It would be safe for me to assume no one in the audience has ever heard of Lord Oglethorpe, or James Oglethorpe by his given name.  Browse over to the Wiki and skim his biography, then rejoin me here.

 

Welcome back.

 

We should all now be on the same page.  James Oglethorpe was a British Royalist, the holder of a Royal Grant of lands destined to become the state of Georgia.  In fact, it was James Oglethorpe who named Georgia in the first place.  Lord Oglethorpe was honoring King George II for his faith in him.

 

King George II did not stumble upon Oglethorpe.  Oglethorpe had been a Member of Parliament, a fact which would not endear him to rebellious colonists years later.  Oglethorpe’s family had fought for King Charles I, had suffered under Cromwell’s dictatorship and was only restored to service following the Restoration.  Oglethorpe was educated at Eton and then Oxford before accepting a commission in the army.

 

Few details of his academic work were available at the time of this writing, but it is fair to assume Oglethorpe was a Classical Scholar.  His affiliations in Parliament and all his subsequent actions in the colonies confirm that as fact, despite the absence of a “master’s thesis”.

 

Theses are very important to accredited academia.  One may attend college all they want, and pass every science course with honors, but unless you wrote a thesis and it remains in the stacks, you aren’t considered an “academic”.

 

We’ll skip all the boring parts of Oglethorpe’s career in service to King and country and go straight to s plan he devised with an abolitionist in Parliament, a man named Thomas Bray.  Between Bray and another associate Oglethorpe found a financial backer for a wild scheme of Oglethorpe’s: Recruit one hundred unemployed and unemployables from poor houses around London, load them on a ship and start a colony in the New World!

 

I myself would decry the scheme as exporting poverty beyond recall, were it not for the fact James Oglethorpe was determined to lead the expedition and govern the new colony.

 

In the only terms which parallel in the modern world, Oglethorpe’s ambitions were tantamount to Elon Musk loading up his Starship with one hundred, random homeless people and lifting off for Mars with Elon at the controls.

 

If asked, I am certain Oglethorpe’s professors at Oxford would have been willing to guess where the seat of Oglethorpe’s soul was the hour he came up with that plan.  But Oglethorpe found someone willing to underwrite a couple hundred one-way tickets to the New World, and off James Oglethorpe went.

 

Full stop.  Let the record show that James Oglethorpe was an abolitionist before he ever embarked for the New World.  Classical Scholars and religious leaders all formed the core of the abolitionist movement precisely because they came down in favor of the soul in the debate Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope started.  Oglethorpe did not give a damn why human cells looked just like all other mammalian cells.  Cells were just bricks and the body was a temple.

 

This conviction, though not specified in the crass term of modern debate, was what motivated James Oglethorpe to recruit the indigent poor to join him in an experiment.  James Oglethorpe did not set sail for the New World to found a colony and become a governor.  James Oglethorpe set sail for the New World to prove his faith, and thereby the volume which nourished it, correct.

 

A sane man would have taken a company of experts from Oxford.  But professors would not find the courage to forsake their campuses for a ship until Darwin came along.  Now would be the time to wonder if Darwin had ever heard of Oglethorpe.

 

While Oglethorpe’s contemporaries in academia were conducting experiments with Van Leeuwenhoek’s microscope, Oglethorpe decided to see what prayer could do until science found the seat of the soul.

 

In 1733 James Oglethorpe and the cast from Les Misérables landed on the coast of what is today Charleston, South Carolina, then established their first community near modern Savanah.  Oglethorpe stayed long enough to get the new colonies affairs in order, appoint a captain and establish friendly relations with the Native Americans of the region before setting sail back to England.

 

Anyone tempted to suggest he abandoned the cast of Les Misérables to their fate can’t possibly understand the odds of surviving a trans-Atlantic crossing in that age.   Back in England, he loaded up another batch of extras, including 40 Jews, returned to the colony, and personally governed it until his return to England in 1743.

 

In those early years Oglethorpe proved his abolitionist beliefs were not just talk.  Oglethorpe walked the walk.  In 1732, while serving as an interim officer of the Royal Africa Company, Oglethorpe received a letter written by Diallo intended for his father in Africa.  The letter was such a novelty by all who came into contact with it that it ended up on Oglethorpe’s desk, and he sent it off to Oxford to have it’s Arabic authenticated.

 

The very fact that an alleged “savage” wrote an eloquent appeal on his own behalf to his father, in Arabic mind you, and clearly respected protocols of decent society he was supposed to know nothing about, struck like a gong in Oglethorpe’s mind.  The Royal Africa Company was being lied to by those selling “war captives” along Africa’s coast.

