American Minute with Bill Federer
Fighting the Sultan to Founding Georgia - Eugene of Savoy's aide-de-camp James Oglethorpe, and Georgia's Religious Heritage
|
|
Early in his career,
Eugene of Savoy,
under the command of
Polish King Jan Sobieski,
helped defeat 200,000 Muslim Turks on S
eptember 11, 1683,
thus saving the city of Vienna, Austria.
|
|
Austrian Prince Eugene of Savoy
went on to become one of
Europe's most famous commanders.
|
|
Savoy
helped drive the Turks from
Budapest
in 1686.
In 1687, he gallantly commanded a cavalry brigade defeating the Turks at the
Second Battle of Mohács in Hungary.
|
|
This victory was so significant that the
Ottoman army mutinied,
resulting in its general,
Grand Vizier Sarı Süleyman Pasha,
being
executed,
and the
Sultan, Mehmed IV,
being
deposed.
|
|
Prince Eugene of Savoy
was most renown for his victory over 100.000 Muslim Ottoman Turks at the
Battle of Zenta, Serbia, September 11, 1697.
|
|
Then Turks invaded Russia.
The
new Turkish Grand Vizier, Baltacı Mehmet,
defeated
Peter the Great's Russian Army
in the
Russo-Turkish War (1710-1711).
|
|
Turks then invaded
Greece
and
Venetian territories,
led by
Turkish Grand Vizier Damat Ali
in the
Turkish-Venetian War (1714-1718).
|
|
Once again, to Europe's rescue came
Austrian Prince Eugene of Savoy
in the
Austro-Turkish War,
1716-1718.
In 1716,
Savoy
defeated the Turks at
Petrovaradin,
captured the
Banat
(areas of
Romania, Serbia
and
Hungary)
and the capital city of
Timisoara.
|
|
In 1717,
Savoy
recaptured
Belgrade, Serbia,
whose Christian population had been brutally crushed and enslaved by numerous Muslim campaigns dating back to 1521.
|
|
Savoy's
successful halt of the
Ottoman invasion
into Europe resulted in Turks suing for peace in 1718 with the
Treaty of Passarowitz,
as the Islamic practice was, when you are strong fight without mercy, but when you are weak, make treaties till you can become strong.
|
|
One of the young soldiers fighting at the
Battle of Belgrade
was 17-year-old Englishman
James Oglethorpe,
who served as
Prince Savoy's aide-de-camp.
|
|
Oglethorpe,
after fighting with distinction in the
Austro-Turkish War,
returned to England at the age of 21.
He unintentionally killed a man in a brawl and spent five months in
prison.
Upon release,
James
followed in the footsteps of his father,
Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe,
and became a
member of Parliament,
where he served for 32 years, 1722-1754.
|
|
In
Parliament,
he became known for opposing slavery.
In 1728, one of
James Oglethorpe's
friends,
Robert Castell,
was unable to pay his debts and was thrown into
London's notorious Fleet Debtor's Prison.
|
|
At the time, in English prisons,
prisoners had to pay the guards to get food
and a decent room. As Castell was unable to pay, he was put in a cell with someone dying of smallpox.
Castell
caught the disease and
died.
When
Oglethorpe
heard the news, he was distraught. He soon began a
national campaign for prison reform,
heading a parliamentary committee to investigate them.
Steps were made to end the extortion and abuse of prisoners, and improve sanitary conditions.
|
|
James Oglethorpe
conceived of an idea for a
colony in America
where
poor debtors and religious refugees
could get a second chance.
He named the colony
"Georgia"
after Britain's
King George II.
|
|
Georgia's Colonial Charter,
1732, stated regarding religious freedom:
"There shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God ...
and that all such persons, except papists, shall have a free exercise of their religion."
|
|
Sailing on the ship
Ann,
the 115 settlers landed on JANUARY 13, 1733.
A year later,
Protestant refugees
from Salzburg, Austria, called
"Salzburgers,"
settled the town of
Ebenezer, Georgia.
|
|
In 1735,
Moravian Christian settlers
from
Bohemia
arrived through
Fort Argyle.
|
|
Scottish Presbyterians
arrived from
New Inverness
in 1736.
Huguenot Protestant
refugees had arrived from
France.
|
|
James Oglethorpe's
secretary was
Charles Wesley,
who later became a hymn writer, composing among others, the carol
"Hark, the Herald Angel Sings."
|
|
Charles Wesley's brother, John Wesley,
served in 1735 as the
Georgia's Anglican minister.
