of the founders of the colony. The climate favored the plan of labor by Africans rather than Europeans; but it suggested nothing with regard to the destruction of their original rights, and their reduction to the position of chattels.

About 1672, a few people settled on Oyster Point, which gradually rose to the rank of a town, and was named for Charles, the reigning monarch. A century later, it became the growing commercial city of Charleston, a place of highest distinction in the trade and history of the South.

Now South Carolina becomes an attractive country to the adventurers of New England and of New York; and they come to its magnificent groves, its land of flowers and sunny skies, to seek an easier home. But especially the "impoverished Cavalier" and the High-Churchman see in this rising colony strong inducements to emigrate, to attempt to inprove their fortunes, and build up an aristocratic government and a State religion. But with them came, as Providence willed, the intelligent industrious dissenters, fleeing from discomfort and proscription at home to the wilds of America, where they hoped to enjoy the sacred rights of conscience, and freedom of worship. This steady advance of parallel columns in the rising armies of Oppression and Liberty cannot be an accident. It has been too long continued, and implies the potent adjustment of too many contingencies, to admit of the thought for a moment. It is here precisely that we see the hand of God in the special preparations for the future triumphs of the right.

Let us now turn to another grand movement in the developments of Providence. We have seen how disastrously the attempts of French Protestants, under the great Coligny, failed in Carolina. In a preceding chapter, we mourned over the bloody destruction sent to their settlement by Spanish cruelty under the domination of Rome. They were then laboring for the aggrandizement of France, from whose persecuting tyranny they fled; and they could not succeed: but,

10

as we saw, the Huguenots would eventually find a home in the bosom of American freedom.

"John Calvin, by birth a Frenchman, was to France the Apostle of the Reformation." God gave him and his fellowlaborers great success in winning souls in that populous and powerful kingdom. The struggle which arose with the Romish Church was protracted and fearful. Bloody superstition exacted its hecatombs of victims. The wily Madame de Maintenon controlled the weak and bigoted Louis XIV. The tolerating Edict of Nantes was revoked, and Justice bled in her vales and in her high places. The humble peasant and the noble prince fell together in witness of the truth, that Jesus Christ had power on earth to forgive sins, without the presence of ghostly confessor or intervening priest. God was glorified in the humble boldness and triumphant suffering of the martyrs of France.

A signal providence now appears, as in the days of the apostles, in the dispersion of the saints. The north of Germany, London, New England, New York, and other parts, received accessions of skill and industry in the useful and elegant arts from the bloody fields of France, at the same time that the paradise above received the souls, and the catacombs of Paris the bodies, of unnumbered thousands "for the testimony of Jesus."

"But the warmer climate" of South Carolina "became the chief resort of the Huguenots." Finally, from their baptisms of blood, came "the fugitives from Languedoc on the Mediterranean, from Rochelle and Saintange and Bordeaux, the provinces on the Bay of Biscay, from St. Quentin, Poictiers, and the beautiful Valley of Tours, from St. Lo and Dieppe. Men who had the virtues of the English Puritans, without their bigotry, came to the land to which the tolerant benevolence of Shaftesbury had invited the believer of every creed."*

* Bancroft, ii. 180, 181.

In Charleston and vicinity, these noble people found their home; and how grateful must have been the return of the holy sabbath, when parents and children moved over the waters, or through their groves of palmetto perfumed with the odors of liberty and love, to their quiet church in Charleston, where, with songs of gratitude and humble prayers, they remembered their sorrows and their deliverance, and listened to the simple and exalting truths of the gospel, with "none to molest or make them afraid"! We must needs emerge from the sea of martyrdom to understand their joy. Well said Judith, the wife of Pierre Manigault," God hath done great things for us in enabling us to bear up under so many trials ;" and well might the pæans of victory rise from the church of the Huguenots in Charleston.

Let us, however, note that this was God's gracious plan by which South Carolina should receive some of her best blood and noblest citizens from sunny France, and a strong infusion of liberty from the firm and sturdy Protestantism of the French Calvinists. Other portions of the United States shared in the benedictions, which, under God, arose from the horrors of Romish persecution.

We can now still better understand how it was that "the company of courtiers" could not succeed well in establishing their splendid forms of aristocratic government; and why their weakness must constantly appear, and gradually yield before the gathering power of the people, whose ideas of the rights and dignity of self-government rose with every new emergency: for God had sent enough of the nonconformists of Virginia, the dissenters of England, and the Huguenots of France, into South Carolina, to make the battle for liberty heroic, and finally successful.

In process of time, however, the centre of the Southern group would remove from Virginia to South Carolina, where slavery was fundamental, and revealed its utmost malignity.

GEORGIA.

Spanish pride was slow to surrender the rights of discovery claimed on the Atlantic coast. The treaty which England had extorted was held to be of no binding force, and the resumption of jurisdiction over Carolina was only a question of time. But these pretensions were becoming every year more impracticable. So far from yielding to them, England determined to crowd down still nearer to St. Augustine. In 1717, it was seriously proposed "to plant a new colony south of Carolina, in a region that was heralded as the most delightful country of the universe." The time was at hand, but under providential auspices entirely different from the spirit of avarice which controlled the British courtiers.

From the dark and loathsome prisons, where, simply for the crime of poverty, thousands of British subjects sighed and pined away their precious lives, a wail of distress came up, which fell upon the ears of the noble philanthropist, James Oglethorpe; and his whole soul promptly responded to the voice of agony. He went into those cells; he listened to the tales of woe; he gazed upon the haggard forms of wealth's suffering victims; he took up and echoed their wail, until all England shuddered at the cry for justice which smote the ears of lords and commons, of king and subjects; and multitudes came out of their cells to breathe again the pure air of heaven.

Oglethorpe interpreted Providence correctly. There must be an advance step in the humanizing power of government. These poor sufferers must get away from an administration of law, which in theory, and very largely in English practice, made the protection of property the grand aim of government, and would, therefore, imprison a man for a trifling debt, or hang him for petty theft. Even the savage wilds of America might be a grateful retreat from such merciless barbarity. Oglethorpe would found a colony; and George II.

would grant a charter for the use of the famous country "between the Savannah and the Altamaha, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific," wholly and solely "in trust for the poor." "Non sibi, sed aliis," was the noble motto upon the corporate seal. Not for themselves, but for others, did Oglethorpe and his friends undertake this grand enterprise.

This great man could not be induced to intrust to others the execution of a plan so difficult, requiring so much sacrifice, and having such high claims to the patronage of God. In November, 1732, with "about a hundred and twenty emigrants," he embarked for the scene of his future toil. After a voyage of fifty-seven days, he reached Charleston; exchanged civilities with the South-Carolinians; and in January, 1733, located the principal town where Savannah now stands. The emigrants soon arrived at their long-sought home; houses combining. comfort with economy were constructed for the residence of governor and people alike; and the great prison-philanthropist had become the founder of a State which was to be "the place of refuge for the distressed people of Britain and the persecuted Protestants of Europe."

The preparatory period of Georgian history is of high moral significance, and of grave importance in this discussion. The philanthropy of Oglethorpe was no transient sentiment. It arose from a high sense of man's responsibility to God. It was, therefore, living, vigorous, and practical. It was deeply imbued with religious principle and motives, and therefore was consistent in its treatment of men under all circumstances.

No promptings of avarice or ambition dictated cruelty to the native race. Tomo-chichi, chief of the Yamacraws, made to the governor a present of "a buffalo-skin painted on the inside with the head and feathers of an eagle," and beautifully said, "The feathers of the eagle are soft, and signify love; the buffalo-skin is warm, and is the emblem