Scots Cancel Slavery! (or maybe not)
ANNETTE TELLS TALES In 1977, a historian takes a deep dive into a letter written by Scots living in the American Deep South
Don’t forget to click the headline above to be taken to the Non-Boring History site, for a MUCH better reading experience than in your inbox. Really!
Note from Annette
Welcome, welcome, new readers, to Non-Boring History! Let me just shove the Non-Boring History orientation under your nose. Meet us back here when you’ve had a look:
Today is an Annette Tells Tales post, in which this renegade historian (PhD and all that) (me) translates a work of academic history to make sense to real people, like you, entertainingly! It’s gobsmacking stuff, I tell you. My goal is not to respond to today’s headlines, but to equip you with a bit of historical context for the future. Often, this is in the form of stuff that’s well known to specialist historians, but completely unknown to the public and the journalists who write for you. And no, it’s not “extra” or trivia.
Good news! I trained as a journo as well as as a historian! I’m a Brit in America who is not a posh person! And this will, I promise, be waaaay better than the history class my American readers took with Coach Grunt! I don’t take attendance, or hand out worksheets!
This post originally appeared in the far-off days of August, 2023, but, even without some extremely minor tweaks I’ve made for clarity, I could have written it yesterday. It’s one of more than 500 fresh posts from which annual and monthly subscribers can choose at their leisure, searchable by keyword at the Non-Boring History site, whenever the mood strikes. One perk of being a Nonnie, a paid subscriber, among many others, is that I help connect you to the history that speaks best to you, on your own time. And no, US readers, despite the message you got in school and college from those crappy survey classes they made you take, you don’t need to make a mad tour of the whole thing. In fact, it’s much better that you don’t.
NBH ANNOUNCEMENTS
After four years of slow but steady growth, we got popular in this past week. Very popular. This is from yesterday:
We’ve gained 2,500 new readers in a week. And the numbers continue to climb. Exciting Times! The Social Media and Marketing Gnomes are hosting a party in the basement of Non-Boring House! The Quality Control Gnome, though, insists that it’s all his doing, by making sure that NBH is worth the read.
I invite SuperNonnies (patrons) and Nonnies (annual or monthly paid subscribers) to pat yourselves on the back!
If you’re still a free reader but want to share in the glory and credit for being in at the start of a phenomenon out of the US Midwest involving one renegade Brit historian, her long-suffering American spouse, and a crack team of Gnomes, now’s a good time to nip in sharpish and join us!
All new paying subscribers are warmly welcomed. Indeed, Patrons (aka SuperNonnies) who fork over extra, are fawned over: The Gnomes at Non-Boring House send new SuperNonnies (Patrons) your choice of an NBH mug or shirt!
But every contribution matters, and if you’re not yet ready to go paid, but want to chip in as little as $5, you’ll find a link to my BuyMeACoffee account at the end of the email in your inbox. Show NBH your love!
Upcoming NBH Events for Nonnies (annual and monthly or Patron-level paid subscribers)
RSVP Salem for Beginners: Sip n’ Chat on the 1692 Salem Witch Episode
Exclusive online event for Nonnies (paid annual and monthly subscribers to Non-Boring History), coming this Saturday, March 1, 2025
Starts: 1 p.m. Eastern US; 12 Noon Central US; 10 a.m. Pacific; 6 p.m. GMT (UK)
To sign up and get Zoom link, hit reply to this email, and use SALEM as subject line, and put “Yes” in the body, with any questions. The Nonnie Relations Gnome or I will send you a Zoom link and details.
RSVP NBH in the Capital! Meet-Up in Washington, DC
Join me and other Nonnies for a relaxed chat in Alexandria on the morning of Monday, March 10 (time TBA). All Nonnies (paid annual and monthly subscribers) are invited! For details of time and place, please RSVP by hitting reply or via the usual email address with CAPITAL as subject line, and YES in body, plus any questions. The Nonnie Relations Gnome will send you a Zoom link and details.
Want to join us for either or both events?
And now . . . Our feature presentation!
You don’t have to read it right now—or at all—so don’t panic at the length. At the right time, grab yourself your NBH mug, pop on your NBH shirt, settle into your NBH comfy chair (not yet a bit of merch, because we have some sliver of shame) and enjoy, even if you’re not interested in Scots or slavery. It’s my job to lure you in. Oh, and click on the big headline at the top of the post to be transported to a much better reading experience on the NBH site.
Scots Cancel Slavery! Or maybe not.
Scotland the Brave
I well remember how excited I was, back in the 90s, to read that Scots in early 18th century Georgia had written a letter opposing the introduction of slavery to the colony. Ooh! My pride in my native country soared in my bosom! Of course we Scots would be on the side of ordinary folk, on the right side of history!
Hark, is that the skirl of the pipes I hear in the distance? Perhaps… gasp… playing Scotland the Brave?
Aye, well. You cannae dae history richt wi’oot . . . Oops, forgot where I was for a moment . . . Yes, well. You can’t do history properly without losing your innocence, without becoming—perhaps not cynical— and certainly not jumping down the conspiracy rabbit hole—but a wee bit older and wiser, learning to cast a careful eye over everything in history other than firmly established fact, and not getting too worked up when your dearest beliefs come crashing down, bulldozed by those firmly established facts. Oh, and while, morally speaking, there’s often a right side that doesn’t kill people, you won’t find it in history.