He later began the
Methodist movement.
|
|
The Wesleys' friend, Rev. George Whitefield,
preached to enthusiastic crowds in
Georgia
in 1738, and later started an orphanage there.
|
|
On July 11, 1733, 34
Portuguese Sephardic Jews
and 8
German Ashkenazic Jews,
arrived in
Savannah, Georgia.
This was the largest group of Jews to land in North America prior to the Revolutionary War.
They began the
Holy Congregation Hope of Israel-"Kahal Kodesh Mickve Israel,"
the
third oldest Jewish congregation in the United States.
|
|
In 1742, during the
War of Jenkin's Ear,
some 3,000
Spanish soldiers
landed on
Georgia's St. Simon's Island.
|
|
Oglethorpe
repelled them in the
Battle of Bloody Marsh,
July 7, 1742.
The next year,
Oglethorpe
returned to England where he served in the military.
Georgia's Royal Governor Henry Ellis
made peace with the
Creek Indians,
and issued an Act regarding religion in 1758:
"Establishing Religious Worship therein, according to the Rites and Ceremonies of
the Church of England;
and also for empowering the Church Wardens and Vestrymen of the respective Parishes ... for the repair of churches, the relief of the poor, and other Parochial service."
|
|
This Act
established the Anglican Church
as the Colony of
Georgia's official denomination,
with a £25 per annum salary for every Anglican clergyman.
Catholics
were specifically excluded from the colony.
|
|
Beginning in 1755,
Britain expelled all French Catholics
from
Acadia, Canada.
Some 400
French Catholics
arrived in
Savannah, Georgia.
They were only allowed to stay the winter before being
ordered to leave.
|
|
Some expelled
Acadians
traveled to South Carolina, others to St. Dominique Island, and still others to the
French Catholic Louisiana Territory,
where the pronunciation of
"Acadian" evolved to "Cajun."
|
|
Other Protestants arrived in Georgia.
In 1772,
Daniel Marshall
established Kiokee Baptist Church - the
first Baptist Church in Georgia.
|
|
Georgia
is also known for
Polish General Casmir Pulaski,
father of the American cavalry, who died fighting the British at
Savannah.
|
|
Georgia
had many Revolutionary War patriots, such as
Nancy Hart.
While her husband was away, six British soldiers converged on their frontier home.
|
|
Soldiers shot her prize gobbler and ordered her to cook it.
After feeding and serving them lots of wine
Nancy
grabbed one of their guns, promising to shoot the first one that moved.
|
|
After shooting two, her husband showed up and they hung the rest.
|
|
Mordecai Sheftall
of Georgia became the Continental Army's
highest ranking Jewish officer.
|
|
In 1777,
Georgia
passed its
first State Constitution,
stating:
"We the people of Georgia, relying upon the protection and guidance of
Almighty God,
do ordain and establish this Constitution."
Georgia's Constitution, 1777, Article 6 stated:
"Representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county ... and they shall be of the
Protestant religion."
|
|
In 1785,
John Adams
was sent as the
first U.S. Ambassador to Britain.
While there,
he visited with James Oglethorpe
just months before his death.
|
|
In 1788,
Georgia
was the 4th State to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1789, Georgia's population was over 82,000. It adopted a
second Constitution
which
removed the Protestant requirement,
simply stating:
"All persons shall have the free exercise of religion."
A third Georgia Constitution was adopted in 1798, establishing religious toleration.
|
|
In the first 34 years of Georgia's statehood, conflicts arose between settlers and
Indians,
especially when
gold was discovered on Cherokee land
in 1829, causing the
Georgia Gold Rush.
|
|
An
Indian Removal Act
was hurriedly rushed through a Democrat controlled Congress in 1830.
This resulted in the tragic
"Trail of Tears"
where over 16,000 men, women, and children of the tribes
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole,
and
Cherokee,
were forcibly removed from their homes by the Federal Government in the bitter winter of 1838.
Over 4,000 died on the forced march from
Georgia
and southeastern United States to the
Oklahoma Territory.
|
|
Georgia's religious history
included the
Jewish Mickve Israel Congregation,
which in 1786 had an attendance of 73.
