James Oglethorpe Quotes

If We allow Slaves, we act against the very Principles by which we associated together, which was to relieve the distressed.

Stories of Ayuba's Muslim religious practices - running away to find private spaces in which to say his daily prayers - led to his imprisonment. During his captivity, Ayuba wrote a letter in Arabic to his father in Africa, explaining the desperation of his situation and pleading for help. The letter made its way into the hands of James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, which began as an antislavery colony.

The time capsule is a characteristically twentieth-century invention: a tragicomic time machine. It lacks an engine, goes nowhere, sits and waits. It sends our cultural bits and bobs traveling into the future at snail's pace. At our pace, that is. They travel through time in parallel with the rest of us, at our standard velocity of one second per second, one day per day... Builders of time capsules are projecting something forward into the future, but it's mainly their own imaginations. Like people who buy lottery tickets for the momentary dreams of riches, they get to dream of a time to come when, though long dead, they will be the cynosure of all eyes... Clear the airwaves: Dr. Thornwell Jacobs, Oglethorpe University, AD 1936, has something to say.

I was surprised to learn that Savannah’s design was enlightened in more ways than one. James Oglethorpe, who founded Georgia and drew up the plan for Savannah, was very progressive. Georgia was founded to house relocated inmates—debtors released thanks to Oglethorpe’s push for prison reform in England—and under his watch, which lasted until 1742, slavery was prohibited in Georgia. So, for that matter, was aristocracy. Oglethorpe’s vision of social equity extended to his layout for Savannah. By serving as shared public space, the now-famous squares fostered community engagement and participation in city affairs.

This last southern colony was the most unusual of Britain’s offspring. An ex-military man, James Oglethorpe, was its guiding force, and he saw this venture as a unique opportunity to reconstruct class relations. It

The initial aim of Georgia’s founder, James Edward Oglethorpe, and the colony’s twenty trustees was to create an Eden in which England’s “downtrodden” would find opportunity to become sturdy yeoman, growing grapes for wine and mulberry trees for silk. In 1732, sensing in advance these would bring Georgia to grief, Oglethorpe convinced Parliament to outlaw liquor, slaves, large plantations, lawyers, and Catholics.