 

I’ll cut out the middle part and get right to Oglethorpe’s latest plan.  Oglethorpe, realizing that Diallo was, technically, the property of another, purchased Diallo and set him free.  The Agnostics in accredited academia could not tell you where the seat of the soul is, but Oglethorpe proved it was only worth 45 Pounds Sterling.  That would be 5,300 Pounds Sterling in today’s money.

 

After purchasing Diallo, Oglethorpe learned the man was a Muslim and had run afoul of his “master” in the American Colony of Maryland for wanting to pray.  That cinched it for Oglethorpe.  Since science could not locate the seat of the soul, and this man clearly could, Diallo would serve Oglethorpe as a star witness in his abolitionist plans.

 

Full stop.

 

To illustrate just how conflicted and sadistic the slave trade was, Diallo was captured and sold into slavery after he travelled to the coast of West Africa to sell two slaves then owned by his father.  Just don’t be tempted to conclude Diallo got what he deserved, for nobody, not even a slaver, deserves to be enslaved.  Slavery is that evil.

 

Diallo’s plight, though, does shatter a lot of myths about the so called “innocents” being enslaved by Europeans.  In nearly every case Africans were being sold into slavery by Africans.  In few cases do we know why.  Diallo’s case is one such case, thanks to James Oglethorpe.

 

Oglethorpe’s plans may have been hairbrained, or heart rending, but his prayers were working just fine.  As it turned out, London’s unemployable were, after all, only unemployable in London.  In the colonies, where every family was provided land of their own to till and all the support needed to learn how to till it, the cast of Les Misérables was Misérables no more.

 

The confirmation of Oglethorpe’s faith in his fellow man encouraged more planning.  If Oglethorpe had then known that just 33 years later the new plan forming in the back of his Classical, Royalist, Loyalist mind would lead to open revolt against the Crown in the colonies, he might have kept his plans to himself.

 

Between 1743 and 1776 James Oglethorpe was conveying diplomatic missions between Native American leaders from the Carolinas and Georgia, to negotiate treaties with Charles II.  Not a representative of Charles II, mind you, but with the King in person.  Not in Parliament, mind you, but at Kensington Palace.  Anyone who suggests James Oglethorpe was not a trusted agent of the Crown is being willfully dishonest.

 

The contrast between the Classical Scholars and Agnostic Scholars of the Enlightenment is that the Classical Scholars refused to accept the dehumanization of their fellow man.  History books in public schools, both in Britain and in the United States, gloss over Crown initiatives during this period in history as sub-chapters of history, perhaps with justification. 

 

The Crown, after all, was never fully restored following Cromwell’s downfall.  The result is that Parliament maintains the chapter headings while the Crown supplies the indices and foot notes.  Reading British History since the Restoration as anything less than two, parallel histories, is certain to mislead and confuse. 

 

As I am not attempting a complete defense of the British Monarchy here, I’ll proceed on the assumption we all accept the facts: While American colonists were confusing their fellow man for savages at best, and animals at worst, the British Monarch was entertaining into diplomatic negotiations with Native American leaders at Kensington Palace.  One does not negotiate with savages or animals.

 

One could fault the British Nobility for many things, but one could not fault the British Nobility for degrading humanity in any quarter of the globe.  I state what should be obvious to all in the full knowledge that claim will contrast with the experience in British Colonies throughout the world.  The excesses attributable to British Colonialism appear to contradict my claim only where we attribute British Colonialism to the Crown.

 

I could and probably will one day review the rise of the British Empire as a socio-political phenomenon, but that tact would be a tangent from my purpose today.   Here I will just reiterate, British History, from Cromwell forward, must be read as two parallel narratives, sometimes in conflict with each other, sometimes in compliment of each other.

 

One may properly debate the degree of authority, and hence culpability, shared by the Crown since the Restoration, but one cannot deny the role of the British Parliament.  The British Parliament acquired its critical mass in the advent of mercantilism.   The mercantilist interests caught a ride with the great maritime explorers of the Elizabethan Age, and it wasn’t long before the mercantilists could fund independent trade efforts of their own. 

 

Britain’s age of discovery spanned two centuries, crossed two oceans and bridged all continents.  For the majority of its existence the British Empire was truly never more than a collection of ad hoc trading ports separated by months at sea.

 

While the age of discovery was definitely attributable to Crown initiatives, the Crown could not, would not and did not sustain ongoing efforts across any sea.  It was the mercantilists who funded a sustained presence in all ports, and it was the mercantilist interests who, led by Cromwell, consolidated control of the British Parliament and conspired against the Crown.

 

Anyone who suggests Cromwell’s revolution had nothing to do with the rise of mercantilism has not done the math on all the added value in the economy.  The battle against slavery was being waged on mercantilism’s offshore edge, long before accredited academia would openly acknowledge it as fact.  As evidenced by James Oglethorpe’s documented role in the colonies, through his less documented affiliation with the Most Noble Order of the Garter, it is clear the British Crown was leading, if only discretely in that effort.

