Chapter IV: , VII (80)

A law which prohibited the taking of interest for loans is
said to have been adopted at Rome, B. C. 342, on the proposal
of the tribune Genucius; but modern historians are skeptical
as to the actual enactment of the law.

_W. Ihne,
History of Rome,
book 3, chapter 5._

GEOK TEPE, Siege and capture of (1881).

See RUSSIA: A. D. 1869-1881.

GEOMORI, OR GAMORI, The.

"As far as our imperfect information enables us to trace,
these early oligarchies of the Grecian states, against which
the first usurping despots contended, contained in themselves
more repulsive elements of inequality, and more mischievous
barriers between the component parts of the population, than
the oligarchies of later days. … The oligarchy was not (like
the government so denominated in subsequent times) the
government of a rich few over the less rich and the poor, but
that of a peculiar order, sometimes a Patrician order, over
all the remaining society. … The country-population, or
villagers who tilled the land, seem in these early times to
have been held to a painful dependence on the great
proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and to have been
distinguished by a dress and habits of their own, which often
drew upon them an unfriendly nickname. … The governing
proprietors went by the name of the Gamori, or Geomori,
according as the Doric or Ionic dialect might be used in
describing them, since they were found in states belonging to
one race as well as to the other. They appear to have
constituted a close order, transmitting their privileges to
their children, but admitting no new members to a
participation. The principle called by Greek thinkers a
Timocracy (the apportionment of political rights and
privileges according to comparative property) seems to have
been little, if at all, applied in the earlier times. We know
no example of it earlier than Solon."

_G. Grote,
History of Greece,
part 2, chapter 9._

GEONIM, The.

See JEWS: 7TH CENTURY.

GEORGE I.,
King of England (first of the Hanoverian or Brunswick line),
A. D. 1714-1727.

George II., King of England," 1727-1760.

George III., King of England, 1760-1820.

George IV., King of England, 1820-1830.

George Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, 1458-1471.

George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 1619-1640.

----------GEORGE: End----------

{1424}

GEORGIA: The Aboriginal Inhabitants.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: APALACHES,
MUSKHOGEAN FAMILY, CHEROKEES.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1539-1542.
Traversed by Hernando de Soto.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1528-1542.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1629.
Embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1663.
Embraced in the Carolina grant to Monk,
Clarendon, and others.

See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1663-1670.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739.
Oglethorpe's colony.

"Among the members of Parliament during the rule of Sir Robert
Walpole was one almost unknown to us now, but deserving of
honour beyond most men of his time. His name was James
Oglethorpe. He was a soldier, and had fought against the Turks
and in the great Marlborough wars against Louis XIV. In
advanced life he became the friend of Samuel Johnson. Dr.
Johnson urged him to write some account of his adventures. 'I
know no one,' he said, 'whose life would be more interesting:
if I were furnished with materials I should be very glad to
write it.' Edmund Burke considered him 'a more extraordinary
person than any he had ever read of.' John Wesley 'blessed God
that ever he was born.' Oglethorpe attained the great age of
ninety-six, and died in the year 1785. … In Oglethorpe's
time it was in the power of a creditor to imprison, according
to his pleasure, the man who owed him money and was not able
to pay it. It was a common circumstance that a man should be
imprisoned during a long series of years for a trifling debt.
Oglethorpe had a friend upon whom this hard fate had fallen.
His attention was thus painfully called to the cruelties which
were inflicted upon the unfortunate and helpless. He appealed
to Parliament, and after inquiry a partial remedy was
obtained. The benevolent exertions of Oglethorpe procured
liberty for multitudes who but for him might have ended their
lives in captivity. This, however, did not content him.
Liberty was an incomplete gift to men who had lost, or perhaps
had scarcely ever possessed, the faculty of earning their own
maintenance. Oglethorpe devised how lie might carry these
unfortunates to a new world, where, under happier auspices,
they might open a fresh career. He obtained [A. D. 1732] from
King George II. a charter by which the country between the
Savannah and the Alatamaha, and stretching westward to the
Pacific, was erected into the province of Georgia. It was to
be a refuge for the deserving poor, and next to them for
Protestants suffering persecution. Parliament voted £10,000 in
aid of the humane enterprise, and many benevolent persons were
liberal with their gifts. In November the first exodus of the
insolvent took place. Oglethorpe sailed with 120 emigrants,
mainly selected from the prisons—penniless, but of good
repute. He surveyed the coasts of Georgia, and chose a site
for the capital of his new State. He pitched his tent where
Savannah now stands, and at once proceeded to mark out the
line of streets and squares. Next year the colony was joined
by about a hundred German Protestants, who were then under
persecution for their beliefs. … The fame of Oglethorpe's
enterprise spread over Europe. All struggling men, against
whom the battle of life went hard, looked to Georgia as a land
of promise. They were the men who most urgently required to
emigrate; but they were not always the men best fitted to
conquer the difficulties of the immigrant's life. The progress
of the colony was slow. The poor persons of whom it was
originally composed were honest but ineffective, and could not
in Georgia more than in England find out the way to become
self-supporting. Encouragements were given which drew from
Germany, from Switzerland, and from the Highlands of Scotland
men of firmer texture of mind—better fitted to subdue the
wilderness and bring forth its treasures. With Oglethorpe
there went out, on his second expedition to Georgia [1736],
the two brothers John and Charles Wesley. Charles went as
secretary to the Governor. John was even then, although a very
young man, a preacher of unusual promise. … He spent two
years in Georgia, and these were unsuccessful years. His
character was unformed; his zeal out of proportion to his
discretion. The people felt that he preached 'personal
satires' at them. He involved himself in quarrels, and at last
had to leave the colony secretly, fearing arrest at the
instance of some whom he had offended. He returned to begin
his great career in England, with the feeling that his
residence in Georgia had been of much value to himself, but of
very little to the people whom he sought to benefit. Just as
Wesley reached England, his fellow-labourer George Whitefield
sailed for Georgia. … He founded an Orphan-House at
Savannah, and supported it by contributions—obtained easily
from men under the power of his unequalled eloquence. He
visited Georgia very frequently, and his love for that colony
remained with him to the last. Slavery was, at the outset,
forbidden in Georgia. It was opposed to the gospel, Oglethorpe
said, and therefore not to be allowed. He foresaw, besides, what
has been so bitterly experienced since, that slavery must
degrade the poor white labourer. But soon a desire sprung up
among the less scrupulous of the settlers to have the use of
slaves. Within seven years from the first landing, slave-ships
were discharging their cargo at Savannah."

