ADDRESS OF HON. WALTER G. CHARLTON. After the address of Mr. Innes, the Hon. Walter G. Charlton of Savannah delivered the following oration : "Governor of Georgia, Ladies and Gentlemen, My Fellow Georgians: "Near two centuries ago [1711] a man of strong and noble nature sought here and there in London a missing friend, whose character and kindly qualities kept him in affectionate remembrance. His search brought him at length to the debtors' prison of the Fleet, where in vilest surroundings, deliberately imprisoned in a narrow cell with victims of small-pox, he found the friend of his youth, dying of that loathsome disease. When he departed from that horrible scene, his life was consecrated to a great purpose. With the passing of the years there came a bright day in the long ago, when as the soft voices of spring were calling back to life and glory the sleeping beauties of nature, there landed upon what was destined to become a sovereign state a small band, selected to start upon its career the most remarkable experiment in the history of colonization. The purpose had reached its fulfillment, for the sorrowing friend was Oglethorpe; the adventurers, the passengers of the Anne; the land, the commonwealth which holds our allegiance, our hopes, our happiness. "As they stood at that historic moment beneath the marvelous blue of the February [1732] sky—free as the winds which sighed through the majestic pines which surrounded them—their memories aglow with the hospitality which had received and sheltered them as their voyage drew to its conclusion on the neighboring shores of Carolina, no happier people ever faced the serious responsibilities of life. About them was grace and song and beauty; before them, the prospect of rest and content; within them, the peace of God. The tempestuous Atlantic, with its wintry wastes, had become a memory; and in the dim vistas of the past, the cruel bitterness of man's brutality was fading away as the phantoms of the night before the warmth and splendor of the rising sun. They were not makers of history, these six score men and women from the debtors' prisons of England. They were the opportunity through which history is made. With all the limitations the condition suggests, they had been the victims of the most merciless system of laws which ever disgraced a civilized country—and were now free; free to take up the broken journey of a life which, burdened as it had been with measureless suffering, had yet been untouched by the vice and dishonesty which surrounded it hour by hour. They were good men who had failed in the practical affairs of life, and from whom had departed the buoyancy of youth. They had marked time as ambition hurried by and was lost. And yet, when the last man stepped ashore on that historic day the echo of his footfall was to sound down the centuries; the historian was to take up a new story in the annals of nations—for the great tide in human affairs had turned definitely to its upward flow. "There had been nothing like it in the history of mankind. They were of the weak and oppressed of earth. Few in number; untrained in military venture, unskilled in civic construction, their mission was to build for all time an empire in a wilderness and hold it against the warlike savage and the armies and navies of one of the greatest powers of Europe. Even as they set foot upon the shore, facing them were the hordes of Indians whom they were to resist, whilst to the south were gathering like unto the storm-clouds of the coming tempest the hosts of Spain. Yet from the tragic elements of failure came victory, for in the divine purposes of the Almighty it had been ordained at that moment there should stand upon the soil of Georgia the one man in all the world through whom victory might come. "A great artist, under the inspiration of a great subject, has brought to triumphant conclusion a work of art which, for all time, will hold the attention and interest of those whose vision rises above the sordid and groveling concerns of life and takes within its scope the things which charm and ennoble thought and action. To him who loves art for art's sake, the faithfulness of detail; the grace of outline; the strength of pose; the historic perfection of the portrayal will hold in fascination. What the Georgian will see and what he will carry in his memory from this historic spot will be the recollection of a strong, dominant warrior, with the fighting look upon his face—resolute and unconquerable—in the wisdom of Providence destined to stand on Georgia soil and in one momentous day end forever a conflict which had convulsed the civilization of Europe for centuries; and to see as he sheathed his victorious sword what would be in time the greatest monument it was ever given to man to rear—a free and sovereign State. "Human force and genius are so often contrasted with the grave crises which threaten to destroy the organized affairs of men, that when emergencies occur we instinctively search the perspective for the inevitable relief. The tension of the situation reacts upon the tendencies of given minds and won or lost no great cause ever swayed the hopes and emotions of mankind but from the stress and conflict sprang some heroic spirit to leave its shining record on the pages of history. Of the greatness of Oglethorpe is the