What’s an established fact? Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. That's a fact. But academic historians (no fans of Hitler) don’t all agree on the details of why Hitler invaded Poland. And facts matter, and we can’t make things up: Despite the exciting discovery of sixty handwritten journals in the 80s, Hitler did not keep a diary in which he wrote about farting.
If I just caught your attention, great! Before we get on with talking about 18th century Georgia, Scots, and slavery, now seems a good time to draw your attention to my mind-blowing and surprisingly relevant post on Scottish kilts, the Hitler Diaries, and a cocky historian who came a cropper. No, not me. Nor the historian whose work I’m writing about today. But I’ll just leave this here for later.
When Black History Isn’t
Today’s story is about things that happened long ago that have had grave consequences for Africans, their descendants, and, indeed, everyone in the US state of Georgia ever since, all the way to the present. But just because I’m writing about slavery doesn’t mean I’m writing about African-American history as such.
Many black parents (and I daresay a fair few parents who aren’t black) get fed up of kids only hearing in school about African-Americans as victims in history. That’s where Black History Month comes in, offering a dizzying parade of black heroes and role models. We also want kids and teens to learn about the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, of course, or else American history and the US today makes no sense, but part of historical truth is that black people didn’t just take these horrors lying down. Historians who study African-American history—regardless of our identity— are concerned to demonstrate what scholars call “agency”, showing Africans, African Americans, and black Brits taking active roles in the past, of doing, and not just being done to, even within slavery, showing resistance among enslaved people in thought and action. We don’t have to look hard, much less make stuff up: Human agency shines through the historical record, even when historians have to read through documents left by a privileged few to get to it.
Among those privileged few who accidentally revealed enslaved people resisting was William Byrd, who kept an astonishing diary. I recently wrote about the diary, Byrd, and the people he enslaved:
Really, though, today is a story about white people. Don’t panic, conservative readers! This won’t be a wokey rant! Everyone needs to stay chill at NBH! I rush to add I have a real issue with how Americans—most Americans, sorry, no matter who you are— think and talk about “race” as if it’s real, as if we really are innately different, rather than race being an imaginary product of racism. All people who share a skin color do not think alike, although racism can certainly drive them together. Racism has its claws into everyone here, everyone, and if you don’t believe me, here’s a book called Racecraft by two African-American scholars, historian Dr. Barbara J. Fields and her sister, the late sociologist Dr. Karen Fields, that’s so brilliant, it’s been praised by black scholars and activists who normally disagree with the authors and/or each other.
So let me be clear: Today’s story is about specific white people in a very specific place, a small community in Georgia, and over a particular period of time, in the early 18th century. It's about a short article based on one letter, and how a historian tackled that letter, and questioned how other historians had interpreted it.
In the end, though, it’s a story that affects us all, no matter who we are, or where we live. It’s not just about Georgia, or even just about slavery in America. It’s about us all.
Darien: Not a Lucky Name
If you’ve ever heard the words “Darien” and “Scotland” in the same breath (and you probably haven’t, so no worries if not!), you’ve probably heard of the disastrous attempt of Scots in long-ago 1698 to colonize part of Panama, on the thinnest bit of Central America, where the Panama Canal is now, and which the Spanish called the Darién Gap.
The goal of Darien’s Scottish promoters and backers was to improve and control land traffic between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and make a lot of money from doing it.
Their attempted colony was a fiasco which led to piles of dead Scots. Scottish people had no previous experience with tropical disease, because, well, there’s not a lot of tropical disease in Scotland. Scotland is a place that, in the words of legendary Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, “rains on people”, and not in a tropical way.
Despite kind locals in Panama bringing the hapless Scots gifts of food, those gifts were hogged by the colony’s leaders, who lazed around on their ships while ordinary Scottish blokes dug ditches and went hungry. Despite optimistic happy talk, Darien ended badly. It brought financial ruin to the Scottish Lowlands (the bit of Scotland I’m from), where practically every family had invested heavily in the project. Needless to say, fairly or not, the English were blamed.
The story today is about Scottish colonists. But it’s not about that Darien. Still, you have to wonder why anyone would name any place Darien ever again. Yet they did. Seriously, wouldn't you worry the name “Darien” was cursed? I would.
Highland Scots and ANOTHER Darien
This Darien is in south Georgia, about fifty miles from the Florida border. Today, it looks pretty much like every other small town in south Georgia, where for a long time I lived in a small town, so I would know.
There’s nothing much Scottish about twenty-first century Darien. There’s no trace of the Scots who once lived here, except likely in the DNA of local people, black and white. Fifteen years before the Highland Scots arrived, the British had built a small fort, which vanished long ago, and a replica was built in 1988 to catch tourists from the nearby I-95 freeway to Florida. For many years, Darien High School students were called Highlanders, but the school is closed now, and is now part of McIntosh County Academy, whose mascot is the buccaneer. I guess pirates are more exciting.
But once upon a time, Darien was home to about 177 emigrants from the Scottish Highlands. They arrived in 1736, just four years after Georgia was founded. Georgia was Britain’s last American county to be founded, only about 40 years before American independence.
The British government authorized Georgia because they hoped it would serve as a protective buffer between Britain’s Spanish enemies in Florida, and the booming British colony of South Carolina, which was making a ton of money for a few wealthy people and for Britain from products grown by enslaved people, especially rice.
These Scottish men, women, and children who came live in Darien came to farm and serve as cannon fodder the first line of military defense against possible invasion from Spanish Florida.
