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248 . GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
ties to the agreement. Ten years later, in 1773, Governor Wright, at
Augusta, negotiated from the Indians, in satisfaction of debts due to
traders, a large body of land out of which in 1777 was erected the orig
inal County of Wilkes.
While the devastating Seven Years war had enlarged the dominions
of England, it had also doubled her national debt, and to provide addi
tional revenue for the Crown it was thought necessary to tax the colonies.
English taxpayers at home were already struggling under a heavy bur
den, to increase which was deemed unjust, especially since a part of the
nation's war debt had been contracted to defend the colonies. There
seemed to be some basic element of fairness in this contention; but, on
the other hand, it was claimed by the colonies that, in furnishing aid
and equipping soldiers for the French and Indian war and in helping
to achieve an English victory in Canada, they had already redeemed this
obligation in full. Moreover, the right of Parliament to tax the colonies
was traversed on the ground of its opposition to fundamental law. It
was a cardinal principle of English freedom, securely founded -upon the
Bill of Rights, that taxation without representation was unjust; and
since the colonies were denied a voice in the Parliament of England it
was manifestly unfair to impose upon them a tax in the levying of which
they were unrepresented. Even though living in America the colonists
were not aliens but English subjects, entitled to all the rights conferred
upon them by the Great Charter. Englishmen they were in allegiance,
Englishmen in blood. Despite the manifest injustice, therefore, of
denying to them a time-honored and well-established principle of right,
despite the short-sightedness of a policy whose effect would be to excite
resentment, to weaken allegiance, and to alienate affection, despite the
earnestness with which the colonies themselves protested against such
a monstrous wrong, despite the warnings of Chatham, of Burke, and of
Fox, Parliament in the spring of 1765 proceeded to pass the iniquitous
Stamp Act.
Patrick Henry's great speech in the Virginia Assembly voiced the
protest not .of Virginia alone but of all the North American colonies.
Even Georgia arose in revolt—though England's youngest born. To a
circular letter sent out by Massachusetts, calling for a congress of all
the colonies to enter formal protest against the tax, Georgia was ready to
respond, and, though Governor Wright's personal influence prevented
an election of delegates, a letter was addressed to the congress pledging
Georgia's co-operation. Her next step was even more belligerent. She
dismissed her agent in London, William Knox, for the reason that he
made himself obnoxious by advising her to accept the situation. This
course was likewise recommended by most of the graybeards of the
province; but the younger element of the population, in whose veins
pulsed the riotous blood of youth, banded themselves together for resist
ance into an organization styled "the Sons of Liberty," a patriotic
order destined to give a good account of itself in the approaching con
flict of arms.
On October 26, 1765, an event occurred which served to test the
temper of this patriotic uprising. Governor Wright, to celebrate the
fifth anniversary of the new king's accession to the throne, ordered a
general muster of the provincial militia, little reckoning as to its conse-