fact that no crisis was at hand when he started upon the illustrious career, in recognition of which a grateful people this day do homage to his memory. In the times in which he began life the direction in which his steps led was along the beaten path of thousands. A military apprenticeship under generals of renown; a parliamentary career of more or less usefulness; a respectable and quiet old age amid the congenial surroundings of a privileged class—it was the common fate of those from whom he came. "The imagination falters as it attempts to reconstruct the conditions upon which the contemporaries of Oglethorpe looked with the complacency which hourly contact induces. In military prowess; in terrific hardships upon land and sea; in shrewd and cunning diplomacy and politics, the age was supreme. For the simpler and nobler qualities from which are evolved the patriot and the brother, there was neither place nor recognition. The greatest soldier of the age did not hesitate to sell his country for gold; the poet on bended knee served the fruitions of his soul to the taste of the dissolute in power; the statesman pandered to the vices of those who could repay in coin and place the eloquence which belonged to the race and not to the individual. Jeffries had not long since ridden upon his circuit, with a sneer upon his lips, sending to the gallows, amid the brutal clamor of the accompanying mob, women and children for offenses which now receive the least of punishments. The poor were despised; the sick abandoned; the stricken in mind maltreated and exhibited for money. Deep down in all of this misery, friendless and hopeless, forgotten of friend and kindred, removed even from the exhausted malice of foes, was the insolvent debtor whose only crime was his inability to deliver at the moment of demand the money he had promised to pay. "Appalling as was the condition which prevailed as the century drew to its close, the most frightful manifestation was the unprotested acceptance of it as endurably natural. Removed by the circumstances of birth from its more debasing aspects and influences was born on Dec. 22, 1696, James Edward Oglethorpe. Influence and opportunity brought him a commission, in his fifteenth year, under Marlborough, and after the peace of 1712 he served under Prince Eugene in the campaigns on the Danube. There could have been no better martial schooling. But in this English boy was something beyond military enthusiasm. Working in his active brain was the constructive force which moulds statesmen, and so directs and rules the destinies of nations. He might in the parliamentary career upon which he entered in 1722, have attained distinction, or, restive in the subservient crowd which dog the footsteps of the great, he might have gone prematurely to that life of quiet which in the distance awaited his coming. It was otherwise ordained. The pen of a great novelist a century later aroused to indignant protest the English mind against the iniquities of imprisonment for debt, and the echo of that far off revolution in public sentiment sounded at length in the constitution of Georgia. "But on the day when Oglethorpe moved by the misfortune of a friend passed through the portals of the Fleet to find Robert Castell suffering amid the unspeakable brutalities of the debtors' prison the tortures of small-pox, there was no public conscience to be aroused to horror. When Hampden stormed with vivid bursts of eloquence in the British parliament, appealing to the eternal principles of liberty, though they brought down upon him the wrath of royalty, his words found lodgment in the souls and memories of thousands, to grow and develop until in time all England responded to the truths he had proclaimed. The sentiment and the crisis were at hand. But upon this man was to fall not only the responsibility of meeting and overcoming a great evil by the force of his individuality, but of creating the opportunity without which his enthusiasm and devotion must fade and perish for want of that upon which it must take root to live. "The England of 1729 took no heed of what fate might befall the insolvent debtor. Misfortune and misery excited its mirth ; and compassion like some feeble growth slightrooted in arid soil, sent its weak and nerveless tendrils here and there in fitful and uncertain ways toward what might prove support. The man and the evil stood face to face, and singly and alone, as in the tales Where moved the knights-errant of the age of poesy, he gave fight until the sheer gallantry of the spectacle began to make a responsive thrill, and gather to him, one by one, the kindred spirits which, few in number, but worthy of the cause in which they fought, stood with him until the glorious end became a conclusion never to be undone in the history of man. His chivalrous heart, full of indignant pity for the sorrows upon which he looked, Oglethorpe introduced into parliament a resolution of inquiry into the conditions of the debtors' prisons. The investigation which followed revealed, in the language of an historian of that epoch, 'infamous jobbery and more infamous cruelty on the part of prison officials.' With the report came the opportunity without which the greatness of individuals means nothing. "They fail to grasp the greatness of this man's nature who see in his