Most of this group spoke only Scottish Gaelic. Most were from around the town of Inverness. Not shockingly, they renamed their town from Darien to New Inverness, I suppose because they didn’t want to live in a town named for a complete cock-up* done by Lowland Scots, not even Highlanders like themselves.
*A British expression that doesn’t mean what you think, and isn’t offensive. It means fiasco.
Eventually, I don’t know why or when, the name was changed back to the original. Who called it Darien to begin with? Who changed the name back? I don't know, but I bet they were English. 😡 Joke. 🤣
The Highlanders in Darien were supposed to farm to support themselves, and to help protect the colony from attackers.
Who better to defend Georgia, I bet the thinking went, than hairy wee Scotsmen used to scratching a living from poor soil, and torturing their enemies with the screech of bagpipes. The Highlanders were okay with this plan. That’s because they thought they had made a good deal with Georgia’s managers. They got free land and a chance to make a good living in America, while sticking together in a community of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders, even though they didn't all share the same politics, and came from different communities in Scotland.
Scottish Settlers Oppose Slavery (or did they?)
Three years after they arrived from Scotland, in 1739, the Highland Scots in Darien sent a letter to Georgia’s leader, James Oglethorpe, attacking proposals to introduce slavery in the colony.
For a long time, historians had offered this letter as evidence that these Darien Scots, these early Georgians, showed that whites didn't support slavery. This suggested that Georgia didn’t need to be what it became, a society in which a small number of whites got wealthy off the forced work of thousands of enslaved Africans growing rice, and, later, cotton, while poor whites scraped a living on the margins.
But history is always revisionist, despite what you've heard. Changing how historians think doesn't even take the discovery of brand new documents. It takes new pairs of trained historian eyes, new questions, more digging in the documents we have, and some pretty fierce arguments.
We don't typically spend our time unpacking attic trunks in hopes of finding secret stashes of documents. We often spend time unpacking documents that archivists and historians already know exist.
And we also sometimes “unpack” a single document in a discussion or article or book, but always in the context of historians’ existing knowledge and of other documents. Because if we don't, we could end up completely barking up the wrong tree.
In the mid-70s, Dr. Harvey H. Jackson III, a young historian at what’s now Clayton State University in suburban Atlanta, was researching Highland Scots in Georgia.
Dr. Jackson decided to do a deep dive into the letter the Darien Scottish settlers wrote in 1739 opposing slavery. But he didn't do that just by poring over the letter itself. That's because (heads up, US teachers who've been told otherwise) that's not how historians roll.
Jackson did what academic historians do: He immersed himself in other documents, and in work already done by other historians of early Georgia. He consulted with other historians, even (in those pre-Internet days) with pioneering historian of early Georgia Dr. Betty Wood, at faraway Cambridge University, to see what else might have been going on the colony that could throw new light on the 1739 letter, this well-known piece of evidence.
Dr. Jackson didn't discover this letter. He didn't claim to, either. Historians seldom discover major documents. Not like journalists, who have a really bad habit of walking into an archive, glancing at a document an archivist shows them, and then excitedly claiming to their readers that NOBODY EVER KNEW ABOUT THIS BEFORE, despite the fact that, well, the archivist clearly knew it, and historians have known all about it for years, teach about it, and have written shelves and shelves of books and professional journal articles discussing it. Journos, meanwhile, are yelling to their readers/viewers “I HAVE FOUND THIS THING HISTORIANS DID NOT KNOW! ALL BY MYSELF! AND I WHO HAVE NEVER READ A SINGLE BOOK OF ACADEMIC HISTORY IN MY LIFE WILL TELL YOU WHAT IT MEANS!”
Historians don’t act like this at all, unless we really do find a cache of documents at, like, the bottom of a well or something, and when those documents really are so significant, we can’t help but change how we think about a subject. Even then, we don’t get so dramatic. Mostly, though, we argue with each other about how to interpret the many documents we already have. Boy, do we argue.
But I digress.
Dr. Harvey Jackson’s article appeared in October, 1977, in The William and Mary Quarterly, a major scholarly journal in early American history. It’s called The Darien Antislavery Petition of 1739 and the Georgia Plan. And I want to tell you about it, because I promise it's fascinating, even if you couldn't care less about Georgia, Britain, or the early 18th century.
Private Non-Profit Enterprise: The View from London
The British government provided funding in 1732 to jumpstart a new American colony, the first in a long time, because they liked the idea of sending disposable poor Brits to occupy land unclaimed and unused by other European nations, and to protect the highly profitable British slave colony of South Carolina from the Spanish in Florida, to its south.
The British government did not, however, start Georgia.
No. Georgia was the initiative of a private non-profit (UK: charity), managed by a Board of Trustees, and spearheaded by idealistic posh Englishman James Oglethorpe.
Oglethorpe planned Georgia as a utopian community (yes, Americans, another one). His Georgia would be a perfect society! No slavery! No strong booze (rum)! No troublemaking lawyers!
As you can already guess, things didn’t work out that way.
Oglethorpe meant well. He wanted Georgia to give a fresh start in life to the growing number of Brits who were imprisoned for debt in London, in an economy that was increasingly based on cut-throat business, on making fortunes in buying and selling, not a society run for the common good. Oglethorpe got interested in the plight of debtors when one of his friends died in the Fleet Prison, a notorious debtors’ jail in London.
