GEORGIA WAS NOT ‘ALL IN’ ON INDEPENDENCE AT FIRST
Many of us come away from our grade-school American history classes with the perception that after that fateful shot was fired at Concord, the one ‘heard round the world’, that independence was almost universally supported in the colonies. Not so, and certainly not so in Georgia.
When the colonists of Georgia landed on Georgia's shores they were the first new colonists on the eastern coast for over 50 years. When discord with the motherland arose, colonists in Georgia were still very much connected to family and friends back home in England and were not immediately interested in the prospect of independence. Add to it that the Georgia colony had a thriving economy exporting commodities like silk back to England. Georgia colonists did not want to jeopardize their healthy economy and were generally content with the status quo. Georgians were not even upset about the presence of British redcoats in their towns, a thorn in the side of colonists in other colonies such as Massachusetts. British troops offered protection to Georgia colonists from the native populations, so they were viewed as a benefit not a symbol of oppression.
As a quick refresher, discontent among the colonists began to smolder after the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, when England imposed certain revenue-raising laws on the colonies to pay back England for costs of the war. There was the Sugar Act of April, 1764, which taxed sugar, then the 1765 Stamp Act, which levied a tax on legal documents. These were followed by the Quartering Act of 1765, which required colonists to provide housing, food and alcohol to English soldiers on their own dime. A similar quartering act had been imposed during the inter-colonial wars, but in 1765 there was no war, and this made the Quartering Act repugnant to most colonists. Next came the Townshend Act of 1767, which allowed tax collectors to search ships, businesses and houses for smuggled goods. Many colonists including John Hancock and John Adams made good money in the ‘undocumented imported goods business’ so this act had a direct impact on the pocket book of some of the more influential patriots.
In 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act and we all know how that turned out. Two million dollars-worth of tea ended up steeping in Boston Harbor rather than in colonists’ tea pots. In response to this brazen act, England shut down the entire harbor until reparations were made to the East India Trading Company. The Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists, followed shortly thereafter.
In response to these and other affronts, the colonies instituted the First Continental Congress in 1774, which convened in Philadelphia and lasted for two months. Georgia was not having any part of this, and was the only colony that did not send delegates. Georgia was facing a war with neighboring Native American tribes and did not want to jeopardize British assistance in this fight even though the mission of this First Continental Congress was relatively innocuous. That mission was comprised of three objectives: 1) compose a statement of colonial rights 2) document the violation of these rights by Parliament and 3) submit a plan to convince England to restore these rights. The delegates drafted a document aptly named the “Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress” to petition King George. It was an unabashed airing of grievances, but one thing it did not do was mention independence.
Georgia colonists did however form the First Provincial Congress [of Georgia] in January 1775, to discuss whether Georgia should join in the boycott of the import and export of English goods then being conducted by the other 12 colonies. Only five out of the eight parishes in the colony sent delegates to this First Provincial Congress [of Georgia]. It elected delegates to the Second Continental Congress, but when it came time to travel to Philadelphia, these delegates refused to go since all of the parishes had not been represented. Interestingly, Saint John’s Parish (later combined with 2 other parishes to become Liberty County) took the somewhat bold move of sending a delegate, Lyman Hall (after whom Hall county is named) to the Second Continental Congress to represent just the parish, even though the colony as a whole was not represented.
Tensions boiled over when on April 19, 1775, 700 British Royal Regulars encamped in Boston marched to Concord, Massachusetts to destroy the Massachusetts militia's arms stockpile. [1] The Royal Regulars reached Lexington, which is about 6.5 miles from Concord at around 5 am and clashed with a few dozen colonists in a skirmish that left eight colonists dead and many wounded, The Royal Regulars continued their march to Concord. There, at the North Bridge, about 300 of the Massachusetts militia mounted a valiant but unsuccessful defense of the arms depot. The Royal Regulars did suffer significant casualties however on the march back to Boston when hundreds of militia volunteers attacked them using guerrilla tactics.
The first meeting of the Second Continental Congress occurred in May, 1775 in Philadelphia and was represented this time by 13 colonies. [2] The Second Continental Congress met a total of six times from 1775 to 1781. Even after the unpleasantness at Lexington and Concord a month earlier, the delegates sent King George, III the unconfrontational Olive Branch Petition which was a statement of loyalty but also a condemnation of the King’s and Parliament’s actions. The truth was, most of the delegates and the constituencies they represented did not favor armed rebellion at that time and wanted to work things out peacefully.[3] King George ignored the petition by the way.
The needle had moved by the time Georgia's Second Provincial Congress convened in Savannah on July, 4, 1775. This time, 10 of Georgia's 12 parishes sent delegates. The delegates resolved to forbid trade with England and to form a committee, the Council of Safety, which would govern when the Provincial Congress was not in session. Georgia still had a Royal Governor so the Council of Safety and the Provincial Congress were not yet the official governing bodies of the colony. Interestingly, the Council was still deferential to the Royal Governor in some respects. For example, the Council of Safety asked Governor Wright to commission appointed officers into a militia rather than the Royal Regulars, a request which was of course denied. It was only a matter of months though before the Royal government crumbled and the Council took its place. In February 1776, Governor Wright realized he had lost political control and that things would not work out to well for him if he stuck around. Accordingly, on February 11, 1776, Wright escaped with his family to a Royal Navy ship anchored off shore of Savannah at Tybee Island.[4]
Two and a half months later, On May 1, 1776, the Georgia Third Provincial Congress convened in Augusta. The Third Provincial Congress appointed George Walton, Button Gwinnett and Lyman Hall (namesakes of Walton, Gwinnett and Hall counties respectively) to represent the colony at the next meeting of the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.[5]
When the Second Continental Congress convened in 1776, things had come to a head. Although it took a little time and some interesting maneuverings for some of the delegates to obtain proper authority from their constituencies to actually vote for independence, on July 2, 1776, the vote occurred.[6] Twelve colonies (including Georgia) voted in favor and one colony abstained. Over the next two days, the delegates debated and edited the declaration document which had been prepared by Thomas Jefferson. On July 4, 1776, Jefferson’s document, with edits, was approved and sent to the printers. And the rest as they say is history.
[1] The march actually began on the 18th, but they did not reach Lexington and Concord until the morning of the 19th.
[2] There were actually 16 North American colonies at the time. The colonies of East and West Florida as well as Quebec remained loyal to the Crown and did thus did not send delegates.
[3] History credits Thomas Paine, the “father of the American Revolution,” and his book Common Sense with swaying public opinion toward independence. Common Sense sold over 500,000 copies in North America and Europe and was the best-selling work of the 18th century. Thomas Paine was an Englishman who had only been in the colonies for 2 years when he wrote Common Sense. The famous phrase: “these are the times that try men's souls” comes from Payne’s other famous work, “American Crisis.”
[4] Wrightsboro Georgia is named after him.
[5]Walton arrived just in the nick of time. He took his seat in the Second Continental Congress on July 1, one day before the famous vote.
[6] More than a few historians believe that July 2 should be celebrated as Independence Day since that was the day the resolution for independence was voted on and passed.
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