efforts only the workings of emotional benevolence—the distempered energy which forces its conceptions of altruism upon the poor with no thought for the poor man's dignity of thought and independence of spirit. What moved him to action was a divine wrath against injustice—the scorn of an exalted mind for the besotted barbarities of a practice which found no warrant in the laws of God or the promptings of common humanity. It was characteristic of the situation that when the charter of Georgia came to be signed the names written into it were few—few and known and honored. Written at a time when the great civic and private virtues which illustrate every condition of our day were in a state of dormancy, its language places it among the priceless documents of the ages. Without profit or reward or hope of material benefit to any incorporator, it was recited that his majesty, having taken into consideration the miserable circumstances of many of his own poor subjects, ready to perish for want, as likewise the distress of many poor foreigners who would take refuge here from persecution, hath, out of his fatherly compassion toward his subjects, been graciously pleased to grant a charter for incorporating a number of gentlemen by the name of "The Trustees for establishing a colony of Georgia in America.' "We are accustomed to the spectacle of public altruism, where the plethoric dispenser of charity pursues his complacent way with a staff of newspaper reporters at his heels, and followed by the gaping multitude from whom he has drawn his wealth; and with cheque book in one hand and chisel in the other erects an edifice with the one and with the other carves his ignoble name that we may not forget the incident. But here was a soul crying aloud, like John in the wilderness, with no thought of self, that the helpless might be lifted from the depths of despair and the stricken in spirit take hope for the renewed conflicts of a life which had come to be with them a vague and insubstantial memory. Whatever his eloquence or want of eloquence, from the material of the impossible this one man evolved the possible and the fact; and when the slow processes of legislative inquiry began to quiver into movement, and piece by piece to form in the minds of the few the result which took form in the charter of Georgia, the refuge for the friendless and the oppressed, the first practical step in the direction of moral reform in social conditions had been taken; and although the labor and eloquence of an hundred years were to be expended before the revolution in public sentiment became assured and the Samaritan began once more to travel along the highways of life, the fact remains that among human agencies to the founder of Georgia is to be ascribed the first practical step in the direction of that comprehensive altruism which in our day works to its blessed ends with no hope of reward and no thought of personal importance. "It was not to be conceived that any man, be his persuasiveness what it might, could impress on King or parliament or subject the practicability or desirability of establishing in a distant wilderness beyond the seas a colony for the friendless and the oppressed, without more. The shrewdness of Oglethorpe's mind foresaw that without some practical importance to be given the movement he had in contemplation, something which would appeal to a general sentiment already existing, rather than to one which should exist, but did not, the work he had in view would never progress beyond his hopes. Whatever might be the social degradation to which England had descended, with the consequent indifference to the inevitable results which followed upon such a deplorable condition, in one direction the public sentiment was sound. An appeal which was founded upon the necessity or advisability of extending the military power had prompt and effective response from noble and peasant. Marlborough might traffic with the Court of France, but Marlborough was none the less the great general who had carried the flag of England in triumph through the ranks of continental powers; whilst wherever the ocean beat, over its stormy waves floated in defiant freedom the historic banner which our ancestors loved. "Colonies for the exercise of benevolence were unknown to the statesmanship of that or any other age; but colonies for military purposes were as old as civilization itself. The presentation was attractive; the utility demonstrable. Across the stretches of a vast ocean was a colony favored of the crown and established in the sentiments of the people. To the south and west were tribes of savages of unknown numbers, ready and eager to descend upon its resources, whilst in the offing were gathered the navies of the hereditary foe of England, with which at intervals it had waged desperate warfare extending over centuries of time. So to the project of the benevolent colony was added the alluring prospect of a colony which was to interpose its effective presence between Carolina on the one hand and the Spaniard and Indian on the other. Men might scoff at the opportunity to be furnished the insolvent debtor to redeem his fortunes, but it would not occur to the practical minded Briton to view with indifference a determined body of aggressive Englishmen to be drawn from the fighting stock of the old