But men with tact, energy, and ability, were still left in Milwaukee, who laid foundations of stone upon the pasteboard beginnings, resulting in the present rich and flourishing city but little more than fifty years old. There was a strong rivalry for some years between Chicago and Milwaukee, the latter being generally considered the most healthful situation, and in a commercial spirit inclined to crow over her less fortunate neighbor. A great many Chicagoans came to live in Milwaukee. It is said that Nelson Ludington, who had established himself in Chicago in 1838, made a flying visit to see what Milwaukee was like, and when twitted about the sanitary conditions of the home he had chosen, remarked, "Oh, I like Chicago generally speaking. I enjoy living there, but it is not exactly pleasant to see black crape on seventeen doors within a block from your home." Harrison Ludington, who was the mayor of Milwaukee in 1871, 1873, and 1875, and elected governor of Wisconsin in 1876, reached the young city, of which he became such a prominent and useful citizen, in 1838. He belonged to a historic New York family, and was then thirtysix years of age. He was born at Carmel, Putnam county, New York. His grandfather, Colonel Henry Ludington, of Carmel, served in the French war with much credit-was at the battle of Lake George, where his uncle and cousin were killed by his side; he was one of the foremost in espousing the cause of America at the outbreak of hostilities with England, and received his first commission as colonel from the provincial congress of New York, which commission was superseded in May, 1778, by one from Governor George Clinton. His duties were multifarious, neverceasing, and attended with great danger. His own house was his headquarters throughout the Revolutionary war, after which he filled many positions of trust, public and private. He served in the legislature of the state, was for a long time justice of the peace, and through the whole of an honored life was one of the most public-spirited men in the community. His descendants seem to have followed gracefully in his footsteps, and their influence in the building up of towns in the great Northwest will survive to the end of time. Harrison Ludington became widely known as one of a great, prosperous lumber firm, and, aside from his extensive business interests, he was a power in local and state politics. Roy Singleter (To be continued.) GEORGIA-THE ONLY FREE COLONY HOW THE NEGRO CAME The charter for the colony of Georgia granted by his Britannic Majesty to the twenty trustees in 1732 neither permitted nor prohibited the introduction of negroes into the province. The reasons for the founding of the colony which the preamble of the charter set forth were construed by the trustees to virtually prohibit negro slavery, or at least to be incompatible with it. These reasons were, chiefly, that Georgia should be a kind of asylum for the distressed poor of Britain and for the persecuted Protestants of other lands; that it should be made a kind of frontier against Indians and other enemies, but more especially a frontier for South Carolina, where "our loving subjects, who now inhabit there, by reason of the smallness of their number, will, in case of a new war, be exposed to the like calamities (i.e. massacres and devastation); that we may extend our fatherly compassion even to the meanest and most infatuate of our people, and to relieve the wants of our above-mentioned poor subjects;" and "that it will be highly conducive for accomplishing those ends, that a regular colony of the said poor people be settled and established in the southern territories of Carolina." From these fundamental principles and aims the trustees naturally concluded that the admission of negroes would prevent the carrying out the purposes of the charter. While latent motives of humanity may have been the secret spring of opposition to slavery on the part of some of the board-as we shall find to have been the case, notably with the founder of the colony, the illustrious Oglethorpe-yet this sentiment played but a small part in antagonizing a system then fostered by England in all her American provinces. All the other colonies were slave-holding, and so remained until after the outbreak of the Revolution, and some of them, especially the New England, were deriving great profits from the importation and sale of native Africans. What of opposition the traffic encountered was based chiefly upon economic considerations. The philanthropic trustees of Georgia, though far ahead of their age in humanitarian views and efforts, yet seldom discussed slavery from any other than the white man's standpoint. How the system would affect the white man, was the question: the negro's side was not debatable. The Church did not, at least, antagonize slavery; indeed, many of the most renowned clergymen of those times championed it as necessary to the very existence of some of the American colonies. Under these circumstances the establishment of a free colony seems the more extraordinary. At the time of Georgia's birth South Carolina's position was most critical. Her negro population was to her white about as eight to one, and a very large part of this dark race was of native Africans, almost as untamed as before they left the Guinea coast. Much of the present territory of the state was held by Indian tribes in whose bosoms there was little affection for the pale-faced intruders, and only the opportunity was wanting to kindle the border into a flame. South of the Savannah as far as the Altamaha, and westward beyond the ken of Europeans, were great nations of aborigines, with most of whom Carolina was on a precarious footing. In Florida was the Spaniard, and in Louisiana and along the Gulf coast the Frenchman, both born enemies of England and of all that was English. With such foes within and without, the very existence of Carolina was problematical, and one of the most cogent reasons for establishing a new colony south of the Savannah was that expressed in the charter-to give a frontier to South Carolina. Silk and wine were to be the staple products of the new colony, and for such labors the negro's brawn was not needed. "Hence annual vessels shall to Europe sail The colonists who came with Oglethorpe in 1733, and those who followed for the next three or four years, being chiefly "decayed people," and most of them "sent on the charity," at first thought little of attaining to mastery and ownership of slaves. Probably, had they not been brought into contact with slavery just across the river, the desire for negroes would not have prevailed to the extent of introducing them into the colony. For a time the matter was but little agitated. Rum had been prohibited in 1733, and there seemed little likelihood that negroes would be introduced, unless by Carolina settlers who might endeavor to bring their slaves across the Savannah; but this was not attempted for a time. Early in 1734 Oglethorpe returned to England for the first time, and resumed his seat in parliament. VOL. XXII.