_R. Mackenzie,
America: A History,
book 1, chapter 10._

ALSO IN:
_T. M. Harris,
Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe,
chapters 1-10._

_R. Wright,
Memoir of General James Oglethorpe,
chapters 1-9._

For text of charter, etc., see in

_G. White,
Historical Collections of Georgia,
pages. 1-20._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1734.
The settlement of the Salzburgers.

"As early as October the 12th, 1732, the 'Society for the
Propagation of Christian Knowledge' expressed to the Trustees
a desire 'that the persecuted Salzburgers should have an
asylum provided for them in Georgia.' … These Germans
belonged to the Archbishopric of Salzburg, then the most
eastern district of Bavaria; but now forming a detached
district in upper Austria, and called Salzburg from the broad
valley of the Salzer, which is made by the approximating of
the Norric and Rhetian Alps. Their ancestors, the Vallenges of
Piedmont, had been compelled by the barbarities of the Dukes
of Savoy, to find a shelter from the storms of persecution in
the Alpine passes and vales of Salzburg and the Tyrol, before
the Reformation; and frequently since had they been hunted out
by the hirelings and soldiery of the Church of Rome. …
{1425}
The quietness which they had enjoyed for nearly half a century
was now rudely broken in upon by Leopold, Count of Firmian and
Archbishop of Salzburg, who determined to reduce them to the
Papal faith and power. He began in the year 1729, and, ere he
ended in 1732, not far from 30,000 had been driven from their
homes, to seek among the Protestant States of Europe that
charity and peace which were denied them in the glens and
fastnesses of their native Alps. More than two-thirds settled
in the Prussian States; the rest spread themselves over
England, Holland, and other Protestant countries. Thrilling is
the story of their exile. The march of these Salzburgers
constitutes an epoch in the history of Germany. … The
sympathies of Reformed Christendom were awakened on their
behalf, and the most hospitable entertainment and assistance
were everywhere given them." Forty-two families, numbering 78
persons, accepted an invitation to settle in Georgia,
receiving allotments of land and provisions until they could
gather a harvest. They arrived at Savannah in March, 1734, and
were settled at a spot which they selected for themselves,
about thirty miles in the interior. "Oglethorpe marked out for
them a town; ordered workmen to assist in building houses; and
soon the whole body of Germans went up to their new home at
Ebenezer."

_W. B. Stevens,
History of Georgia,
book 2, chapter 2 (volume 1)._

ALSO IN:
_F. Shoberl,
Persecutions of Popery,
chapter 9 (volume 2)._

_E. B. Speirs,
The Salzburgers
(English History Review, October, 1890)._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1735-1749.
The Slavery question.
Original exclusion and subsequent admission of negro slaves.

Among the fundamental regulations of the Trustees was one
prohibiting negro slavery in the colony. "It was policy and
not philanthropy which prohibited slavery; for, though one of
the Trustees, in a sermon to recommend charity, declared, 'Let
avarice defend it as it will, there is an honest reluctance in
humanity against buying and selling, and regarding those of
our own species as our wealth and possessions'; and though
Oglethorpe himself, speaking of slavery as against 'the gospel
as well as the fundamental law of England', asserted, 'we
refused, as Trustees, to make a law permitting such a horrid
crime'; yet in the official publications of that body its
inhibition is based only on political and prudential, and not
on humane and liberal grounds; and even Oglethorpe owned a
plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South Carolina,
about forty miles above Savannah. … Their [the Trustees']
design was to provide for poor but honest persons, to erect a
barrier between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements,
and to establish a wine and silk-growing colony. It was
thought by the Trustees that neither of these designs could be
secured if slavery was introduced. … But while the Trustees
disallowed negroes, they instituted a system of white slavery
which was fraught with evil to the servants and to the colony.
These were white servants, consisting of Welch, English, or
German, males and females—families and individuals—who were
indented to individuals or the Trustees, for a period of from
four to fourteen years. … On arriving in Georgia, their
service was sold for the term of indenture, or apportioned to
the inhabitants by the magistrates, as their necessities
required. … Two years had not elapsed since the landing of
Oglethorpe before many complaints originated from this cause;
and in the summer of 1735 a petition, signed by seventeen
freeholders, setting forth the unprofitableness of white
servants, and the necessity for negroes, was carried by Mr.
Hugh Sterling to the Trustees, who, however, resented the
appeal as an insult to their honour. … The plan for
substituting white for black labour failed through the
sparseness of the supply and the refractoriness of the
servants. As a consequence of the inability of the settlers to
procure adequate help, the lands granted them remained
uncleared, and even those which the temporary industry of the
first occupants prepared remained uncultivated. … There
accumulated on the Trustees' hands a body of idle, clamourous,
mischief-making men, who employed their time in declaiming
against the very government whose charity both fed and clothed
them. … For nearly fifteen years from 1735, the date of the
first petition for negroes, and the date of their express law
against their importation, the Trustees refused to listen to
any similar representations, except to condemn them," and they
were supported by the Salzburgers and the Highlanders, both of
whom opposed the introduction of negro slaves. But finally, in
1749, the firmness of the Trustees gave way and they yielded
to the clamor of the discontented colony. The importation of
black slaves was permitted, under certain regulations intended
to diminish the evils of the institution. "The change in the
tenure of grants, and the permission to hold slaves, had an
immediate effect on the prosperity of the colony."