country and landed upon a distant shore charged with the duty of fighting, and fighting in what to all was not only a good cause, but a cause which had in it the element of temper as well as right. "And so what was apparently the secondary purpose of the settlement of Georgia became by force of circumstances inherent in the original project the real purpose—and the charter in ringing terms made this the only military colony in America. In considering the character and success of Oglethorpe both purposes are to be borne in mind. That his object was really to lift from the deplorable condition in which he was the insolvent debtor, there can be no doubt; that he accepted not only in good faith but with the enthusiasm of one in whom the spirit of chivalry was developed to its highest excellence, the additional charge to carry to success the English arms, is equally certain. No one of his unusual perspicacity could fail to know that a colony of insolvent debtors just from the loathsome prisons of England, however honest they might be, would be worse than useless as a military establishment. It meant in all probability just so many more people to protect. A man who was simply wise without being great and humane would upon the granting of the charter with its two objects, have ignored the one and fixed his hopes upon the other. "If he had followed the paths of his predecessors in colonial experimentation that would have been his determination. If he had in view personal aggrandizement, personal greed, personal privilege, the military feature assured the friendless prisoners would have been relegated to despair. It is to be remembered of this man so long as history shall carry the deeds and greatness of mortals to a discriminating posterity, that in all the years of the administration of the affairs of the colony of Georgia, from the moment when the project took shape in his mind and heart to the moment when, his work accomplished, he saw the lines of her coast recede from his vision [17??]; through the resulting years of honor and dignity, unto the moment when he passed into the peace of eternity, the founder of Georgia never owned a foot of Georgia soil; enjoyed no privilege in her vast domain save such as was necessary to the effective discharge of his public trust; and so far from taking to his profit one cent devoted to her development or the purposes of her settlement, left the service of Georgia and of the crown of England with fortune impaired and never restored by the government which had profited by his work. "You will search in vain through the stories of American colonization, my fellow Georgians, for the instance which suggests remotely the disinterestedness of him in whose honor we are here today. Integrity and disinterestedness in public life as the illustrated Oglethorpe, so made they our people great in the days which followed. Guard with constant watchfulness this priceless heritage, for on that day when we become indifferent to the influence of these virtues; that moment when we view with complacency the give and take of modern politics, so sure as the rising of the sun will be the passing of the republic which Southern thought and sacrifice made possible and Southern tradition and devotion keep secure in the deadly storms which are now shaking it to its foundations. "The occasion is concerned with the individual rather than the incidents which one by one formed his life work into a great historical event, not without its epic setting. Consider for a moment a broad and chivalric nature, trained in the school of military service under the great captains of Europe, at the head of a colony of 120 men and women, broken in for tune and in spirit, bound for a wild country across the tempestuous seas, extending the written words of the charter from the waters of the Savannah to the South seas—a land inhabited by savages of warlike disposition and habit, and menaced by the naval and military power of the ancient and truculent foe of England. Yet when on November 30, 1732, the good ship Anne set sail from Gravesend and turned her prow to the setting sun, at that moment began a distinct epoch not only in the military history of England, but in the moral development of mankind. "Upon that momentous voyage and its conclusion at the hospitable shores of Carolina it is not permissible to dwell at length. Leaving the colonists in the generous care of the noble people of that great colony, Oglethorpe pursued his way to Georgia and in a brief interview with Tomochichi settled for all time the relations between the colony and the Indians. There is no such colonial record anywhere in America. Without this victory of peace the colony could not have progressed, if it could have started upon its way, and it would reflect upon a generous people to forego a passing tribute to that great Georgian of the long ago whose broadness of mind and faithfulness of character made possible the solution of this problem which confronted the colonists at the threshold of their undertaking. It has been said that not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till that hour when many that are great shall be small and the small great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep; their lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record them.' "Of these