Oglethorpe led the first settlers to Georgia in person, as a sort of executive director, and founded the city of Savannah. The Georgia Trustees, the rest of the board members, stayed in London, and held committee meetings.
It was all a bit amateur hour, to be honest. The Trustees, all rich men, were unpaid volunteers, and their motto was Non sibi sed aliis, which is Latin for “Not for self, but for others”. And ooh, they meant well. Oh, yes. They did, bless. Among them was former sea captain Thomas Coram, who became rich in Massachusetts building ships, and then returned home to England to start an orphanage for kids abandoned on London’s streets. Good guy.
The Georgia Trustees’ two logos suggest how clueless they were, and I'd like to show you them.
There’s a tech issue preventing me from using captions or alt-text for my readers who are blind or have visual impairments, so please read on.
The logo on the left tells us how the Trustees imagined Georgia: The land between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, which are depicted as water gushing from urns. Laid-back happy white guys loaf about. A white woman representing Liberty, freedom, sits on a cornucopia, the symbol of plenty, especially plenty food.
The logo on the right shows a silkworm cocoon and a silkworm munching atop a mulberry leaf, the food of silkworms, because the Trustees hoped that raw silk production would support British colonists in Georgia.
Hahahahahahaha! That's the laughter of Nonnies (annual and monthly paying subscribers) who have read in Non-Boring History about silk and England:
It’s pretty clear that, sitting in London, sipping sherry, the Trustees didn’t really have a clue what they were doing. As you can tell from the fine reputation of Georgia silk. No, that’s not a thing, in case you were wondering.
I mean, people talk about British colonialism now as if it was all a diabolical conspiracy, when half the time it was more Monty Python than Bond villain.
Very few British debtors actually ever came to Georgia, either.
And yet . . . It’s easy to mock the Trustees and their fantasyland, but, so far as I can tell from what I've read, they and Oglethorpe meant well.
Indeed, Georgia's rich creators were not selfish bastards trying to get rich at the expense of American Indians and Africans. They were trying to address very real problems among ordinary people in England.
Georgia was launched at the dawn of a horrendous drug booze epidemic in London, later depicted by popular British artist William Hogarth in Gin Lane (1751). Oglethorpe and the Georgia Trustees also wanted to help the victims of a new economy that had made going into debt easy, but getting out of it very hard, by jailing debtors in horrific prisons, so they couldn't work to pay off their credit cards creditors. Artist Hogarth’s dad, incidentally, had been imprisoned for debt in the same Fleet jail where Oglethorpe’s friend died.
If this grabs your attention, check out my piece on Hogarth:
The Letter
So here’s the letter that the Scottish Highlander settlers sent to James Oglethorpe, Georgia governor, in 1739, and which Dr. Harvey Jackson set about putting in context.
Don’t worry, it’s followed by my, um, creative translation to help us make sense of it. But I want you to have the original in case you care to take a look at it, so here you go:
The Original Darien Letter
To His Excellency General Oglethorpe, The Petition of the Inhabitants of New Inverness
We are informed that our Neighbors in Savannah have petitioned your Excellency for the Liberty of having Slaves: We hope, and earnestly intreat, that before such proposals are hearkened unto, your Excellency will consider our Situation, and of what dangerous and bad Consequences such Liberty would be of to us, for many reasons.
1) The Nearness of the Spaniards, who have proclaimed Freedom to all Slaves who run away from their Masters, makes it impossible for us to keep them, without more labor in guarding them than what we would be at to do their work.
2) We are laborious, & know a White Man may be, by the Year, more usefully employed than a Negroe.
3) We are not rich, and becoming Debtors for Slaves, in Case of their running away or dying, would inevitably ruin the poor Master , and he become a greater Slave to the Negroe-Merchant, than the slave he bought could be to him.
4) It would oblige us to keep a Guard Duty at least as Severe as when we expected a daily Invasion: And if that was the Case, how miserable would it be to us, and our Wives and Families, to have one Enemy without, and a more dangerous one in our Bosoms!
5) It is shocking to human Nature, that any Race of Mankind and their Posterity should be sentanc'd to perpetual Slavery; nor in Justice can we think otherwise of it, that they are thrown amongst us to be our Scourge one Day or other for our Sins: And as Freedom must be as dear to them as it is to us, what a Scene of Horror must it bring about! And the longer it is unexecuted, the bloody Scene must be the greater.We therefore for our own Sakes, our Wives and Children, and our Posterity, beg your Consideration, and intreat, that instead of introducing Slaves, you'll put us in the Way to get some of our Countrymen, who, with their Labor in Time of Peace, and our Vigilance, if we are invaded, with the Help of those, will render it a difficult Thing to hurt us, or that Part of the Province we possess. We will forever pray for your Excellency, and are with all Submission, &c.
New Inverness Formerly named Darien
3 Jan. 1738-9
John Mohr Mackintosh
John Mackintosh-Linvilge
John Mackintosh-Son to Lt John Mackintosh-Moore
John Mackintosh-Bain
Jo. Cuthbert
James Mackay
Archibald McBain, his mark AMB
Ranald Macdonald
John Macdonald
John Macklean
Jos. Burges, his mark BE
Donald Clark-first
Alex. Clark, Son of the above
Donald Clark-second
Donald Clark-third, his mark X
Hugh Morrison, his mark HM
Alex. Munro Will Munro
So, based on Dr. Harvey Jackson’s 1977 article, I’m fancifully imagining how that petition might be written today, if the author(s) had had better access to more information from historians about what was going on at the time, less deference to politicians, and email accounts.