-No. 4.-20 Of a meeting of the common council of the trustees in the palace court, January 9, 1735, at which Oglethorpe was present, we find the following minute: "An Act for rendering the colony of Georgia more defensible by prohibiting the importation and use of Black slaves into the same. Which Act being read and an amendment made thereto: Order'd, That the said Act with the said amendment be engross'd." Both the negro and the rum acts were approved by his Majesty in the same month; and the negro, free or slave, was henceforth to be a stranger upon Georgia soil. Yet the trustees favored the policy of introducing white (German) servants. These were commonly sold to the colonists at the rate of £8 per head for a three years' indenture. At the end of this time they were to be freed and receive "trust lots." It was believed that they would make valuable citizens and add to the strength of the colony as a frontier against the Spaniards. In May, 1735, the trustees notify the bailiffs of Savannah that they have contracted for one hundred Germans for four years, "whom they intend to place out to such persons as have behaved with most zeal for the welfare of the colony, and shall have thereby deserved best from the publick. The trustees will give credit for their passage and give their masters one year's food and cloathing for them upon credit; and by the placing of them to such persons as have so behaved the trustees hope to encourage the religious, industrious and quiet people." Again we read in the "Egmont Journals," that forty German servants arrived in Georgia in November, 1737, and were sent to Darien to Lieutenant J. Moore McIntosh. Each freeholder was allowed to take one of those servants by giving bond with security in the sum of £8, payable in one year. The remainder were to be employed in cutting and sawing timber for the trustees. To secure the colonists in the use of such labor, as far back as September, 1733, the trustees endeavored to obtain the passage of a law in Carolina, "to prevent any persons running from Georgia receiving any encouragement or getting any settlement there." This was a fugitive slave law for white servants-a measure which Carolina was very unwilling to adopt, and many complaints were made in Georgia against Carolina for harboring her fugitives. Thus the board endeavored to anticipate the need of "helps" for the colonists. The results we shall see hereafter. In May, 1735, the trustees give to the lords commissioners for trade and plantations their reasons for excluding negroes from the colony: "The trustees were induced to prohibit the use of negroes within * Transcript of Colonial Documents (MS.), p. 46. Georgia, the intention of his Majesty's charter being to provide for poor people incapable of subsisting themselves at home, and to settle a frontier for South Carolina, which was much exposed to the small number of its white inhabitants; it was impossible that the poor who should be sent from hence, and the foreign persecuted Protestants, who must go in a manner naked into the colony, could be able to purchase or subsist them (negroes) if they had them; and it would be a charge too great for the trustees to undertake, and they would be thereby disabled from sending white people. The first cost of a negro is about thirty pounds, and this thirty pounds would pay the passage over, provide tools and other necessaries, and defray the charge of subsistence of a white man for a year, in which time it might be hoped that the planter's own labor would gain him some subsistence. Consequently the purchase money of every negro (abstracting the expense of subsisting him as well as his master), by being applied that way, would prevent the sending over a white man, who would be of security to the province, whereas the negro would render that security precarious. It was thought the white man by having a negro slave would be less disposed to labor himself, and that his whole time must be employed in keeping the negro to work, and in watching against any danger he or his family might apprehend from the slave; and that the planter's wife and children would, by the death-or even the absence of the planter, be in a manner at the mercy of the negro. It was also apprehended that the Spaniards at St. Augustine would be continually enticing away the negroes or encouraging them to insurrection; that the first might easily be accomplished, since a single negro could run away thither without companions, and would only have a river or two to swim over; and this opinion has been confirmed and justified by the practices of the Spaniards, even in time of profound peace, among the negroes of South Carolina, where, though at a greater distance from St. Augustine, some have fled in periaugas and like boats to the Spaniards and been protected, and others in large bodies have been incited to insurrection, to the great terror, and even endangering the loss of that province, which, though it has been established about seventy years, has scarce white people enough to secure her against her own slaves. It was also considered that the produces designed to be raised in the colony would not require such labor as to render negroes necessary for carrying them on; for the province of Carolina produces chiefly rice, which is a work of hardship proper for negroes, whereas the silk and other produces which the trustees proposed to have the people employed |