last was Tomochichi, who, when upward of ninety years of age, was fighting the enemies of Georgia. In a neighboring square, a few hundred feet from this spot, where he was laid to rest by the people of Georgia, a noble band of Georgia women, carrying out the forgotten behest of Oglethorpe made in the long ago, have placed as a memorial where he was buried a boulder of Georgia granite. On it is inscribed that he was the Mico of the Yamacraws; the companion of Oglethorpe, and the friend and ally of the colony of Georgia. As they were associated in life, so let them live together in our grateful memories, and let this spot on which stands the monument to the one discard a designation which is meaningless and take on the name of the old warrior whose friendship made possible the peaceful settlement of the colony of Georgia. "From the petty details and annoyances of colonial inauguration, infinitely more trying to one of Oglethorpe's character than the stern hardships and dangers of campaigning, the project in what began to be its more critical phase engrossed the thought and anxiety of the leader. The Indian had been converted into a friend but the war clouds were still gathering to the south. To attempt to stay that storm by the exhibition of one hundred and twenty insolvent debtors would have recalled, amid the derisive laughter of the gods, Xerxes stilling the sounding waves with the uplifting of his hands. But the call to battle which rung in the words of the Georgia Charter had not been unheeded. The first adventurers who sailed in the Anne [1733?] came from the debtors' prison, but the colonists who followed during the next three years were of as free and sturdy a stock as ever ventured forth to extend the prestige and power of England. These freemen from England and Scotland, with the brave-hearted Salsburgers [Saltzburghers], were the substantial colonists of Georgia, and from their arrival here the movement took on new life. "It was a colony as notable for what it did not do as for that which was undertaken and accomplished. It was of the fortune of mankind that at the critical moments the guiding power was in the man who had made the experiment possible. An apparently impossible undertaking which must have appealed to the age in which it was essayed as a comic manifestation, took on a practical business aspect within a few hours of the landing. The Indians became friends; toleration prevailed; civic and military progression went on side by side; even the dreaded witch in free Georgia had more rights than the minister of God who in higher latitudes wandered from colony to colony seeking in vain the rest which his vocation suggested and his character demanded and after centuries of persecution here at last the learned and patient Jew found peace. To the practical mind of Oglethorpe no detail was negligible. As there were no mercenary aims in the venture itself or its development, the grinding processes which were applied elsewhere found no toleration here. It was not only a practical mind which governed, but the mind of a constructive statesman, trained in the hard school of military necessity. "Oglethorpe not only dealt successfully with the petty details of colonial life, but with singular clearness his vision took within its scope the things which were to come. He forbade slavery and prohibited rum, industries which found lodgement only after his departure. The very plan upon which Savannah progresses was formulated by him. The instructed Georgian cannot look in any direction here without being reminded of the great man who was responsible for the existence of Georgia. The fate of the colony was in the keeping of this one man. Had he faltered; had his resources of mind and soul even so much as checked their out-pour at any given time, the experiment had failed. He had already accomplished a great work. The colony of Georgia had been fixed on safe lines, and altruism had been rewritten upon the souls of men. A great man and a great work had come together, and the vitality of a great nature had been breathed into the work. "But the colonization of Georgia even upon such lofty ideals was the accomplishment of only a part of that which Oglethorpe had in mind. As you face his statue, with the naked sword in hand and its defiant and fighting look toward the south, another Oglethorpe confronts you. The statesman has stripped away his robes, and the lieutenant of Marlborough and Eugene, with the problem of centuries before him, awaits the moment when along the narrow edge of the gleaming blade in his hand shall flash the signal of battle, and the old quarrel between England and Spain find its solution. "From the settlement on February 12, 1733, the colony had progressed without special incident for a year. In the summer of that year Oglethorpe had returned to England, accompanied by Tomochichi; and on March 10, 1734, the Purisburg, with the Salsburgers [Saltzburghers], arrived—the Highlanders sailed on the Prince of Wales, Oct. 20, 1735. The London Merchant and the Symond left England with the Frederica colonists on Dec. 21, 1735. Having returned to the colony toward the close of 1736, Oglethorpe again sailed for England to urge the departure of the military contingent. A portion of the troops sailed on May 7, 1738, and the remainder, with Oglethorpe as