Annette Unpacks the Darien Letter
From: John Mohr McIntosh, Sr., BigJohnM@NewInverness.net
To: General James Oglethorpe, VisionDude@georgia.gov.uk
Subject: New Inverness Says NO to Slavery
Dear Jim,
Hello from the lads in New Inverness (formerly Darien). Look, we’ve learned that some of our rich neighbours in Savannah, the so-called “Malcontents”, have asked you for permission to own slaves. Before you give them a hearing, we need you to consider our situation, and the dangerous and negative impacts that slavery would have on the rest of us, and on the Georgia Strategic Plan we’ve been pleased to see you and the Trustees have been developing these past three years, which favours small farmers and businessfolk like us.
We have many reasons for sounding the alarm about the dangers of greenlighting slavery in Georgia. Here are a few:
The Spanish in Florida, as you know, have announced that they will give freedom to all slaves who run away to them. This makes it impossible for us to own slaves, living on the frontier as we do: We would end up working harder to guard the slaves doing our work than if we simply did the work ourselves. Does that make sense to you? We think not.
We work extremely hard. We know that a free white man, in the end, can get more done than an enslaved black man. Not to be racist or anything. Or sexist. Look, you know that while rich people in Savannah have sat on their bums waiting for the Trustees to give them handouts, we in Darien have been hard at work building houses, and raising crops. We also remain happy and prepared to do our part in defending the colony,
We’re not rich. If we bought slaves on credit, and they ran away, or died, we would be slaves ourselves, working every waking hour just to pay off the banks and credit card companies. Jim, we know that you and the Trustees in London are very much opposed to people taking on debt, and that you started Georgia hoping to give bankrupt city folk a fresh start (sorry that part of your plan’s not working out, but there’s still time, eh?)
So we know any mention of debt will set off alarm bells for you. We also share your vision of Georgia as a society of rented small family farms, run for the benefit of ordinary people like us, not for the benefit of a handful of greedy bigwigs buying up land and slaves, and pricing people like us out of their property market.
We get your vision, Jim. We know that Georgians are supposed to be people concerned for the common good, not a small bunch of selfish greedy bastards exploiting people as slaves, if you’ll forgive the expression. Once you allow slavery, as we all know from just looking at the sorry state of South Carolina, family farms would give way to slave labor camps, income inequality would widen, and Georgia would be all about money, and not people.
Quite honestly, Jim, these “Malcontents” are just that: Troublemakers. These are the sort of people who messed up the original Darien, in central America, forty years ago. We know you’re frustrated with these rich troublemakers, too. We know they have been allowed to acquire 500 acres each, while we ordinary blokes were limited to our charity grants of fifty acres each. We know the “Malcontents” brought English workers with them, and aren’t pleased to realize that they can’t work those fellows half to death, like the South Carolinians exploit their slaves.
We know the “Malcontents” think that land in Georgia isn’t good enough to make them serious fortunes, and that they’re not making all the money they think they’re entitled to. We know they have abandoned their land out of laziness, moved into Savannah, and spend their days loafing around together as members of this St. Andrews Society club they have founded, bitching about how they can’t get good help, and how only slavery is the answer. Malcontents, indeed.
You know, they have sent slick letters around Georgia trying to get the rest of us to support allowing rum, landownership and slavery in the colony. But at least they have done us one favour: We’ve found out what they’re up to, and it is, naturally, all about making themselves stinking rich.
If we in New Inverness owned slaves, we would have to stay armed and vigilant around the clock against a slave uprising, at least as much on alert as when we expect imminent Spanish invasion. And if that were the case, what kind of miserable life would that be for us, our wives, and kids, to have one enemy hammering on our door, and another living among us? You see the problem.
It’s totally against human nature for any human beings and their descendants to be sentenced to be enslaved forever. We’re good Christians, and think slavery is sinful. So all we can think is that allowing enslaved people among us would create bad karma that would come back to bite us on the ass. And since slaves value freedom as much as anyone else, imagine the violence when they finally turn on us! The longer we kept them enslaved, the more violent their uprising would be, we reckon. Trust us, Jim, our imaginations are running wild down here, and as we know you're no fan of slavery, and its dreadful impact on white people's morale and good character, we hope you’re sympathetic.
So, Jim, for our own sakes, our wives’ and children’s sakes, and the sakes of our future grandchildren, we ask you to consider us and our concerns. We ask that, instead of introducing slavery to Georgia, you’ll help us get more of our fellow Highland Scots across the pond to settle here. We are people with farming and military experience, and we’re loyal to our leaders—I mean, look at Scottish clans! New migrants’ work in peacetime, and their fighting with all of us in case of invasion, would make it hard for our enemies to conquer us or our part of Georgia.
Know that you’re in our prayers, and that we’re your devoted fans and friends, and all that good stuff.
Signed by eighteen landholding tenants of New Inverness, in the district of Darien, January 3, 1739
Well, It Would Have Been Nice
I’m trying really, really hard not to turn this post into the whole sorry story of the American state of Georgia. When I think of all the human misery that has befallen Georgians in the decades and centuries since it began (and I spent more than two decades living there which, trust me, felt like centuries), I could weep.*
*Are you a Georgian offended by Annette’s comment? Hey, isn’t that interesting! Sometime, we’ll talk about Southern honor culture, and how it affects you, but until then, we’re so sorry you feel that way, bless your heart. Please send your complaint, preferably wrapped in a peanut shell, addressed to the Head Complaints Gnome at Non-Boring House, Madison, Wisconsin, Up There in Yankeeland. He is standing by to read your comment before carefully placing it in the very important round file.
