In 1775, the colony of Georgia faced heavy criticism for failing to support the American Revolution fully. The situation would change dramatically, as represented by a moment in 1776 connected to the famous events in Boston at that time, and also to East Florida, escaped enslaved people, Indigenous native peoples, and rice.
Georgia’s history had been the opposite of rebellion. In 1754, the colony was so weak that it was not included in Benjamin Franklin’s famous Albany Plan for the union of the rest of mainland America against the French colonies. In 1766, this province, alone among those that eventually rebelled, issued stamped paper, however briefly, during the Stamp Act Crisis.
With a small population, Georgia needed economic and military support from Great Britain. Hundreds of Georgians along the colony’s extremely long border with neighboring Indigenous tribes signed petitions in 1774 denouncing the Boston Tea Party and other acts of rebellion. Even the coastal merchants and planters from whom most of the rebels, such as they were, were drawn declined to send representatives to the First Continental Congress in 1775.[1]
The dangers were real. Attacks by renegade Creek war parties had struck near Augusta in 1773-1774. Georgia was situated between British East Florida, powerful Indigenous Native nations influenced by the King’s agents, and thousands of men loyal to the Crown on the North and South Carolina frontier who wanted to remain in the British Empire. Two-fifths of the province’s population were enslaved, with the potential for an uprising. Whatever happened in Georgia also had consequences for neighboring South Carolina, which was much larger and wealthier.[2]
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