The Moravians in Georgia, 1735-1740Fries, Adelaide L. (Adelaide Lisetta)
History
The Moravians in Georgia, 1735-1740
Fries, Adelaide L. (Adelaide Lisetta)
Moravians -- Georgia
Toeltschig. “You forget that Gen. Oglethorpe promised us exemption from
military service, and we claim the liberty he pledged.”
Causton. “If the Count, and the Trustees and the King himself had agreed
on that in London it would count for nothing here, if war comes it will
be FIGHT OR DIE. If I were an officer on a march and met people who
would not join me, I would shoot them with my own hand, and you can
expect no other treatment from the officers here.”
Toeltschig. “We are all servants, and can not legally be impressed.”
Causton. “If the Count himself were here he would have to take his gun
on his shoulder, and all his servants with him. If he were living on
his estate at Old Fort it would make no difference, for the order of the
Magistrates must be obeyed. If the English, to whom the country belongs
must fight, shall others go free?”
Toeltschig finally yielded so far as to tell him the number of men in
their company, “it could do no harm for we could be counted any day,”
but their names were resolutely withheld, and service firmly refused.
Then the townspeople took up the cry. Should they fight for these
strangers who would not do their share toward defending the land? They
would mob and kill them first! They only injured the colony at any rate,
for they worked so cheaply that they lowered the scale of wages; and
besides they received money from many people, for their services, but
spent none because they made everything they needed for themselves!
Still the Moravians stood firm in their position, indeed they could
do nothing else without stultifying themselves. The instructions from
Zinzendorf and the leaders of the Church at Herrnhut, with the approval
of the lot, were definite,--they should take no part in military
affairs, but might pay any fines incurred by refusal. To Oglethorpe and
to the Trustees they had explained their scruples, making freedom of
conscience an essential consideration of their settling in Georgia, and
from them they had received assurances that only freeholders were liable
to military duty. Therefore they had claimed no land as individuals, but
had been content to live, and labor, and be called “servants”, paying
each week for men to serve in the night watch, in place of the absent
owners of the two town lots. In Savannah their views were well known,
and to yield to orders from a Magistrate, who openly declared that
promises made by the Trustees, who had put him in office, were not worth
regarding, and who threatened them with mob violence, would have been
to brand themselves as cowards, unworthy members of a Church which
had outlived such dire persecution as that which overthrew the ancient
Unitas Fratrum, and recreant to their own early faith, which had led
them to abandon homes and kindred in Moravia, and seek liberty of
conscience in another kingdom. That Georgia needed armed men to protect
her from the Spaniards was true, but equally so she needed quiet
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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