_W. B. Stevens,
History of Georgia,
book 2, chapter 9 (volume 1)._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.
War with the Spaniards of Florida.
Discontents in the colony.

"The assiento enjoyed under the treaty of Utrecht by the
English South Sea Company, the privilege, that is, of
transporting to the Spanish colonies a certain number of
slaves annually, … was made a cover for an extensive
smuggling trade on the part of the English, into which private
merchants also entered. … To guard against these systematic
infractions of their laws, the Spaniards maintained a numerous
fleet of vessels in the preventive service, known as 'guarda
costas,' by which some severities were occasionally exercised
on suspected or detected smugglers. These severities, grossly
exaggerated, and resounded throughout the British dominions,
served to revive in England and the colonies a hatred of the
Spaniards, which, since the time of Philip II., had never
wholly died out. Such was the temper and position of the two
nations when the colonization of Georgia was begun, of which
one avowed object was to erect a barrier against the
Spaniards, among whom the runaway slaves of South Carolina
were accustomed to find shelter, receiving in Florida an
assignment of lands, and being armed and organized into
companies, as a means of strengthening that feeble colony. A
message sent to St. Augustine to demand the surrender of the
South Carolina runaways met with a point blank refusal, and
the feeling against the Spaniards ran very high in
consequence. … Oglethorpe … returned from his second visit
to England [Sept. 1738], with a newly-enlisted regiment of
soldiers, and the appointment, also, of military commander for
Georgia and the Carolinas, with orders 'to give no offense,
but to repel force by force.' Both in Spain and England the
administrators of the government were anxious for peace. …
The ferocious clamors of the merchants and the mob …
absolutely forced Walpole into a war.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741.—THE WAR OF JENKINS' EAR.

{1426}

Travelling 300 miles through the forests, Oglethorpe held at
Coweta, on the Chattahoochee, just below the present site of
Columbus, a new treaty with the Creeks, by which they
confirmed their former cessions, acknowledged themselves
subject to the King of Great Britain, and promised to exclude
from their territories all but English settlers. After
finishing the treaty, Oglethorpe returned through the woods by
way of Augusta to Savannah, where he found orders from England
to make an attack on Florida. He called at once on South
Carolina and the Creeks for aid, and in the mean time made an
expedition, in which he captured the Fort of Picolata, over
against St. Augustine, thus securing the navigation of the St.
John's, and cutting off the Spaniards from their forts at St.
Mark's and Pensacola. South Carolina entered very eagerly into
the enterprise. Money was voted; a regiment, 500 strong, was
enlisted, partly in North Carolina and Virginia. This addition
raised Oglethorpe's force to 1,200 men. The Indians that
joined him were as many more. Having marched into Florida, he
took a small fort or two, and, assisted by several ships of
war, laid siege to St. Augustine. But the garrison was 1,000
strong, besides militia. The fortifications proved more
formidable than had been expected. A considerable loss was
experienced by a sortie from the town, falling heavily on the
Highland Rangers. Presently the Indians deserted, followed by
part of the Carolina regiment, and Oglethorpe was obliged to
give over the enterprise. … From the time of this repulse,
the good feeling of the Carolinians toward Oglethorpe came to
an end. Many of the disappointed Georgia emigrants had removed
to Charleston, and many calumnies against Oglethorpe were
propagated, and embodied in a pamphlet published there. The
Moravians also left Georgia, unwilling to violate their
consciences by bearing arms. Most unfortunately for the new
colony, the Spanish war withdrew the Highlanders and others of
the best settlers from their farms to convert them into
soldiers."

_R. Hildreth,
History of the United States,
chapter 25 (volume 2)._

"After the late incursion into Florida, the General kept
possession of a southern region which the Spaniards had
claimed as their own; and, as they had taken encouragement
from the successful defence of St. Augustine, and the
well-known dissensions on the English side, it was to be
expected that they would embrace the earliest opportunity of
taking their revenge. … The storm, which had been so long
anticipated, burst upon the colony in the year 1742. The
Spaniards had … fitted out, at Havana, a fleet said to
consist of 56 sail and 7,000 or 8,000 men. The force was
probably not quite so great; if it was, it did not all reach
its destination," being dispersed by a storm, "so that only a
part of the whole number succeeded in reaching St. Augustine.
The force was there placed under the command of Don Manuel de
Monteano, the Governor of that place. … The fleet made its
appearance on the coast of Georgia on the 21st of June"; but
all its attempts, first to take possession of the Island of
Amelia, and afterwards to reduce the forts at Frederica, were
defeated by the vigor and skill of General Oglethorpe. After
losing heavily in a fight called the Battle of the Bloody
Marsh, the Spaniards retreated about the middle of July. The
following year they prepared another attempt; but Oglethorpe
anticipated it by a second demonstration on his own part
against St. Augustine, which had no other result than to
disconcert the plans of the enemy.

