Collection: The Gilder Lehrman Collection, 1493-1859.
Signer of the U.S. Constitution. Georgia, as we have seen, was the only colony that ever attempted to outlaw slavery. As early as 1750, however, the colony's settlers had acquired slaves despite the efforts of Georgia's trustees and the British government to stop them. Because of Georgia's late start in establishing a plantation economy, there were only 3,500 slaves (out of a total population of 9,600) in 1760. Demand for slaves soared during the 1760s and 1770s. Delegates from Georgia vehemently opposed the First Continental Congress's prohibition on slave imports and by the early and mid-1790s, Georgia was the only state still legally importing slaves. In 1793, however, in response to the Haitian Revolution, Georgia excluded slave imports from the West Indies and Spanish Florida; and in 1798, prohibited all further slave imports, partly out of a fear of slave revolts. In 1803, the neighboring state of South Carolina reopened the African slave trade and legally imported some 40,000 African slaves between 1803 and 1808. The state law barred slaves from the West Indies (for fear that they might lead slave revolts) and required slaves imported from other states to be of good character; and have not been concerned in any insurrection. The decision to reopen the Atlantic slave trade, motivated by the growing demand for cotton after the invention of the cotton gin and the opening of fresh lands for slavery in Louisiana, shocked the nation and produced a move in Congress to abolish the Three-Fifths Compromise. The following letter describes the mounting controversy over slavery. The letter's author, William Few (1748-1828), was a signer of the Constitution from Georgia who moved to New York in 1799. This letter's recipient, Edward Telfair (1735-1807), served several terms as Georgia's governor.
Electronic reproduction. Marlborough, Wiltshire : AM, 2014. Digitized from a copy held by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History