number of undenominational schools, the most noteworthy is the Lucy Cobb Institute at Athens.
Charitable and Penal Institutions. The State Lunatic Asylum is located near Milledgeville, and includes separate buildings for white and black inmates, free to bona fide citizens of Georgia. In 1900 it contained 2550 individuals, and there were 150 others confined in the county jails, the asylum having been filled to its utmost capacity. There are a State institution for the deaf and dumb at Cave Spring, and an academy for the blind at Macon. There are also private institutions, such as the Female Asylum at Savannah, the Augusta Orphan Asylum at Augusta, and orphan homes of the Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist, and Hebrew organizations.
A recently adopted State law puts the control of State convicts in the hands of agents or lessees. A State commission has administrative authority over the State institutions, and the above provision is carefully carried out. The same law seeks to attain the same end in control of county chain-gangs, but in this instance it is generally violated, as are also the provisions intended to prevent the products of their labor from coming into competition with the products of free labor, and to restrict the gangs to public works. Female convicts, infirm males, and all boys under fifteen years old are placed on a farm apart from able-bodied men.
History. Georgia was originally part of the vast domain of the Cherokee and Creek Indians, themselves the successors of a superior race, whose ruined mounds still exist. De Soto, in 1540, penetrated its interior, and Ribault, in 1562, visited its coast. Though included in the grant to the Carolina proprietors, the English did not occupy the region, and their claim was denied by the Spanish, who had already worked its mines. In June, 1717, the tract between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, extending westward to the Pacific Ocean, was granted to Sir Robert Montgomery to be held as a distinct province under the title of the Margravate of Azilia. As it was not settled in the time required, it lapsed to the proprietors, from whom the British Government purchased, in 1730, seven-eighths of the territory, which it ceded by the charter of June 8, 1732, to a body of trustees organized for the purpose of “establishing the Colony of Georgia in America.” Before this—February, 1732—the remaining one-eighth had been acquired from Lord Carteret. Chief among the trustees was General James Oglethorpe, who desired to found an asylum for the poor debtors of England and for the Protestant refugees of Europe. The Government desired to defend the Carolinas against the Spanish and Indians of Florida, and to divert from the Spanish and French their trade with the Chorokees. The Colony was the only one of the original thirteen to receive aid from the British Government. Oglethorpe landed at Charleston, January 13, 1733, and after negotiations with the Creek Indians, took up land on the site of Savannah, February 13th. The rules for the Colony required land to be held in tail male and on military service. The introduction of rum and of slaves was forbidden. In 1733 fifty Jewish colonists arrived, and these were followed in 1734 by Lutheran refugees from Germany (Salzburgers). In 1736 a colony of Highlanders arrived, and with them John and Charles Wesley, whose strict religious discipline made them unpopular, and shortly led to their return to England. In 1738 George Whitefield founded the orphanage of Bethesda, near Savannah. Though generously aided, the Colony did not flourish. The system of land tenures was oppressive, the scarcity of servants hindered agriculture, and the absence of restrictions in South Carolina drew many settlers there. In 1738 many colonists petitioned for the introduction of slavery. In 1740 Oglethorpe led the troops of Carolina and Georgia in an invasion of Florida, and in 1742, by his strategy, drove off a Spanish fleet that attacked the forts on the Altamaha. Slavery was introduced in 1749, the system of land tenure was changed in 1750, and the first Provincial Assembly met at Savannah in January, 1751. In 1752 the charter was surrendered, and Georgia became a royal province. In 1753 the first General Assembly met at Savannah.
Well governed and generously treated by Parliament, Georgia had little cause to aspire after independence, but Saint John's Parish sent a delegate to the second Continental Congress in March, 1775, and its example was followed by the other parishes. In 1778 the British captured Savannah, and in 1779 Augusta and Sunbury. An attempt by the Americans and French to retake Savannah was unsuccessful (October, 1779), and it was held by the enemy till 1782. The first State Constitution was framed in February, 1777, and in January 2, 1788. the Federal Constitution was ratified, A second State Constitution was adopted in 1789, and a third in 1798, when the importation of slaves was forbidden, and the boundaries of the State were defined as extending to the Mississippi on the west, and the Saint Clary's River on the south. The capital was moved to Louisville in 1795, and to Milledgeville in 1807. The enmity of the Indians had been aroused early in the history of Georgia; from 1783 to 1790 there were troubles with the Creeks and the Cherokees, and from 1790 to 1835 the lust for Indian lands was the chief force that shaped politics. In 1802 the State ceded its territory west of the Chattahoochee to the United States in return for $1,250,000 and the promise that the Federal Government would undertake to extinguish peaceably all Indian titles within the State of Georgia. Large cessions were made by the Creeks to the United States in 1814, after they had been defeated in a sanguinary war, and the territory of the lower Cherokees was acquired in 1817. In 1825 the Creek Indians relinquished to the United States all their lands within the limits of Georgia, and Governor Troup, proceeding on the theory that the inherent title of the Commonwealth in the land had thus been freed from all incumbrance, ordered the survey of the relinquished territory. The Indians, however, repudiated their agreement on the ground of fraud, and this led to a conflict between the Governor and the National Administration (1826), in which the State successfully defied the power of the General Government. After the same manner, the Georgia Legislature, in 1827, extended the criminal jurisdiction of the State over a part of the lands held by the Cherokees, thus asserting the incompatibility of an Indian com-