Ah, but my fellow Scots in New Inverness, the once and future Darien, they had the right answers! They fought slavery! People should listen to us Scots!
Oh, dear.
Well, this is awkward. You know how my translation of the 1739 letter mentioned the “Malcontents”? These were rich men in Georgia, who were demanding they be allowed to own slaves, so they could make lots of money. The Malcontents were . . . wait for it . . .
Also Scots.
They were Lowland Scots, urban, and speakers of Scots or, increasingly, English in a Scottish accent. As a Lowland Scot myself, I am far more connected to them than I am to 18th century Highlanders. We Lowland Scots have long been proud of our national commitment to equality: As Lowland poet (and tax collector) Robert Burns said, “A Man’s a Man For A’That”, meaning nobody's better than anyone else.
But, yeah, there goes another myth. These Malcontents, Lowland Scots in Georgia, weren’t interested in people’s welfare, or equality, or condemning slavery as a sin. They were interested in making money. Lots and lots of money.
Hey, at least the Highlanders did the right thing in Darien! Go Highlanders, flying the Saltire (Scottish flag) in your wee town of New Inverness, opposing slavery when opposing slavery wasn’t yet cool!
Um, well, here comes Dr. Harvey Jackson to rain on my parade, and to remind us all why historians don't get invited to parties.
Stuff Happens (and it’s probably not what you think)
In 1739, Scottish Highlanders in New Inverness (aka Darien) wrote to oppose introducing slavery to Georgia, including taking a moral stance against enslaving human beings and their descendants.
Fifteen years later, things in Georgia had changed dramatically.
By 1755, the Georgia Trustees were no longer running the show as a non-profit social enterprise: The British government had taken charge. James Oglethorpe had gone back to England years before, and was no longer involved in Georgia. And in Georgia, here is a sign of what had changed:
In Georgia in 1755, a British man, who had already been awarded five hundred acres by the new colonial government, wrote asking for even more land. He mentioned that he employed three white guys, and owned eight enslaved Africans. This was a pretty typical request in Georgia at this time, Dr. Jackson says, except for one thing.
The name of this man—major landowner and slaveowner— was John McIntosh Bain. Yes, the same John Mackintosh Bain who signed the anti-slavery letter in Darien in 1739.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. What happened?
At first, the Darien settlers were the pride of the Georgia Trustees, who often compared them favorably with the lazy useless rich gits in Savannah. But even the Highlanders struggled to produce enough corn from sandy south Georgia soil to feed themselves, and had to ask for handouts from the Trustees.
Still, the Highlanders were expected to eventually get the hang of farming in sandy wasteland, and meanwhile, James Oglethorpe kept them in mind a lot. That's because he had moved the center of Georgia administration from Savannah to the Highlanders’ neighborhood, building Fort Frederica about 20 miles from Darien, on Saint Simons Island (It helps to look on a map: This is a barrier island, not one stuck out in the Atlantic Ocean.)
The thing is, Oglethorpe’s sudden new importance in life, having become Mr. Georgia, was all going to his head. He no longer wanted just to help defend Britain's colonies from the Spanish in Florida, Dr. Jackson tells us. No. Oglethorpe now wanted to conquer Spanish Florida.
Uh-oh.
James Oglethorpe’s Rocky Bromance With The Darien Scots
The first time James Oglethorpe, Englishman, visited Darien, he wowed the Highlanders by turning up in Scottish Highland dress. He wore a traditional Scottish plaid for the occasion. This wasn’t a modern kilt, which had only recently been invented by an Englishman (I know, right?), but a blanket toga thing, basically, which Highlanders carried over their shoulders.
Also like traditional Highland warriors, Oglethorpe slept during his visit outside on the ground next to a camp fire, wrapped in his plaid, even though the hospitable Darien folk had provided him with a tent and a made bed with nice sheets. This must have impressed them.
Or maybe they thought he was trying too hard? Why rough it when you don't have to? My UK readers may recall that time British prime minister Tony Blair tried to show that he was a man of the people by having his photo taken standing on a Tube (US subway) train in London, surrounded by empty seats. We all laughed at him. Because who the hell stands on the Tube when there are loads of seats? Puh-leeze.
But re: Oglethorpe and the Darien Scots, we'll go with impressed.
Dr. Jackson argued that Oglethorpe, by acting more Scottish than the Scots, was trying to build loyalty to himself, like a clan chieftain back in Scotland. But Oglethorpe needed to do more than cosplay a Scotsman: He was, after all, 100% English, and the Scots knew it.
So Oglethorpe needed a helper with cred. He appointed as his man in Darien Lt. John Mackintosh Mohr, which means Big John Mackintosh, basically, so that’s what we’re calling him. Big John spoke English as well as Gaelic fluently, and he belonged to a family to whom many of the Darien settlers had long been loyal back in Scotland.
