AHC: Keep slavery out of Georgia for at least 30 or 40 years after its founding

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Georgia was founded with smallholdings in mind and slavery banned in 1732. The ban on slavery was lifted 17 years later in 1749.

The challenge is, from a PoD after Georgia's founding, to have the slavery ban last longer, at least 30 years, 40 years, or possibly more.

Perhaps if the Trustees had been packed with more people of antislavery convictions like Oglethorpe?

I was also going to suggest boosting the Quaker presence, but that doesn't quite help for a couple reasons-
Quakers are not well suited to be the predominant area of what is supposed to be a military frontier province, and opposition to slavery, while increasingly common among Quakers, was certainly not universal in the 18th century.

Is there a period of time after which if slavery is introduced, it will never be tried?

Would delayed legalization of slavery simply mean a lower non-Indian population in general (fewer blacks and whites) and delayed development?

If Georgia is slower developed, is it more likely to stay Loyalist? Or could this domino into slower settlement and statehood of old southwest locales like Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
 

fashbasher

Banned
Quakers are not well suited to be the predominant area of what is supposed to be a military frontier province, and opposition to slavery, while increasingly common among Quakers, was certainly not universal in the 18th century.

Understatement of the year. Before they turned against slavery, Quakers were among the most notorious slave traders in the Americas.

I think that one way to stop slavery would be to have it be a religious colony whose beliefs ban slavery (Southern Puritans, maybe?) or alternately have a separate colony be founded beyond Georgia (*West Georgia) that has slavery and a military presence while Georgia remains a utopian colony centered around Savannah.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
have it be a religious colony whose beliefs ban slavery

What sect could realistically fill that role in the 1730s though? I know you said southern Puritans but Massachusetts still had slavery at the time.

Indeed Oglethorpe's original idea of banning slavery in the colony was a *very* odd one for the time. That part of the 1700s probably saw less questioning of slavery than earlier or later times.
 
A British government decides to ship off it's surplus population to Georgia. That would take care of the labor shortage, making Slavery unnecessary.
 
A selection of previous topics:
What sect could realistically fill that role in the 1730s though? I know you said southern Puritans but Massachusetts still had slavery at the time.
Salzburger Protestant refugees, there was a community of them at Ebenezor, and they did in fact oppose the introduction of slavery. There were also briefly Moravian Brethren but the Salzburgers ran them out of the state because I guess after you just fled religious persecution it's time to persecute other people's religion (I don't know the actual events, just read a brief quip and I hope I am not disparaging the Salzburgers) , I don't know their positions on slavery but I suspect the Brethern were against it. BTW, I think the Brethren ultimately settled in North Carolina.

Anabaptist might also do the trick.

A British government decides to ship off it's surplus population to Georgia. That would take care of the labor shortage, making Slavery unnecessary.
The trick was keeping them there.

Georgia was founded with smallholdings in mind and slavery banned in 1732. The ban on slavery was lifted 17 years later in 1749.
. . .
Would delayed legalization of slavery simply mean a lower non-Indian population in general (fewer blacks and whites) and delayed development?
If the other limiting factors like the weird property laws and liquor were done away with I think the population would have grown better. There still would have been people leaving for South Carolina, just not as many.


raharris, you and I must have been on similar thoughts lately as I have been interested in the proclamation line and a slavery free Georgia too. Funny how that works. :)

The challenge is, from a PoD after Georgia's founding, to have the slavery ban last longer, at least 30 years, 40 years, or possibly more.
. . .
I was also going to suggest boosting the Quaker presence, but that doesn't quite help for a couple reasons-
Quakers are not well suited to be the predominant area of what is supposed to be a military frontier province, and opposition to slavery, while increasingly common among Quakers, was certainly not universal in the 18th century.
Let the property law reforms take place, let the Salzburgers have more luck in their commercial developments, let some Quakers come into the urban areas to help build up what the Salzburgers started, let the Moravian Brethern settle peacefully, bring in some more Highlanders (like at the Darien settlement, that was also antislavery BTW), and you have a good shot at delaying slavery.

If Georgia is slower developed, is it more likely to stay Loyalist?
I think the opposite.

Or could this domino into slower settlement and statehood of old southwest locales like Mississippi, Alabama and Florida?
Yes.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
I wonder if the aftermath of the '45 rising left a lot of Scotsmen imprisoned or exiled. Maybe that could change the labor economic enough to cause a delay.

Then again, you are not going to be wanting to stuff exiles with supposed and actual Catholic sympathies and use them to populate your buffer against Spanish Florida.

Possibly the military vulnerability argument against slavery could be made stronger if the Spanish could somehow mount an expedition into South Carolina during the War of Jenkins ear into coastal South Carolina that provokes a major servile insurrection.
 
The Highland Scots in Darien were mixed between loyalist and rebels IIRC. I think they even had a few Ulster Scots (Scotch Irish) too.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
These PoDs would have larger consequences than just the development of Georgia and the American Deep South, but possibly a critical mass of settlers able to generate a surplus and opposed to introduction of slavery could occur through:

a) Catholic victory in the Thirty Years War, followed by worsening repression of Protestants in the HRE and their emigration (of Calvinists, Lutherans and assorted Anabaptists)
b) A French blow-out victory in the Franco-Dutch war, devastating the Netherlands, lopping off some of its territory and sending many of its people fleeing
c) A Scots-Irish loss at the Battle of Boyne, sending a bigger wave of these Presbyterians to America
d) Establishment of a migratory flow of Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian Protestants that proceeds along with the counter-Reformation in their home countries
e) A Thirty Years War redux in the first third of the 18th century, with a style of warfare far more devastating than what was adopted in OTL 1700s Europe
 
Top