rnor and Assembly of Jamaica in
regard to the Maroon Negroes_ (London, 1796).

[20] Sainsbury, _Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and W.
Indies, 1661-68_, Sec. 1679.

* * * * *

_Chapter II_

THE PLANTING COLONIES.

3. Character of these Colonies.
4. Restrictions in Georgia.
5. Restrictions in South Carolina.
6. Restrictions in North Carolina.
7. Restrictions in Virginia.
8. Restrictions in Maryland.
9. General Character of these Restrictions.

3. ~Character of these Colonies.~ The planting colonies are those
Southern settlements whose climate and character destined them to be the
chief theatre of North American slavery. The early attitude of these
communities toward the slave-trade is therefore of peculiar interest;
for their action was of necessity largely decisive for the future of the
trade and for the institution in North America. Theirs was the only
soil, climate, and society suited to slavery; in the other colonies,
with few exceptions, the institution was by these same factors doomed
from the beginning. Hence, only strong moral and political motives could
in the planting colonies overthrow or check a traffic so favored by the
mother country.

4. ~Restrictions in Georgia.~ In Georgia we have an example of a
community whose philanthropic founders sought to impose upon it a code
of morals higher than the colonists wished. The settlers of Georgia were
of even worse moral fibre than their slave-trading and whiskey-using
neighbors in Carolina and Virginia; yet Oglethorpe and the London
proprietors prohibited from the beginning both the rum and the slave
traffic, refusing to "suffer slavery (which is against the Gospel as
well as the fundamental law of England) to be authorised under our
authority."[1] The trustees sought to win the colonists over to their
belief by telling them that money could be better expended in
transporting white men than Negroes; that slaves would be a source of
weakness to the colony; and that the "Produces designed to be raised in
the Colony would not require such Labour as to make Negroes necessary
for carrying them on."[2]

This policy greatly displeased the colonists, who from 1735, the date of
the first law, to 1749, did not cease to clamor for the repeal of the
restrictions.[3] As their English agent said, they insisted that "In
Spight of all Endeavours to disguise this Point, it is as clear a