This Country of OursMarshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
History
This Country of Ours
Marshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
United States -- History
Meanwhile the war against the Indians had cost a great deal of
money. And as the Lords Proprietor made a good deal of money out
of the colony, the settlers thought they might as well bear some
of the expense also. So they sent messengers home to arrange this
matter. But the Lords Proprietor seemed to care little about their
possessions except as a means of making money. And they refused to
pay any of the cost of the war. This made the settlers angry.
The settlers revolt and Carolina becomes a royal province, 1719
They had never liked the rule of the Lords Proprietor; now they
were heartily tired of it and they refused to stand it longer. King
William III was now upon the throne, and the settlers asked him to
make South Carolina a Crown Colony. To this King William agreed.
Ten years later North Carolina also became a Crown Colony, and the
two Carolinas from henceforth continued to be separate states.
__________
Chapter 44 - The Founding of Georgia
South Carolina extended as far as the River Savannah, and between
that river and the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine there stretched
a great waste of country inhabited only by the Redmen who ever and
anon made raids into Carolina. Southward from this the Spaniards
claimed the land and called it Florida; but they made no effort to
colonise the wilderness which stretched between Florida and the
borders of South Carolina. So at length the idea of founding a
British colony there occurred to an Englishman named James Oglethorpe.
He was a truly great man, and in an age when men were cruel to each
other out of mere thoughtlessness he tried to make people kinder
to their fellows.
In those days in England people could be imprisoned for debt. And
if they could not pay they remained in prison often for years, and
sometimes till they died. They were starved and tortured, loaded
with fetters, locked up in filthy dungeons, herded together with
thieves and murderers, or those suffering from smallpox and other
loathsome diseases. It was horrible, but no one troubled about it.
There had always been misery in the world, there always would be,
men thought, and no one had pity for prisoners.
But now young Oglethorpe had a friend who was imprisoned for debt,
and, being treated in this horrible fashion, he died of smallpox.
Oglethorpe's generous heart was grieved at the death of his
friend, and he began to enquire into the causes of it. The things
he discovered were so awful that he stood aghast with horror at
the misery of the imprisoned debtors. And what was more he did not
rest until he had made other people see the horror of it also. Soon
there was an outcry all over England, and some of the worst evils
were done away with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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