In 1790, Georgia's Governor granted the Jewish congregation a State Charter.
|
|
President Washington
wrote to the
Hebrew Congregation
in S
avannah, Georgia,
May 1790:
"May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land,
whose Providential Agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation,
still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven, and make the inhabitants of every denomination partake in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people, whose God is Jehovah."
|
|
The
first Catholic residents
moved into Georgia from Maryland around 1793.
They had no priest until the
French Revolution
sparked a
slave revolt
on the
Island of St. Dominique/Haiti
causing a few
priests
to
flee to Georgia.
In 1810, the State Legislature incorporated the Catholic Church of Augusta.
|
|
In 1820,
Irish Bishop John England
was appointed over the State's one hundred
Catholics
in
Savannah,
plus a few more in
Augusta.
Bishop England
founded
America's first Catholic newspaper,
The United States Catholic Miscellany.
Bishop John England
delivered the
first Catholic Sermon in the U.S. Capital
at the Sunday morning Church service held in the House of Representatives, January 8, 1826.
|
|
The overflow audience included
President John Quincy Adams
, who had previously stated, July 4, 1821, that Catholicism and Republicanism were incompatible.
Bishop England
reassured the predominately Protestant audience:
"We do not believe that God gave to the Church any power to interfere with our civil rights, or our civil concerns ...
I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop
of our Church ... the smallest
interference
with the humblest vote at our most insignificant
balloting box."
|
|
By 1839,
Bishop John England
listed 11 priests in
Georgia.
The population of
Georgia
in 1830 was 516,823.
|
|
In 1836,
Methodists
founded
Emory College,
named after
Methodist Bishop John Emory,
in the city of Oxford, and
Wesleyan Female College
at Macon -- the
first institution
of learning founded
specifically for women in America.
|
|
Georgia
supported the State's Right doctrine before the outbreak of the
War Between the States,
and when Lincoln was elected, politicians moved for secession from the Union.
|
|
Georgia
was devastated as the Civil War progressed, especially in the
fall of Atlanta
and
General Sherman's
march to the sea.
|
|
In 1865,
Atlanta University
was founded by the
Protestant American Missionary Association
to help freed slaves, as was
Clark University,
founded in 1869 by the
Methodist Episcopal Church.
|
|
The population of
Georgia
in 1870 was 1,184,109.
In 1877,
Georgia's Constitution
stated:
"Relying upon the protection and guidance of
Almighty God ...
All men have the natural and inalienable right to worship
God,
each according to the
dictates of his own conscience."
In 1877,
Baptists
founded
Shorter College
at Rome, and in 1881,
Methodists
founded
Morris Brown College.
|
|
In 1895, history was made at the
International Exposition in Atlanta
when the black
President of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington,
was invited to give a
keynote address.
In 1900, the population of
Georgia
was 2,216,331.
As of 1910, the
State of Georgia
gave full
liberty of conscience
in matters of religious opinion and worship, but did not legalize willful or profane scoffing.
It was unlawful to conduct any secular business on Sunday.
Georgia's oath of office was administered with one hand upon the
Bible
and the other uplifted, with the affirmation:
"You do solemnly swear in the presence of the
ever living God"
or "You do sincerely and truly affirm, etc."
Legislative sessions opened with prayer.
|
|
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,
conducted by
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,
2007, published in the
USA Today,
listed Georgia as:
83 percent Christian,
consisting of:
-Evangelical Protestant - 38 percent
-Mainline Protestant - 16 percent
-Black Protestant - 16 percent
-Catholic - 12 percent
-Orthodox - <0.5 percent
-Other Christian - <0.5 percent
1 percent - Jewish
<0.5 percent - Mormon
<0.5 percent - Jehovah's Witnesses
<0.5 percent - Muslim
<0.5 percent - Buddhist
<0.5 percent - Hindu
<0.5 percent - Other World Religions
<0.5 percent - Other Faiths
<0.5 percent - Did not answer
12 percent - Unaffiliated
|
|
When
James Oglethorpe
and the first settlers touched
Georgia's shore,
JANUARY 13, 1733, they knelt while
Rev. Herbert Henry
offered prayer. They declared:
"Our end in leaving our native country is not to gain riches and honor, but singly this: to live wholly to
the glory of God."
Their object was: "To make
Georgia
a
religious colony."
|
|
American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
|
|
Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
[email protected]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