_W. B. O. Peabody,
Life of Oglethorpe
(Library of American Biographies, 2d series, volume 2),
chapters 11-12._

"While Oglethorpe was engaged in repelling the Spaniards, the
trustees of Georgia had been fiercely assailed by their
discontented colonists. They sent Thomas Stevens to England
with a petition containing many charges of mismanagement,
extravagance, and peculation, to which the trustees put in an
answer. After a thorough examination of documents and
witnesses in committee of the whole, and hearing counsel, the
House of Commons resolved that 'the petition of Thomas Stevens
contains false, scandalous, and malicious charges'; in
consequence of which Stevens, the next day, was brought to the
bar, and reprimanded on his knees. … Oglethorpe himself had
been a special mark of the malice and obloquy of the
discontented settlers. … Presently his lieutenant colonel, a
man who owed everything to Oglethorpe's favor, re-echoing the
slanders of the colonists, lodged formal charges against him.
Oglethorpe proceeded to England to vindicate his character,
and the accuser, convicted by a court of inquiry of falsehood,
was disgraced and deprived of his commission. Appointed a
major general, ordered to join the army assembled to oppose
the landing of the Pretender, marrying also about this time,
Oglethorpe did not again return to Georgia. The former scheme
of administration having given rise to innumerable complaints,
the government of that colony was intrusted to a president and
four counselors."

_R. Hildreth,
History of the United States,
chapter. 25 (volume 2)._

ALSO IN:
_C. C. Jones,
History of Georgia,
chapters 17-22 (volume 1)._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1743-1764.
Surrender to the Crown.
Government as a royal province.

"On Oglethorpe's departure [1743], William Stephens, the
secretary, was made President, and continued in office until
1751, when he was succeeded by Henry Parker. The colony, when
Stephens came into office, comprised about 1,500 persons. It
was almost at a stand-still. The brilliant prospects of the
early days were dissipated, and immigration had ceased, thanks
to the narrow policy and feeble government of the Trustees. An
Indian rising, in 1749, headed by Mary Musgrove, Oglethorpe's
Indian interpreter, and her husband, one Bosomworth, who laid
claim to the whole country, came near causing the destruction
of the colony, and was only repressed by much negotiation and
lavish bribes. The colony, thus feeble and threatened,
struggled on, until it was relieved from danger from the
Indians and from the restrictive laws, and encouraged by the
appointment of Parker, and the establishment of a
representative government. This produced a turn in the affairs
of Georgia. Trade revived, immigration was renewed, and
everything began to wear again a more hopeful look. Just at
this time, however, the original trust was on the point of
expiring by limitation.
{1427}
There was a party in the colony who desired a renewal of the
charter; but the Trustees felt that their scheme had failed in
every way, except perhaps as a defence to South Carolina, and
when the limit of the charter was reached, they turned the
colony over to the Crown. … A form of government was
established similar to those of the other royal provinces, and
Captain John Reynolds was sent out as the first Governor." The
administration of Reynolds produced wide discontent, and in
1757 he was recalled, being "succeeded by Henry Ellis as
Lieutenant-governor. The change proved fortunate, and brought
rest to the colony. Ellis ruled peaceably and with general
respect for more than two years, and was then promoted to the
governorship of Nova Scotia. In the same year his successor
arrived at Savannah, in the person of James Wright, who
continued to govern the province until it was severed from
England by the Revolution. The feebleness of Georgia had
prevented her taking part in the union of the colonies, and
she was not represented in the Congress at Albany. Georgia
also escaped the ravages of the French war, partly by her
distant situation, and partly by the prudence of Governor
Ellis; and the conclusion of that war gave Florida to England,
and relieved the colony from the continual menace of Spanish
aggression. A great Congress of southern Governors and Indian
chiefs followed, in which Wright, more active than his
predecessor, took a prominent part. Under his energetic and
firm rule, the colony began to prosper greatly, and trade
increased rapidly; but the Governor gained at the same time so
much influence, and was a man of so much address, that he not
only held the colony down at the time of the Stamp Act, but
seriously hampered its action in the years which led to
revolution."

_H. C. Lodge,
Short History of the English Colonies in America,
chapter 9._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1760-1775.
Opening events of the Revolution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1760-1775, to 1775.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1775-1777.
The end of royal government.
Constitutional organization of the state."

The news of the battle of Lexington reached Savannah on the
night of the 10th of May, 1775, and produced intense
excitement among all classes. On the night of the 11th, Noble
Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham, Edward Telfair, and a few
others, impressed with the necessity of securing all military
stores, and preserving them for colonial use, took from the
King's magazine, in Savannah, about 500 pounds of powder. …
Tradition asserts that part of this powder was sent to Boston,
and used by the militia at the battle of Bunker Hill. … The
activity of the Liberty party, and its rapid increase, …
gave Governor Wright just cause for alarm; and he wrote to
General Gage, expressing his amazement that these southern
provinces should be left in the situation they are, and the
Governors and King's officers, and friends of Government,
naked and exposed to the resentment of an enraged people.' …
The assistance so earnestly solicited in these letters would
have been promptly rendered, but that they never reached their
destination. The Committee of Safety at Charleston withdrew them
from their envelopes, as they passed through the port, and
substituted others, stating that Georgia was quiet, and there
existed no need either of troops or vessels." The position of
Governor Wright soon became one of complete powerlessness and
he begged to be recalled. In January, 1776, however, he was
placed under arrest, by order of the Council of Safety, and
gave his parole not to leave town, nor communicate with the
men-of-war which had just arrived at Tybee; notwithstanding
which he made his escape to one of the King's ships on the
11th of February. "The first effective organization of the
friends of liberty in the province took place among the
deputies from several parishes, who met in Savannah, on the
18th January, 1775, and formed what has been called 'A
Provincial Congress.' Guided by the action of the other
colonies, a 'Council of Safety' was created, on the 22d June,
1775, to whom was confided the general direction of the
measures proper to be pursued in carrying out resistance to
the tyrannical designs of the King and Parliament. William
Ewen was the first President of this Council of Safety, and
Seth John Cuthbert was the Secretary. On the 4th July, the
Provincial Congress (now properly called such, as every parish
and district was represented) met in Savannah, and elected as
its presiding officer Archibald Bulloch. This Congress
conferred upon the 'Council of Safety,' 'full power upon every
emergency during the recess of Congress.'" Soon finding the
need of a more definite order of government, the Provincial
Congress, on the 15th of April, 1776, adopted provisionally,
for six months, a series of "Rules and Regulations," under
which Archibald Bulloch was elected President and
Commander-in-chief of Georgia, and John Glen, Chief Justice.
After the Declaration of Independence, steps were taken toward
the settling of the government of the state on a permanent
basis. On the proclamation of President Bulloch a convention
was elected which met in Savannah in October, and which framed
a constitution that was ratified on the 5th of February, 1777.

