Sitting on top of a bluff of the Savannah River is Savannah's city hall. The river is downhill on the backside.
Georgia's founder and first governor, James Oglethorpe, left his ship here under Yamicraw Bluff to establish the new British colony of Georgia, named after King George II. Oglethorpe's intent was for his New World settlement to become a city on a bluff for all to see its Age of Enlightenment ways, its beacon of hope. Although Savannah was founded in 1733, this current city hall was opened in 1906.
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This statue of Georgia founder James Oglethorpe proudly stands in Savannah's Chippewa Square. The shore of Savannah was where he and his British settlers first settled in Georgia.
If statues could talk, this British parliamentarian would have quite a story to tell.
Idealistic Oglethorpe had a vision in this new Age of Enlightenment for this new land–equality for all. Georgia became the only British colony in America to prohibit slavery.
Who knew? I didn’t. This part of Georgian history had been buried to me. I had to look it up. Dig deeper.
Those big rich plantations of South Carolina would not be allowed in Georgia, which would orchestrate smaller property plots. By charter of King George II, there would be no slavery in Georgia according to the hard-won efforts of British abolitionist James Ogelthorpe, one of the first movers of the British abolition movement as well as founder and first governor of the abolitionist colony of Georgia. South Carolina had its rice and king cotton that needed slaves but slavery was not to be transplanted to his beloved Georgia. No. Trouble lay in that direction. Georgia's founder wanted Georgians and their posterity to be beyond that.
Wikipedia notes of the founding of Georgia colony: "Although many believe that the colony was formed for the imprisoned, the colony was actually formed as a place of no slavery.*"
Encyclopedia Britannica has a different take: "In 1729 he [James Oglethorpe] presided over a [British Parliamentary] committee that brought about prison reforms. This experience gave him the idea of founding a new colony in North America as a place where the poor and destitute could start afresh and where persecuted Protestant sects could find refuge."
When it came to the abolition of slavery, Oglethorpe was nearly seven decades ahead of his native Britain.
When Georgia's founding father eventually left the colony to live in his British motherland and return to Parliament, some Georgians balked at the prohibition of slavery. Who didn't want to have big rice plantations like the South Carolinians and be a member of the rich planter class, albeit that direction was not conducive to the founding vision and charter of the land? Slaves were needed for such enterprises.
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Additional reading: James Oglethorpe, Father of Georgia: A Founder’s Journey from Slave Trader to Abolitionist by Michael L. Thurmond
*Note: Uhm Wikipedia, the construct of this sentence makes it sound like the British destitute in debtor's prison was of secondary concern to Ogelthorpe compared to the plight of the enslaved, which is also a form of destitution and captivity. However, I think what you imply is that former prisoners were not actually on the ship's list of Georgia-bound passengers; hence, it was just lip service, while banning slavery actually happened and was enforced. That Georgia was for those in debtor's prison is a popular myth–if gauged by that passenger list. I don't know about the accuracy of that view but I do know that the destitute are specifically mentioned in Georgia's charter. (I've read it). Banning slavery was also part of a Georgia trustee act and very real. The sentence needs to be clarified.
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The old southern city of Savannah and its lit-up domed city hall sits on the far shore. With sunrise twenty-five minutes away, a container ship already was slide-dancing the chassé up the Savannah River. I suspected that container ships had been coming and going through the night at this East Coast port city.
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Man, Georgians, you have a wonderful American story, which is not meant to be hidden. Flaunt it! This masonic lodge came way, way earlier than Virginia's or Pennsylvania's. Such lodges were an early and steady influencer in the New World for a self-governing republic. I'll explain why.
This is one of the oldest buildings in Georgia. Georgia's founder and first governor, James Oglethorpe, alongside James Lacey, established Savannah's Freemason Hall in 1734, shortly after Oglethorpe's chartering and arrival with the first settlers into the new colony of Georgia that he had pushed so hard for. Wikipedia writes of this masonic lodge, "It is believed to be the oldest, continuously operating, English-constituted lodge in the Western Hemisphere, a title also claimed by St. John's Lodge, Portsmouth, established in 1734 or 1736."
Why is this important?
Consider this: "In Europe, the Masons were known for plotting against royal governments. In America, they became known for promoting republican virtues of self-government, [👏] writes non-profit library Jstore. "Masonic thought influenced American history: the Masons were opposed to the claims of royalty—a strong influence on the development of the American revolt against Britain which culminated in the Revolutionary War."
I bet Oglethorpe told King George II that he was a freemason just for the social company.😉
Long after British abolitionist Oglethorpe went back to his native land, returned as a member of parliament, and died, his freemason hall called Solomon's Lodge, eventually became a venue for the new economic order of king cotton, in the form of the Savannah Cotton Exchange building, which was built here in 1876. It went out of business in 1951.
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