, although a very young man, a preacher of unusual promise. He burned to spread the gospel among the settlers and their Indian neighbors. He spent two years in Georgia, and these were unsuccessful. His character was unformed; his zeal out of proportion to his discretion. The people felt that he preached "personal satires" at them. He returned to begin his great career in England, with the feeling that his residence in Georgia had been of much value to himself, but of very little to the people whom he sought to benefit. But the church that he founded is to-day the largest Christian body in America, and is especially powerful in the South.

Just as Wesley reached England, his fellow-laborer George Whitefield sailed for Georgia. There were now little settlements spreading inland, and Whitefield visited these, bearing to them the word of life. He founded an Orphan-House at Savannah, and supported it by contributions, obtained easily. from men under the power of his unequalled eloquence. He visited Georgia very frequently, and his love for that colony remained with him to the last.

Slavery was, at the outset, forbidden in Georgia. It was opposed to the gospel, Oglethorpe said, and therefore not to be allowed. He foresaw, besides, what has been so bitterly experienced since, that slavery must degrade the poor white laborer. But soon a desire sprang up among the less scrupulous of the settlers to have the use of slaves. Within seven years from the first landing, slave-ships were discharging their cargoes at Savannah.

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