_W. B. Stevens,
History of Georgia,
book 4, chapter 2,
and book 5, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

GEORGIA: A. D. 1776-1778.
The war in the North.
The Articles of Confederation.
The alliance with France.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A.D. 1776, to 1778.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1778-1779.
Savannah taken and the state subjugated by the British.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778-1779.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1779.
Unsuccessful attack on Savannah by the French and Americans.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1779 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780.
Successes of the British arms in South Carolina.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1780 (FEBRUARY-AUGUST).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1780-1783.
Greene's campaign in the South.
Lafayette and Washington in Virginia.
Siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis.
Peace.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A. D. 1780, to 1783.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1787-1788.
The formation and adoption of the Federal Constitution.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1787, and 1787-1789.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1802.
Cession of Western land claims to the United States.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1781-1786
and MISSISSIPPI: A. D. 1798-1804.

GEORGIA: A. D. 1813-1814.
The Creek War.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1813-1814 (AUGUST-APRIL).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1816-1818.
The First Seminole War.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1816-1818.

{1428}

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (January).
Secession from the Union.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1861 (October-December).
Savannah threatened.
The Union forces in possession of the mouth of the river.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER: SOUTH CAROLINA-GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1862 (February-April).
Reduction of Fort Pulaski and sealing up of the port of
Savannah by the National Forces.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (FEBRUARY-APRIL: GEORGIA-FLORIDA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (May-September).
Sherman's campaign against Atlanta.
The capture of the city.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA),
and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (September-October).
Military occupation of Atlanta.
Removal of the inhabitants.
Hood's Raid to Sherman's rear.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1864 (November-December).
Destruction of Atlanta.
Sherman's March to the Sea.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1864 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865 (March-May).
Wilson's Raid.
Capture of Jefferson Davis.
End of the Rebellion.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (APRIL-MAY).

GEORGIA: A. D. 1865-1868.
Reconstruction.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), and after, to 1868-1870.

----------GEORGIA: End----------

GEOUGEN, The.

See TURKS: SIXTH CENTURY.

GEPIDÆ, The.

See GOTHS: ORIGIN OF;
HUNS; LOMBARDS: EARLY HISTORY;
and AVARS.

GERALDINES, The.

The Geraldines of Irish history were descendants of Maurice
and William Fitzgerald, two of the first among the
Anglo-Norman adventurers to engage in the conquest of
Ireland, A. D. 1169-1170. Their mother was a Welsh princess,
named Nest, or Nesta, who is said to have been the mistress
of Henry I. of England, and afterwards to have married the
Norman baron, Gerald Fitz Walter, who became the father of
the Fitzgeralds. "Maurice Fitzgerald, the eldest of the
brothers, became the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare
and Desmond; William, the younger, obtained an immense grant
of land in Kerry from the McCarthys, indeed as time went on
the lordship of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and
larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as many a
small European kingdom. Nor was this all. The White Knight,
the Knight of Glyn, and the Knight of Kerry were all three
Fitzgeralds, all descended from the same root, and all owned
large tracts of country. The position of the Geraldines of
Kildare was even more important, on account of their close
proximity to Dublin. In later times their great keep at
Maynooth dominated the whole Pale, while their followers
swarmed everywhere, each man with a 'G' embroidered upon his
breast in token of his allegiance. By the beginning of the
16th century their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest
point ever attained in these islands by any subject. Whoever
might be called the Viceroy in Ireland it was the Earl of
Kildare who practically governed the country."

_Hon. E. Lawless,
The Story of Ireland,
chapter 14._

See, also,
IRELAND: A. D. 1515;
and for some account of the subsequent rebellion and fall
of the Geraldines, see
IRELAND: A. D. 1535-1553.

GERALDINES, League of the.

See IRELAND: A. D. 1559-1603.

GERBA, OR JERBA, The disaster at. (1560).

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1543-1560.

GEREFA.

"The most general name for the fiscal, administrative and
executive officer among the Anglosaxons was Gerefa, or as it
is written, in very early documents geroefa: but the peculiar
functions of the individuals comprehended under it were
further defined by a prefix compounded with it, as scirgerefa,
the reeve of the shire or sheriff: tungerefa, the reeve of the
farm or bailiff. The exact meaning and etymology of this name
have hitherto eluded the researches of our best scholars."

_J. M. Kemble,
The Saxons in England,
book 2, chapter 5 (volume 2)._

See, also, SHIRE; and EALDORMAN.

GERGESENES, The.

