George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

In Virginia there were not less than one hundred and sixteen thousand; in North Carolina, perhaps more than twenty thousand; in South Carolina, full forty thousand; in Georgia, about two thousand; so that the country south of the Potomac, may have had one hundred and seventy-eight thousand.

Of the Southern group, Georgia²—the chosen asylum of misfortune–had been languishing under the guardianship of a corporation, whose benefits had not equalled the benevolence of its designs. The council of its trustees had granted no legislative rights to those whom they assumed to protect, but, meeting at a London tavern,³ by their own power imposed taxes on its Indian trade. Industry was disheartened by the entail of freeholds; summer, extending through months not its own, engendered pestilent vapors from the lowlands, as they were opened to the sun; American silk, it is true, was admitted into London duty-free, but the wants of the wilderness left no leisure to feed the silkworm and reel its thread; nor had the cultivator learned to gather cotton from the down of the cotton plant; the indigent, for whom charity had proposed a refuge, murmured at an exile that had sorrows of its own; the few men of substance withdrew to Carolina. In December, 1751, the trustees unanimously desired to surrender their