Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

the Indians; he had already constructed Fort Augusta upriver on the Savannah,
to promote trade and alliance with the natives.
In the fall of 1739, England launched an aggressive war against Spain, and
this was all the signal needed by Georgia or the Spaniards, eager to repulse
the Oglethorpe thrusts. Characteristically, the first mass attack was launched
in 1740 by General Oglethorpe, in an attempt to conquer the chief Spanish
fort of St. Augustine. Commanding South Carolinian and Indian forces and
bolstered by the huge cash subsidy of 120,000 pounds granted by South Carolina,
Oglethorpe besieged St. Augustine by land and sea. The siege, however,
failed completely and Oglethorpe ungratefully and characteristically sought to
use South Carolina as a scapegoat for his own failure. Oglethorpe's bitter
charges naturally provoked retaliation in South Carolina, and Carolinian
charges of incompetence hit far closer to the mark.
Two years later, the Spaniards retaliated and landed an expedition of several
thousand men against Frederica, but were repulsed in a cleverly executed
ambush by the heavily outnumbered Oglethorpe. But the result of this Battle
of Bloody Marsh was owing far more to Spanish incompetence than to the
excellence of Oglethorpe's defense. For his part, after failing to gain English
aid by arousing hysteria in England about the supposedly imminent attack
from Florida, Oglethorpe struck out on his own in the spring of 1743 to try
once again to capture St. Augustine. But the Spanish repulsed the attack. The
new result of the various military clashes between Georgia and Florida was a
stalemate and a maintenance of the status quo. With the aggressive Oglethorpe
having returned to England, the war with Spanish Florida was now at
an end.
The humanitarian Oglethorpe had been most anxious to use his charges for
military fodder; stringent military training and discipline had, from the
beginning, been imposed upon the colonists. Among the hundreds of German
immigrants to Georgia was a group of Protestant Moravians. This pacifist sect
resisted military training and nonexemption from such conscription. When
the war with Spain began, Georgia renewed its demand upon the Moravians,
who courageously replied that "they could not in conscience fight and if
expected to do so, they must leave the country." This they promptly proceeded
to do, and migrated to the far more hospitable valley of Pennsylvania.
Another religious group that arrived during the trustee period was several
score of Jews, who landed in July 1733. Three of the wealthiest Sephardic
Jews (of Spanish-Portuguese descent) in London were hired as fund-raisers
to collect charitable sums for the Georgia project. The three agents were, of
course, supposed to turn over the funds to the trustees. Instead, they blithely
used the money to finance the emigration of two groups of Jews to Georgia.
The more notable group consisted of forty Sephardic Jews, while the other
party was made up of much poorer folk from Germany. The trustees were
understandably embittered at this chicanery, and ordered Oglethorpe to eject
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