The Carolinas

Johnson had appointed the first day of December as the time for a general review of the militia of the province. The Convention chose the same day as the time for the election of a popular governor. Johnson then countermanded the order for the review. But the militia assembled in large numbers in the public square at Charleston. They were a part of the people; and when the governor ordered their commander to disperse them, he said: "I obey the Convention." Then the people proceeded to the election of a chief magistrate, when James Moore was chosen. Soon afterward proprietary rule was dismissed from the soil of South Carolina. The royal ear listened favorably to a petition presented by an agent of the colony, in England. The charter of the proprietaries was abrogated, and in 1720, South Carolina became a royal province, with Francis Nicholson as royal governor.

North Carolina was relieved of proprietary rule without enduring the throes of actual revolution. From the time when its southern sister passed under royal rule and protection, the people of the northern colony became more and more restive. They seemed to be on the verge of revolution, when, in 1729, the proprietors, seeing the inevitable drift of public sentiment, made a virtue of necessity, and sold that domain to the king for about eighty thousand dollars. It then became a royal province. The two Carolinas were then separated. George Burrington was appointed governor of North Carolina, and Robert Johnson was made chief magistrate of South Carolina. The people of the provinces were soon convinced that they had gained nothing by a change of rulers; and from the time of the separation until the French and Indian war, their history is largely made up of the records of disputes between the people and the royal governors.

The latest planted of the English colonies in America was Georgia, the founding of which we have already considered. The settlers there had very little intercourse with or knowledge of the outside world, and thought of but little excepting the material interests of their new homes, until after Oglethorpe's return from England early in 1736. Then foreign politics threatened dangers from their neighbors, and religious teachings stirred the sluggish society into some activity.

With the great guns and the Highlanders skilled in military art, came with Oglethorpe many Germans to join their Moravian brethren who had settled in Georgia two or three years before. He was also accompanied by John and Charles Wesley, sons of an English poet and divine in the reigns of James, William, and Anne. They were religious enthusiasts, and were clergymen of the Church of England. The great guns and the Highlanders came to make war upon visible invaders of the domain; the Wesleys came to make war upon the invisible foes of righteousness. John was then thirty-three years of age, and came as a missionary of the gospel among the settlers and the surrounding pagans. Charles came as an assistant to his brother in this warfare, and as secretary to Governor Oglethorpe. They had lately begun that course of independent action in England, which caused the pulpits of their church to be closed against them and led to the founding of the Methodist denomination.

John Wesley was fervent in spirit and eloquent in speech. A large congregation attended his ministrations at Savannah, at first; but the austerity of his maxims, his fearless denunciations of vice and even foibles, and his rigid exercise of ecclesiastical authority, soon involved him in serious disputes with the settlers, who were a peculiarly mixed people. He became unpopular, and was sorely vexed and irritated by opponents on every side. At length he became involved in a difficulty with a woman whom he had refused to admit to the communion, and he left the province in disgust at the end of two years, and returned to England, "shaking the dust off his feet," as he expressed it. His mission in Georgia was a failure.

At that time there was a sturdy young preacher in England who was swaying multitudes by his fervid eloquence. He was a friend of the Wesleys, and obtained permission to join them in Georgia. He was not quite twenty-four years of age when he arrived at Savannah. The Wesleys had departed, but the young missionary, George Whitefield, entered upon his sacred duties with fervor. More practical than Wesley, he became a blessing not only to Georgia, but to other American colonies, where he labored much as an independent itinerant preacher. He established an asylum for orphans at Savannah, which was founded and supported several years by voluntary subscriptions which he procured in England and else-where. He worked lovingly with the Moravians in Georgia, who made a most salutary impression upon society there.