James Nov-Dec 2023 web - Flipbook - Page 50
Author & DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond
name “Job Ben Solomon,” and became a “roaring lion”
of British society. The budding British celebrity was set
free by British patrons, introduced to King George II and
Queen Caroline, and on August 8, 1734 returned to what
is modern day Senegal in Africa.
While Diallo was celebrating his miraculous rescue
from bondage, pro-slavery Georgia colonists known as
“malcontents” were arguing that deteriorating economic
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conditions in the colony were due to
the absence of enslaved black laborers.
Along with a small group of anti-slavery
supporters, Oglethorpe and the malcontents engaged in a divisive debate over
the legalization of slavery in Georgia.
Interestingly, the most vocal member
of Oglethorpe’s anti-slavery chorus was
John Wesley, a young Protestant evangelist who would become known as the
“father of Methodism.”
Georgia’s principal founder became
the target of a withering smear campaign that included claims of hypocrisy
because of his alleged investment in a
South Carolina plantation that utilized
enslaved black laborers. Yet by January
1739, Oglethorpe anticipated 19th century abolitionist sentiments by asserting that importation of enslaved laborers would “occasion the misery of
thousands in Africa…and bring into perpetual slavery
the poor people who now live free there.”
Finally, on July 22, 1743, Georgia’s most strident
defender of the slavery prohibition exited his beloved
colony. He sailed back home toward a future clouded by
a pending court-martial and the possibility of financial
ruin. The military charges ranged from larceny to treason. Reacting to complaints from pro-slavery colonists,
British officials had also refused to reimburse Oglethorpe for substantial expenses he had incurred on behalf of
the colony— pending a full accounting.
Although Oglethorpe was acquitted on all accounts, he never returned to Georgia. And less than a
decade later, on January 1, 1751, Georgia’s slavery ban
was repealed.
Prevailing historical narrative suggests that following his vindication, Oglethorpe gradually lost interest in
the fight against slavery. To the contrary, the general’s
abolitionist zeal reached its apex during the last two
decades of his eventful life.
Oglethorpe reinvented himself as the center of
gravity for an eclectic circle of anti-slavery friends
and acquaintances. Most significantly, he mentored
Olaudah Equiano, 18th century England’s most influential black abolitionist, Granville Sharp, one of the
founders of the formal British abolitionist movement;
and Hannah More, a feminist author who stoked opposition to the slave trade.
In the twilight of life, Oglethorpe handed off the
nascent anti-slavery struggle that originated in the
Georgia wilderness to emerging abolitionists who transformed it into a powerful international crusade.
Michael Thurmond is the CEO of Dekalb County, Georgia’s one-time labor
commissioner, a former state legislator and a native of Athens. His third book
is James Oglethorpe: Father of Georgia.