Things seemed to go well at first under Big John’s watchful eye. The Darien Scots’ corn crops improved gradually as they worked hard on them, and they started up a lumber business from the abundant trees, producing planks and roof shingles and whatnot. The lumber was intended, first, to help fortify their own settlement, and then to build Oglethorpe’s Fort Frederica. While the Georgia Trustees discouraged big businesses making profits on behalf of a few rich people, lumber was a small business benefiting the community and serving local needs, so that was ok.
So the Darien folk were doing fine, thanks. Thomas Causton, the man in charge of the Trustees’ store of food and supplies in Savannah, a kind of very basic government safety net for emergencies, reported in early 1738 that Big John had informed him that he needed neither food nor ammo, cheers.
But things went wrong. That’s because, honestly, south Georgia really is a hard place to farm. It has poor, sandy soil that doesn’t grow much without soaking the ground in scary chemicals which didn’t yet exist in 1738. Drought soon destroyed half of Darien’s corn crop. And to make matters worse, the Trustees’ emergency cupboards at the Savannah store were increasingly bare. Darien settlers felt strongly that since they had done their duty, staying alert for Spanish invasion attempts, Oglethorpe should now do his duty in saving them from hunger.
Oglethorpe had given the Darien settlers the impression that he was leading a feudal society, like they had known in the Scottish Highlands, a society of mutual obligations between leaders and followers, and now he was on the hook for his part of the bargain. When he couldn’t do much for them, the Darien Highlanders were increasingly fed up.
But the men of Darien were willing to negotiate their continued presence and support. They met with Oglethorpe at Fort Frederica, where he was now stationed and plotting his invasion of Florida. They presented him with a list of their demands. They threatened to move to South Carolina if those demands weren’t met.
The Darien men’s number one demand wasn’t anything to do with keeping out slavery and Big Ag. That wasn’t even mentioned as an issue. In fact, they wanted more land on which to grow their corn. They argued that they had to have more land if they were ever going to be able to grow enough corn to support themselves. At home, in the rocky and bleak Highlands of Scotland, they had eaten oatmeal as the main part of their diet, but good luck getting oatmeal to grow in Georgia. So they turned to corn, instead. Grits, Georgians’ beloved cereal, is basically Scottish porridge made with corn instead of oats (although the idea also came from the Indians, because food history is never ever simple or even possible, since it’s largely undocumented).
The soil the Darien Scots were farming was utterly crappy, so they needed more land just to be able to grow enough corn to eat. And they had other demands. The Darien men demanded their own public store, like the one in Savannah, a food bank where they could get food and other supplies in times of need, like when crops failed. They planned to pay for these supplies by credit card, or in lumber.
These proposals were a serious threat to the Trustees’ vision of happy small farmers supporting themselves in Georgia by growing for their own needs. That’s because if the colonists got lots of land and could pay for food with credit or lumber, they might eventually stop being farmer-soldiers, and become either Big Lumber businessmen or debtors.
Oglethorpe had a problem: Meet the men’s demands and steer Georgia onto a course that could spell it becoming the opposite of his dream, or watch the Highlanders pack up and leave for South Carolina (which was not far away, btw) But he had an ally in negotiating with the Scots, and that was Big John Mackintosh. Big John didn’t want to move to South Carolina. He wanted to keep the Darien Highlanders together, as a community.
Big John met with Oglethorpe privately, and they hammered out a counter-proposal, a compromise, trying hard to make the Darien Highlanders happy. And it shouldn’t have been hard: They just wanted enough resources to keep them fed and together, and to be left to get on with living.
But Oglethorpe and Big John couldn’t act without the help and approval of the Georgia Trustees, and they now contacted the Trustees in London to ask for guidance and grants. I say contacted, but letters sent by ship across the Atlantic to England, and back, were, of course, painfully slow. We’re talking a wait of several months for a decision.
So, meanwhile, Oglethorpe tried to keep the peace. He offered to sell the Darien folk the basics to tide them over until he heard from London: Corn and molasses to eat, clothing and shoes to wear. But the settlers didn’t have cash to pay for these things. The only way they could pay for this stuff was with lumber.
Reluctantly, Oglethorpe agreed to allow them to do just that, even though allowing them to pay in wood could encourage them to expand their lumber business (imagine wood being money, and living next to a forest, and you see the problem!) Accepting payment in wood risked making the Scots lumber dealers, ambitious businessmen, rather than farmers simply growing their own food.
This was not in the Trustees’ plan for people in Georgia. What’s more, demand for lumber in Georgia was very limited: There were trees everywhere, so nobody in Georgia had to buy from the Highlanders. Before you ask, South Carolina didn’t need Darien’s lumber, either.
Big John Mackintosh knew this. But he had an idea: He wanted to encourage the Darien men to export their lumber to London, by getting the Trustees to buy the wood. Only by going deeper into business, buying and selling lumber on a bigger scale, Mackintosh thought, would a little settlement dedicated to small farming be saved. But, of course, it would then no longer be the Trustees’ and the Highlanders’ dream of a settlement of farmer/soldiers. Oglethorpe and Big John had bought time in 1739, keeping the Scots content until the Trustees acted.
But now the manure hit the air conditioning. That’s because now the Malcontents, the rich guys who had made Savannah their HQ, wrote their letter with their demands.
They proposed allowing landownership (not just tenancy) so they could buy up more land, and permitting slavery in Georgia. Big John got a copy of their demands in his mailbox. He was worried the Darien Highland Scots would now join forces with the Malcontent Lowland Scots. He took the letter to Fort Frederica, and learned that Oglethorpe had received a copy of the proposals, too. This was a campaign. It was too big to ignore.
