Some Account of the Design of the Trustees for establishing Colonys in America. Edited by Rodney M. Baine and Phinizy Spalding.

Octavo, red cloth (hardcover), gilt lettering, 60 pp. Fine in a Fine dust jacket. From dustj acket: In 1988 literary scholar Rodney Baine and historian Phinizy Spalding verified that James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony, had authored a manuscript that for decades had resided almost unnoticed in a Florida archive. Titled Some Account of the Design of the Trustees for estalblishing Colonys in America, the manuscript was drafted around 1731 as a pamphlet for potential donors to and settlers in the last of the thirteen original colonies. Though later revised, Some Account was never published. Baine and Spalding's investigation, which they detail in their introduction to this edition, is no less absorbing thatn their findings. Their conclusion, based on historical research and internal and comparative studies of the text itself, suggests a reconsideration of Oglethorpe's place among his peers. Taken with other writings recently ascribed to him, Some Account puts Oglethorpe solidly in the company of John Winthrop and William Penn, men who thought deeply and wrote eloquently about Britain's colonial enterprises. Some Account is a virtual blueprint of Oglethorpe's plans for Georgia -- a synthesis of scholarship and plain talk, philanthropy and imperial enterprise, idealism and pragmatism, all grounded in classical and contemporary sources. Determined to avoid the sort of corruption and speculation found in South Carolina, Oglethorpe proposed innovations related to land use, slavery, the native population, the uses of strong drink, and the colonial bureaucracy. Readers can see not only a remarkable mind at work but a new colony taking shape. This edition includes Oglethorpe's revisions and marginalia as well as Baine and Spalding's notes and references. Georgia, United States History, U. S. History, American History, Americana, British History, American Colonization, Colonial America yslic.…