 

History books, contrary to popular myth, are not written by the victors.  History books are written by the Parliamentarians.  For British Historians to openly acknowledge that it was the Parliament which tolerated slavery while the Crown battled against it would be tantamount to conceding the Divine Authority of the Crown.  The British Parliament will not hear such arguments.

 

The Continental Congress, on the other hand, would.  And when the Continental Congress did hear such arguments, they concluded that King Geroge was to blame for Parliament’s sins against the colonies.  Why?  Because the true leaders of the American Revolution did not want to stop Parliament as much as they wanted to stop the Oglethorpe Plan.  King George III had to be blamed because it was King George and the Most Noble Order of the Garter who were working to undo the source of all the wealth the planters had amassed.

 

James Oglethorpe was the originally “uppity Brit”.   And by “uppity” I do mean “uppity”.

 

In 1735 King George’s leading Royalist in the American Colonies convinced the mercantilist Parliament to ban slavery in the American colonies.  This critical juncture in colonial history is completely neglected for reasons which should now be obvious. 

 

The American Colonies were founded, and funded, on mercantilism.  In 1735 James Oglethorpe finally made the British Parliament realize, with slaves, the merchants of the colonies would drive the merchants of Britain out of business within a generation.  And that would have been true if British mercantilists did not make directly for India.

 

In 1735, mercantilists in the American Colonies did not have global ambitions, precisely the opposite.  But their British brethren where the geese laying Britain’s Golden Egg, so a clash between the colonies was inevitable the minute Parliament, not the Crown, denied colonists representation in Parliament.

 

Fancy that.  A populist government turning on its population.  Who’d have predicted that?  I could range far and wide in a review of just how undemocratic the British Parliament became once it had placed the British Monarchy in a gilded cage, but I promised to connect more limited dots.

 

America’s ignorance about James Oglethorpe is not complete, mind you. 

 

Americans only recall one promise of the Oglethorpe Plan, a promised made immortal in the phrase “Forty acres and a mule”.  I’ll allow my American audience to read the Wiki before continuing, just so I don’t have to convince anyone on what follows. When my American friends return, they will confirm they’ve all heard about “Forty acres and a mule”. 

 

Every American will swear “Forty acres and a mule” was a promise made following the American Civil War.  That is also true, but the promise was originally made by James Oglethorpe in his development plan for Georgia.  General Ulysses S Grant only reintroduced the Oglethorpe Plan during Reconstruction because, frankly, it was brilliant.  Grant added the mule.

 

Oglethorpe’s plan was simple:  Give people with nothing to work for something to work for, and they will get to work.  Deprive them of anything to work for, and they will start fighting.  Oglethorpe was brilliant.  If and when history is corrected to my satisfaction, which is not likely to occur immediately, history will recall even James Oglethorpe cannot take credit for the eponymously named plan. 

 

James Oglethorpe, you see, was acting as a Proxy for an unnamed party in the Most Noble Order of The Garter.  The Oder of the Garter, as it is known in brief, was an Order of Chivalry formed by King Edward III of England in 1348.  Without going into too much detail about the role played by Chivalric Orders in Britain, suffice it to say that the Order of the Garter functions in modern Britain as the Round Table did in Arthurian Lore.

 

The Most Noble Order of the Garter is the Privy Council of Privy Councils.

 

Composed of the Monarch, Royal Consort, Royal Heirs and a limited number of the Principal Nobility of the Realm, not much can be said about what occurs in this sacred circle which could pass journalistic critique.  It would not be a privy if it could.  None of the Order’s activities have ever been acknowledged, much less reported on, but what is known is that Lord Oglethorpe was an intimate of the Order Garter through its affiliation with Cambridge University in the relevant period.

 

In consultation with, if not at the request of the Order of the Garter, Lord Oglethorpe was clearly King George’s agent in attempting two initiatives in the American colonies.  The first was the eradication of slavery and the second was land reforms.

 

Ah, I see the rest of my fellow Americans have rejoined us.  Knowing now what I know about James Oglethorpe, I welcome you back at the moment I was about to explain the Oglethorpe plan to all.  Your timing could not be better. 

 

Mind you, no American alive today will recall anything about land reforms during the period leading up to the Revolution, but the Wiki may be relied upon.  The Oglethorpe Plan was certainly a thing, especially to everyone with land holdings in the colonies.

 

The list of interested land holders started with the Charter Agents of the Crown.  The Charter Agents were those who were issued Land Grants by the British Monarch immediately after the colonies were identified as, if not unpeopled at least unclaimed.

 

My Native American brothers and sisters are all wincing at that claim, and the reflex is understandable, given what occurred after the American Revolution, but I advise Native Americans to do their homework before condemning the British Crown’s assertion of sovereignty over the Colonies. 