One of the tribes of the Canaanites, whose territory is
believed by Lenormant to have "included all Decapolis and even
Galilee," and whose capital he places at Gerasa, now Djerash,
in Perea.

_F. Lenormant and E. Chevallier,
Manual of Ancient History,
book 6, chapter 1 (volume 2)._

GERGITHIAN SIBYL.

See CUMÆ.

GERGITHIANS, The.

See TROJA;
and, ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES.

GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNI.

"The site of Gergovia of the Arverni is supposed to be a hill
on the bank of the Allier, two miles from the modern Clermont
in Auvergne. The Romans seem to have neglected Gergovia, and
to have founded the neighbouring city, to which they gave the
name Augustonemetum. The Roman city became known afterwards as
Civitas Arvernorum, in the middle ages Arverna, and then, from
the situation of its castle, clarus mons, Clermont."

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 12 (volume 2, page 20, foot-note)._

For an account of Cæsar's reverse at Gergovia of the Arverni,

See GAUL: B. C. 58-51.

GERGOVIA OF THE BOIANS.

See BOIANS.

GERIZIM.

"The sacred centre of the Samaritans is Gerizim, the 'Mount of
Blessings.' On. its summit a sacred rock marks the site where,
according to their tradition, Joshua placed the Tabernacle and
afterwards built a temple, restored later by Sanballat on the
return of the Israelites from captivity. On the slope of the
mountain the Feast of the Passover is still celebrated in
accordance with the injunctions of the Law."

_C. R. Conder,
Syrian Stone Lore,
chapter 4._

GERMAN, High and Low.

The distinction, made between High German and Low German is
that resulting from differences of language, etc., between the
Germanic peoples which dwelt anciently in the low, flat
countries along the German Ocean and the Baltic, and those
which occupied the higher regions of the upper Rhine, Elbe and
Danube.

GERMAN EAST AFRICAN AND WEST AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS.

See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889.

GERMAN EMPIRE, The Constitution of the new.

See CONSTITUTION OF GERMANY.

---------------------------------- A Logical Outline of German History

Ethnological Social and political. Intellectual, moral and religious. Foreign.

IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.

3d-5th Centurles. The Wanderinag of the nations.

Germany was slow in finding the definite place in geography
and history that belongs to it at the present day. It was no
more at first than a name, applied with large vagueness to the
country beyond the Rhine and the Danube, where many restless
tribes, of kindred language and character, were unstably
distributed. In time, the tribes crowded one another into wide
wandering movements, were pushed and pressed together into
confederacies and nations, and went swarming over the Danube
and the Rhine into Roman provinces, to take possession of them
and to be the new masters of the European world; but it was
the Germans, not Germany, who began then to be historic.

5th-9th Centuries—Empire of the Franks.

As a fact in history, Germany emerged first with the Franks,
out of the dust-clouds of the wandering time and the darker
clouds of the Gallic conquest. Fast seated on the great
dividing river, the Rhine, the Franks reached backward into
the land which gave them birth, and forward into the land
which took their name, and gathered a broad empire out of
both. But always the two parts of it refused to be held
together. Neither by Clovis, the first conqueror, nor by
Charlemagne, after three hundred years, were the Kingdom of
the East Franks and the Kingdom of the West Franks bound fast
into one. Under Charlemagne's successors, the Kingdom of the
East Franks began to be Germany, in the growing of the fact as
well as the name.

A. D. 962.—The Holy Roman Empire.

But no sooner had a Kingdom of Germany been created than it
was strangely deprived of the distinctness needful to the
making of a nation. The adventurous Otho, its second Saxon
king, who reclaimed Italy and revived the imperial sovereignty
of Charlemagne, diminished the weight and dignity of his
Germanic realm as much as he advanced himself and his
successors in title and rank. By that elevation of its kings
to a pseudo-Roman throne, Germany lost its own proper place in
history, and was obscured by the shadow of an empire which
soon existed as a shadow only. Its elective kings, forsaking
the title of Kings of Germany, and calling themselves Kings of
the Romans, even while they waited for an imperial coronation
at the hands of the Pope, made the nationalizing of Germany,
as France was being nationalized, by its monarchy, impossible.

10th-18th Centuries.—Contests In Italy.

For three centuries, the ambitions and the interests of the
imperialized monarchy were ultramontane. Its Teutonic seat was
a mere resting-place between Italian expeditions. Its quarrels
with the Popes cast all questions of German politics into the
background. It took no root in German feeling, rallied no
national sentiment, gathered no increase of authority, sent
out from itself no centralizing influences, judicial or
administrative, to resist the dissolving forces of feudalism.
And nowhere else in Europe was the action of those forces so
destructive of political unity. That great Fatherland of the
German peoples, where the slow solidification of a nation
should have been going on as surely as in France, was crumbled
by them into petty principalities, which time only hardened in
their separateness.

A. D. 1273-1440—Rise of the House of Hapsburg.

When, at last, the crown came to be settled in one fast-rooted
and enduring House, it was not fortunately placed. Territorially
the Hapsburgs were planted on the verge of the Teutonic land,
where they fronted the Hungarians and the Svavs and were
threatened by the approaching Turks. Speaking figuratively,
they stood with their backs to Germany, facing their greater
dangers and their greater opportunities, east and south.

Their personal dominions were acquired for the most part
outside of the Teutonic line. Their immediate subjects were of
many alien races, with a few of Greman blood. Their kingship
of Hungary was more substantial in its political weight than
any Germanic sovereignty that they held. From the beginning of
its remarkable dynastic career, the House of Austria was in
all respects quite at one side of the great people whose crown
had unhappily passed to its keeping. The emperor-kings, throned
with less reality at Vienna than at Presburg and Prague, lost
more and more their German character, receded more and more
from the range of German influence. Thus Germany was robbed
again of the centralizing constraints which a vigorous, rising
monarchy of the true stamp, not falsified by a fictitious
imperialization, would have brought to bear upon it, for the
unifying of a great nation.