Big John knew that keeping the Darien Highlanders happy and loyal would require more than giving them a few supplies. So Oglethorpe promised them help importing more immigrant Highlander help, and a loan of £200 to start cattle herding, which was how they had been used to supporting themselves in Scotland. That way, they could keep on farming, but they wouldn’t need more land.
In return, Big John and 17 of his followers in Darien gave Oglethorpe what he wanted: A letter opposing slavery, to strengthen his case against the Malcontents. Look, he could say to his political enemies, these people don’t want slavery!
In fact, there’s no sign before this letter that the Darien Highlanders had anything to say about slavery at all.
Speaking as a Scot, things now got worse. The Highlanders’ minister, Rev. John McLeod, didn’t like them getting involved in politics. He had the philosophy that God would sort things out. He claimed that Big John had forced the others to sign the letter. One of the signers, Alexander Munroe, now said he had signed the letter without reading it, because he had been promised financial success if he signed, and financial ruin if he didn’t.
These Highlanders and others who complained, and those who didn’t sign this letter objecting to slavery, soon left Darien and moved to South Carolina.
In the end, Dr. Jackson argued, the Highlanders’ original concerns hadn’t been about slavery at all, but about getting what they came for: The ability to support themselves, together, without having to depend on or be answerable to others. Being truly independent in early America meant getting rich through the work of others, and especially through the work of enslaved people.
Oglethorpe saw slavery as a path, not to independence, but to weakness and laziness among whites. In the end, though, Oglethorpe and the Trustees’ hope of creating a non-commercial settlement of farmer-soldiers at Darien looks like a pipe dream. Georgia was moving toward being a society based on making money out of the work of enslaved people. It didn't have to be that way. But it's a product of a particular time and place and people marinating in dreams of the independence that money can buy.
Could Oglethorpe’s and Big John’s reforms have saved Darien’s remaining community as Big John had hoped? Could the store, the cattle, more immigrant Scottish workers, and lumber exports have saved Georgia as a place for small farmers?
For a few months after the hoped-for help arrived from the Trustees in London, Dr. Jackson tells us, there were signs that the compromise Oglethorpe and Big John had worked out was a success. The Highlanders got their cattle, and ratcheted up lumber production. They sold both beef and wood products locally, to the soldiers at Fort Frederica, so they weren’t going full commercial by developing new markets, but they were getting an income from wood. The Scots didn’t need slaves, and they made that clear. Plus a store was opened, to provide food and goods on credit if need be and it was kept by Big John, Lt. John Mackintosh Mohr.
But then things changed. As so often happens, circumstances change over time, and sometimes they change quickly. Within two years of the anti-slavery letter, James Oglethorpe finally led an invasion of Florida, with the Highlanders among his soldiers fighting the Spanish.
The invasion quickly ended in disaster.
Many of the Darien men were killed in action. Lt. John Mackintosh Mohr became a Spanish prisoner of war. Oglethorpe, defeated, returned home to England, where he later became a figure in London literary circles, promoting writers, a very different occupation.
With Oglethorpe gone, and the Trustees in London unable to impose their will, slavery arrived in Georgia. Slavery was belatedly legalized in 1750, but it was already in full swing by then. The Scots still in Darien got more land from the Government as they had asked . . . and they bought enslaved people to farm that land.
The Trustees’ vision didn’t matter. Highland community didn’t matter. Other people didn’t matter. The Scots’ own words opposing slavery didn’t matter. And never had. Only being independent, and thus rich, mattered.
Except . . . Dr. Jackson points out that the Darien men didn’t need to include that line in their letter about slavery being morally wrong, “shocking to human nature.”
The writer, he suggests, had “exposed the tensions, fears, and guilt which [people] who owned [people] would feel so long as [slavery] lasted.”
What Dr. Jackson has shown us, among many things, is something historians have been tussling with recently: There’s a limit to arguing that people who did things that we consider wrong were just people of their time. The Scots of Darien knew slavery was wrong. They had signed a letter saying so. And they became slaveowners anyway.
And On The Story Goes
Darien today looks just like the rest of rural south Georgia. Because of course it does. 1977, the year of the article, is itself now a long time ago. Dr. Harvey H. Jackson is retired from the history department at Jacksonville State University, in Alabama. Like all historians, he knows our work is doomed to become obsolete, as times, language, and culture change, and will need to be rewritten. And most of our work is read by very few people indeed, mostly scholars.
But what’s lovely about being a historian is that much of our work has real sticking power, that we can take joy years later, sometimes for the rest of our lives, knowing that somewhere, another academic historian or a graduate student is reading us, excited by our ideas and explanations and sources. If Dr. Jackson should happen to read this, I hope he’s glad I’ve done my modest best to extend his reach, and as someone who never paid all that much attention to colonial Georgia (my work was mostly on 18th century South Carolina, much better documented), I really enjoyed reading his piece on the Darien Petition. If he thinks I have got his argument horribly wrong, or if he or other academic historians specializing in early Georgia have any revisions to suggest, based on any more recent work, I will be happy to hear from them.
Annette
Dr. Annette Laing is a historian of America, Britain, and the Atlantic World, and the lone author of Non-Boring History. She lives in Non-Boring House, in Madison, Wisconsin, where she is assisted by her long-suffering spouse, Hoosen Benoti, a crack team of Gnomes, and you.