By 1760, only 5 percent of white Georgians owned even a singleslave, while a handful of families possessed them in the hundreds. JonathanBryan was the perfect embodiment of the “Slave Merchants” whoOglethorpe had warned would dominate the colony.59

In 1750, settlers were formally granted the right toown slaves.58

trustees: “to relieve the distressed.” Instead of offering a sanctuary forhonest laborers, Georgia would become an oppressive regime, promoting“the misery of thousands in Africa” by permitting a “free people” to be“sold into perpetual Slavery.”48

Many contemporaries connected slavery to English idleness. WilliamByrd weighed in on the ban against slavery in Georgia in a letter to aGeorgia trustee. He saw how slavery had sparked discontent among poorwhites in Virginia, who routinely refused to “dirty their hands with Labourof any kind,” preferring to steal or starve rather than work in the fields.Slavery ruined the “industry of our White People,” he confessed, for theysaw a “Rank of Poor Creatures below them,” and detested the thought ofwork out of a perverse pride, lest they might “look like slaves.”

Slavery, however, could not be kept apart from future projections inGeorgia. After allowing South Carolina to send over slaves to fell trees andclear the land for the town of Savannah, Oglethorpe came to regret thedecision. He made a brief trip to Charles Town, and returned to discoverthat in the interim the white settlers had grown “impatient of Labour andDiscipline.” Some had sold good food for rum punch. With drunkenesscame disease. And so, Oglethorpe wrote, the “Negroes who sawed for us”and encouraged white “Idleness” were sent back.46

According to Francis Moore, who visited the settlement in its secondyear of operation, two “peculiar” customs stood out: both alcohol and dark-skinned people were prohibited. “No slavery is allowed, nor negroes,”Moore wrote. As a sanctuary for “free white people,” Georgia “would notpermit slaves, for slaves starve the poor laborer.” Free labor encouragedpoor white men in sober cultivation and steeled them in the event they hadto defend the land from outside aggression. It also promised to cure settlersof that most deadly of English diseases, idleness.41