Setting Out to Begin a New World: Colonial Georgia

Documents from the earliest days of colonial Georgia, including the founding of Savannah and Frederica. Georgia progressed from near collapse under the benevolent but misguided Trustees to prosperity under three Royal governors. Some thirty documents, or groups of documents, illustrate the hopes, disappointments, nobility and pettiness that we share with our ancestors. Here are firsthand accounts of the founding of Savannah and Frederica. Oglethorpe fights mutinying soldiers, treaties with the Indians and twice attacks the Spanish in Florida. There are first glimpses of slavery and “crackers.” Governor James Wright confronts “the liberty boys” and the French and Americans bomb Savannah. Edward J. Cashin is professor of history at Augusta College. Book One in the Documentary History of Georgia series.