A. D. 1477-1496.—Burgundian and Spanish marriages.

The marriagcs which linked the Austrian House with the
sovereign families of Burgundy and Spain only drew it still
farther away, and made it more alien than before to the people
of the German North. The imperial government was brought then
under influences from Spain which opposed every tendency of
their feeling and thought. While the strong Teutonic mind
worked its slow way towards personal freedom,—towards
fearless inquiry and independent belief,—a contrary movement
went on in the Austrian court. Between Germany at large and
the circle in which Vienna stood really a center and a
capital, a widening inteliectual breach began when the
Hapsburg brain was narrowed by the astringent blood of
Castile. This appeared, not alone in the rupture of the
religious Reformation, but in all the advances that were made,
from the sixteenth century down, in science, philosophy,
literature and art.

Some advance was always made; but the modern impulses which
woke early in the German race were wastefully spent, during
many generations, for want of any national concentration. No
large channel opened to them; no worthy spirit directed them.
The pettiness of petty politics and courts belittled in most
ways, for a lamentable time, the workings of German energy and
genius.

A. D. 1618.—Brandenburg—Prussia.

The Thirty Years War made chaos in Germany complete. No
semblance of substance in the empire remained. The Kaiser had
become a sovereign less honored than the King of France,
and Vienna a capital less considered than Paris. But the
first nucleus of nationality took form in that chaos, when
Brandenburg drew Prussia to itself, in the union which
produced a new kingdom at the North. The rise of Prussia was
the rise of German nationality. It brought to bear on the
German people the first centralizing influence that had acted
upon them since their kings took the crown of Rome. For the
first time in their history they felt the pull of a force
which drew them towards common lines of action.

A. D. 1740-1786.—Frederick the Great. A. D. 1800-1813.—Struggle with Napoleon.

The aggrandizement of Prussia by Frederick the Great, though
iniquitous when considered in itself, was splendid work for
Germany. It prepared, for the perils of the next generation, a
power which Napoleon could humble at the moment, but which he
could not crush. It gave footing for the great heroic rally of
the Germanic people, whereby they conquered their place in the
world and secured their future.

A. D. 1866.—The Seven Weeks War A. D. 1870-1871.—The Franco-German War. A. D. 1871.—The Empire.

In all that has come to pass since Leipsic and Waterloo, the
logical sequence is plainer than history is wont to show it.
From men of the first decade in this century, who put the
school and the camp side by side in Prussian training, there
came more than from Bismarck or Moltke of the power which
triumphed at Sadowa and Sedan, which has constructed a new and
true Empire of Germany, with its capital at Berlin, and which
has dismissed Austria from German reckonings as mistress or as
rival, but to make of her an ally and a friend.

Within the last third of the nineteenth century, the Germans
may be said to have opened a great national career, such as
the English, their kinsmen, had entered upon nearly two
hundred years before. The energies of their powerful race have
been centered at last, and are acting with new potency, in
commerce and colonization, abroad, and in all modes of human
advancement, at home.

----------End: A Logical Outline of German History ------

{1429}

GERMAN FLATS: A. D.1765.
Treaty with the Indians.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765-1768.

GERMAN FLATS: A. D. 1778.
Destruction by Brant.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1778 (JUNE-NOVEMBER).

GERMAN NATIONS, The wandering of.

See GOTHS; FRANKS; ALEMANNI; MARCOMANNI;
QUADI; GEPIDÆ; SAXONS; ANGLES; BURGUNDIANS;
VANDALS; SUEVI; LOMBARDS.

GERMAN UNIVERSITIES.

See EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL: GERMANY.

GERMANIA.

"On the origin of the name Germania see Waitz D. V. G. i. 24;
he rejects all German derivations and concludes that it is
originally Gallic, the name given (as Tacitus indicates) by
the Gauls first to the Tungri, and afterwards to all the
kindred tribes. The meaning may be either 'good shouters'
(Grimm), or, according to other writers, 'East-men,' or
'neighbours.'"

_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, page 17, note._

GERMANIANS, The.

See CARMANIANS.

GERMANIC CONFEDERATION,
The First.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1814-1820.

The Second.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1870 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER).

GERMANIC DIET, The.

See DIET, GERMANIC.

GERMANIC PEOPLES OF THE ALEMANNIC LEAGUE.

See ALEMANNI: A.-D. 213.

GERMANICUS, Campaigns of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 14-16.

GERMANTOWN, Battle of.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1777 (JANUARY-DECEMBER).

GERMANY:
The national name.

"The nations of the Germania had no common name recognised by
themselves, and were content, when, ages after, they had
realised their unity of tongue and descent, to speak of their
language simply as the Lingua Theotisca, the language of the
people (theod). … Whence the name 'Deutsch.' Zeuss derives
it rather from the root of 'deuten,' to explain, so that
'theotisc' should mean 'significant.' But the root of 'theod'
and 'deuten' is the same. … The general name by which the
Romans knew them [Germani] was one which they had received
from their Gallic neighbours."

_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, chapter 3, and foot-note._

"In Gothic we have 'thiuda,' people; 'thiudisks,' belonging to
the people. … The High-German, which looks upon Sanskrit 't'
and Gothic 'th' as 'd,' possesses the same word, as 'diot,'
people; 'diutisc,' popularis; hence Deutsch, German, and
'deuten,' to explain, literally to Germanize."