general, arrived off Jekyl bar on Sept. 18, 1738. "During the intervals, Oglethorpe, with the assistance of Tomochichi, made frequent demonstrations along the Spanish frontier. Hostilities began on November 15, 1739, with the slaying of two Highlanders by the Spaniards, on Amelia Island. Oglethorpe at once gave pursuit, pushing on to the St. John's river, and burning three outposts. Marching in the direction of St. Augustine he attacked and defeated a detachment of the enemy, and attempted unsuccessfully to take Forts St. Francis [Pupo?] and Picolata. Returning on Jan 1, 1740, he burnt the latter and reduced the former. It never occurred to Oglethorpe to stay whipped. Driven off today, he was back on the morrow—a practice which the Spanish governor [Montiano] took much to heart as unreasonable, with a touch of discourtesy to a successful antagonist. "In May, 1740, with an army two thousand strong, consisting of regulars, militia and Indians, with co-operative fleet under Admiral Vernon, he moved on to St. Augustine; captured Fort Moosa [Mose], and signaling the fleet to action, prepared to deliver the assault on the fortifications of the Florida stronghold. The fleet failed to respond and departed, and the unsupported attack from the land becoming thus impracticable, a siege of three weeks followed, which Oglethorpe was finally compelled to abandon. To his repeated and urgent requests for reinforcements the home government made no response, and he had been practically abandoned to his fate when, in the summer of 1741, the long gathering storm burst in all its fury A Spanish fleet of fifty-one sails had appeared in June of that year. Its vessels, in one way and another, were so badly used by Oglethorpe in detail that it finally disappeared, to be replaced on June 28 by the St Augustine fleet of thirty-eight sails, Oglethorpe retarded its movements until July 5, when, after a hot engagement, lasting four hours, it passed the batteries and got out of range toward Frederica, upon which place Oglethorpe fell back—the enemy landing on the south end of St. Simon's. On July 7, 1742, the Spaniards moved on Frederica and Oglethorpe advanced to meet them, and the decisive battle of Bloody Marsh was on. When the smoke cleared away Georgia was free. The battle had not been to the strong. The comment of Oglethorpe was as characteristic as it was modest. 'The Spanish invasion which had a long time threatened the colony, Carolina and all North America, has at last fallen upon us, and God hath been our deliverance.' And George Whitfield said of it, 'the deliverance of Georgia from the Spaniards is such as cannot be paralleled but by some instances out of the Old Testament.' "His work accomplished; his mission fulfilled, on July 23, 1743, he sailed for England, never to see again the land to which he had devoted the best years of his life. He was too great to escape the calumnies of the small and the ingratitude of the narrow. Having passed to payment the expenditures made by him out of his personal fortune, the English government revoked its action and appropriated his money. Having availed themselves of his military talents, the advisers of royalty court-martialed him on grounds which were dismissed as slanderous. Finally, he withdrew from the service of an ungrateful monarch and entered upon the last stage of the journey of life which was to end on July 1, 1785. King and courtier might see in him only a successful rival for the fame which it was not given them to attain, but with the great spirit of his time he became a welcome guest. Authors laid their tributes at his feet and poets bound about his brows the laurel wreaths of victory. Georgia and her fate never passed from his thought. Tradition has it that in the days of the Revolution he was tendered the command of the English forces, and refused to take up arms against the colony he had founded. Whether it be true or no, never in thought or word that history records was he ever disloyal to the colony to which he had devoted the best years of his life. "He had striven with success for the betterment of the weak and helpless in an age of abject selfishness. He had made an empire with a handful of the oppressed of earth, and the work had survived. He had overcome the Indian by persuasion and kindness and won the abiding friendship of the savages he had been sent to slay. He had encountered the most powerful foe [Spain, Montiano] of England and driven him in disastrous defeat before his scant battle-line. Reversing all the traditions of colonial administration, he had been tolerant and just. He was a builder and not an iconoclast; a statesman and not a schemer; a soldier and not a plunderer. "Brave and wise and merciful, the ends he accomplished placed him in historic perspective a century ahead of the day in which he worked. Honest in an era of guile, without fear and without reproach, he comes to us with his unstained record, to live so long as Georgians shall stand upon the ancient ways and see and approve the better things of life. In all his brilliant career—in the hour of stress, in the moment of victory—no clamorous sound of vain and self-applauding words came from his lips There was no need. That which he did sends its paeans down the centuries; and over his illustrious career Georgia stands guard forever."