To his Excellency General Oglethorpe:

We are informed that our neighbors of Savannah have petitioned your excellency for the liberty of having slaves. We hope and earnestly entreat, before such proposals are hearkened unto, your excellency will consider our situation and of what dangerous and bad consequences such liberty would be to us, for many reasons.

First. The nearness of the Spaniards, who have proclaimed freedom to all slaves who run from their masters, makes it impossible for us to keep them without more labor in watching them than we would be at to do their work.

Second. We are laborious and know a white man may be, by the year, more usefully employed than a negro.

Third. We are not rich; and becoming in debt for slaves, in case of their running away or dying, would inevitably ruin the poor master and he would become a greater slave to the negro-merchant than the slave he bought could have been to him.

Fourth. It would oblige us to keep a guard duty at least as severe as when we expected daily an invasion; and if that should be the case, how miserable would be to us and our wives and children to have an enemy without and a more dangerous one in our own bosom.

Fifth. It is shocking to human nature that any race of mankind and their posterity should be sentenced to perpetual slavery. Nor in justice can we think otherwise of it that they are thrown amongst us, to be our scourge one day or other for our sins; and, as freedom to them must be as dear as to us, what a scene of horror must it bring about! And the longer it is unexecuted, the bloody scene must be greater.

We therefore, for our own sakes, our wives, and our posterity, beg your consideration and interest, that, instead of introducing slaves, you will put us in the way to get some of our countrymen, who, with their own labor, in time of peace and our vigilance, if we are invaded, with the help of them will render it a difficult thing to hurt us or that part of the province we may possess.

We will forever pray for your excellency and we are, with all submission, Your excellency's most obedient Humble Servants, etc.

New Inverness, January 3, 1739

John Mohr McIntosh
John McIntosh of Lynvulgie
Ronald McDonald
Hugh Morrison
John McDonald
John McLean
John McIntosh (son to Lynvulgie)
John McIntosh of Bain
James MacKay
David Clark
Alexander Clark
Donald Clark
Joseph Burgess
Donald Clark junior
Archibald McBain
Alexander Munro
William Munro
John Cuthbert

Note: New Inverness later became the town of Darien.

Source:
The Seed That Was Sown in the Colony of Georgia: The Harvest and the Aftermath: 1740-1870, Charles Spradling Wylly; The Neale Publishing Company, New York and Washington, 1910, pp. 28-30

Submitted by Bob Franks