_F. Max Müller,
Lectures on the Science of Language,
2d series, lecture. 5._

The account which Tacitus gives of the origin of the name
Germany is this: "The name Germany … they [the Germans] say,
is modern and newly introduced, from the fact that the tribes
which first crossed the Rhine and drove out the Gauls, and are
now called Tungrians, were then called Germans. Thus what was
the name of a tribe, and not of a race, gradually prevailed,
till all called themselves by this self-invented name of
Germans, which the conquerors had first employed to inspire
terror."

_Tacitus,
Germany;
translated by Church and Brodribb, chapter 2._

"It is only at the mouth of the Elbe that the Germany of the
really historical period begins: and this is a Germany only in
the eyes of scholars, antiquarians, and generalizing
ethnologists. Not one of the populations to whom the name is
here extended would have attached any meaning to the word,
except so far as they had been instructed by men who had
studied certain Latin writers. There was no name which was, at
one and the same time, native and general. There were native
names, but they were limited to special populations. There was
a general name, but it was one which was applied by strangers
and enemies. What this name was for the northern districts, we
know beforehand. It was that of Saxones and Saxonia in Latin;
of Sachsen and Sachsenland in the ordinary German. Evidence,
however, that any German population ever so named itself is
wholly wanting, though it is not impossible that some
unimportant tribe may have done so: the only one so called
being the Saxons of Ptolemy, who places them, along with
several others, in the small district between the Elbe and the
Eyder, and on three of the islands off the coast. … The
Franks gave it its currency and generality; for, in the eyes
of a Frank, Saxony and Friesland contained all those parts of
Germany which, partly from their difference of dialect, partly
from their rudeness, partly from their paganism, and partly
from the obstinacy of their resistance, stood in contrast to
the Empire of Charlemagne and his successors. A Saxon was an
enemy whom the Franks had to coerce, a heathen whom they had
to convert. What more the term meant is uncertain."

_R. G. Latham,
Introduction to Kemble's "Horæ Ferales."_

See, also, TEUTONES.

GERMANY: As known to Tacitus.

"Germany is separated from the Galli, the Rhæti, and Pannonii,
by the rivers Rhine and Danube; mountain ranges, or the fear
which each feels for the other, divide it from the Sarmatæ and
Daci. Elsewhere ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and
islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes and
kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed by war. The Rhine
springs from a precipitous and inaccessible height of the
Rhætian Alps, bends slightly westward, and mingles with the
Northern Ocean. The Danube pours down from the gradual and
gently rising slope of Mount Abnoba, and visits many nations,
to force its way at last through six channels into the Pontus;
a seventh mouth is lost in marshes. The Germans themselves I
should regard as aboriginal, and not mixed at all with other
races through immigration or intercourse. For, in former
times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who
sought to emigrate would arrive; and the boundless and, so to
speak, hostile ocean beyond us, is seldom entered by a sail
from our world. And, besides the perils of rough and unknown
seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy for Germany,
with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners
and aspect, unless indeed it were his home?
{1430}
In their ancient songs, their only way of remembering or
recording the past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco,
and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race, as their
founders. To Mannus they assign three sons, from whose names,
they say, the coast tribes are called Ingævones; those of the
interior, Herminones; all the rest, Istævones. Some, with the
freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity, assert that the
god had several descendants, and the nation several
appellations, as Marsi, Gambrivii, Suevi, Vandilii, and that
these are genuine old names. The name Germany, on the other
hand, they say, is modern and newly introduced."

_Tacitus,
Germany:
translated by A. J. Church and W. J. Brodribb,
chapters 1-2._

GERMANY: B. C. 12-9.
Campaigns of Drusus.

The first serious advance of the Roman arms beyond the Rhine
was made in the reign of Augustus, by the emperor's step-son,
Drusus. Cæsar had crossed the river, only to chastise and
terrify the tribes on the right bank which threatened Gaul.
Agrippa, some years later, repeated the operation, and
withdrew, as Cæsar had done. But Drusus invaded Germany with
intentions of conquest and occupation. His first campaign was
undertaken in the spring of the year 12 B. C. He crossed the
Rhine and drove the Usipetes into their strongholds; after
which he embarked his legions on transport ships and moved
them down the river to the ocean, thence to coast northwards
to the mouth of the Ems, and so penetrate to the heart of the
enemy's country. To facilitate this bold movement, he had
caused a channel to be cut from the Rhine, at modern Arnheim,
to the Zuyder Zee, utilizing the river Yssel. The expedition
was not successful and retreated overland from the Frisian
coast after considerable disaster and loss. The next year,
Drusus returned to the attack, marching directly into the
German country and advancing to the banks of the Weser, but
retreating, again, with little to show of substantial results.
He established a fortified outpost, however, on the Lippe, and
named it Aliso. During the same summer, he is said to have
fixed another post in the country of the Chatti. Two years
then passed before Drusus was again permitted by the emperor
to cross the Rhine. On his third campaign he passed the Weser
and penetrated the Hercynian forest as far as the Elbe,—the
Germans declining everywhere to give him battle. Erecting a
trophy on the bank of the Elbe, he retraced his steps, but
suffered a fall from his horse, on the homeward march, which
caused his death. "If the Germans were neither reduced to
subjection, nor even overthrown in any decisive engagement, as
the Romans vainly pretended, yet their spirit of aggression
was finally checked and from thenceforth, for many
generations, they were fully occupied with the task of
defending themselves."

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans,
chapter 36._

GERMANY: B. C. 8-A. D. 11.
Campaigns of Tiberius.