 

The east coast of America had been devastated by the diseases Desoto’s Expedition and was, for all intents and purposes, no longer regarded as an operative constituency, at least by the Iroquois with whom Crown representatives had negotiated.

 

Negotiated is probably a generous term since English Colonists were already settled in their tens of thousands all along the Atlantic seaboard before representatives of the Crown became aware of Native American authorities with whom to negotiate.  The sad truth is the east coast of the United States had become so depopulated during the pandemics of European diseases, that everything east of the Appalachian Mountains were unadministered dominions in the eyes of Native American leaders.

 

I will not bother recounting the life and times of Squanto, the native American who represented the Iroquois to the colonists and vice versa.  Native Americans today grieve their loss of sovereignty over the colonial east coast, but that amounts to seller’s remorse.

 

In exchange for a promise of peace, of cooperation and of mutual support, the British Crown eventually Proclaimed no colonist would settle west of the Line of Royal Proclamation.  Native Americans conceded that Europeans were destined to keep arriving, and so chose Britain over France or Spain as preferred neighbors.  Both France and Spain had negotiated similar understandings with factions on their own.  None of these understandings went well for Native Americans.

 

Early on, though, while both the Crown and the Iriqous honored the Line of Royal Proclamation, and had every intention of continuing to do so, certain leaders of the Revolution did not.  What any of this has to do with land reforms may not be clear, for here I am just defining the boundaries of British Sovereignty and it’s legal and diplomatic basis. 

 

Between you and me, I believe the Crown presumed too much in making assurances to the Iriqous because, as the years went by, more and more settlers arrived from the European continent.  The Crown could and did command the loyalty of all who held land grants, but there was little to command the respect of the hungered, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

 

To the matter of land grants, I properly turn.

History books will uniformly decry the Crown’s authority to grant vast tracts of land to Charter holders like James Oglethorpe, but these are purely sentimental arguments which ignore, not just the practical realities of the age, but the written historical record.  The Oglethorpe Plan was a plan formulated by a Charter holder, James Oglethorpe, acting in direct consultation with, if not at the direction of a member of the Order of the Garter at Cambridge.

 

For any historian to claim that the British Monarch had malicious intent in the colonies is a brazen attempt at historical revisionism a summary reading of the Oglethorpe Plan will expose.  But let’s not put the cart before the horse.  Let’s understand first what a Crown Land Grant was in the first place. 

 

Crown Land Grants allocated colossal tracts of land to agents of the Crown, like James Oglethorpe, over which the grant holders were expected to act as proxies of the Crown in stewardship of the lands granted.  Anyone interested in researching the boundaries of the original land grants awarded by the Crown early in colonial history needn’t look far.  The borders of each of the original thirteen colonies are the boundaries of the original land grants. 

 

I am too lazy to do my own research these days, so I asked Bing’s AI Chatbot to compare the land area of the original thirteen colonies with the land area of England.  Bing’s AI Chatbot reports that the original colonies included 1.2 million square kilometers of land, compared to England which is only 130,310 square kilometers.

 

In other words, the size of the area being established by the Crown of England was ten times larger than England herself.  Do not believe for a moment that King George II, any of his predecessors, or any of his successors were oblivious to the scope of their colonial interests.

 

Obviously, no single grant holder could ever personally benefit from “ownership” of such vast tracts of land, but “ownership” is not the same thing as “stewardship”.  Grant holders like Oglethorpe were considered stewards, as Crown representatives invested with the authority to govern the colonies, precisely so land grabs would not result.

 

Trust me, even in the seventeenth century, with 1.2 million square kilometers of prime, virgin forest up for grabs, there would have been an unmitigated disaster if the ruling authorities of the age did not assert colonial interests in advance of claims by individual colonists.

 

The question over property ownership in that age is ambiguous at best since most of the early colonies were, necessarily, communal in nature.  The imperatives of survival required a degree of cooperation which blurred lines between community and individual property, but in the Oglethorpe Plan we witness documented acknowledgement of individual property existing within the framework of these larger land grants.

 

I will not presume to speak for the Crown, but it is obvious to a novice on these matters that the British Crown entered the colonial era with divestment in mind from the start.  Stewards, such as James Oglethorpe, were invested with exclusive authority until the lands they governed were established as individual property.

 

Asking for deeds in that age is just ignorant.  One’s mere presence on a holding was enough to establish a legitimate claim, and few arguments ever ensued because there was no shortage of tillable land as far as the eye could see.  Families could only own what they could till.

 

To put the population in perspective, in 1700 the population of the colonies was about 250,000 people in total.  Given that there was 1.2 square kilometers of land in total, that would amount to 1,185.6 acres when distributed evenly.  Few of us have any notion why an acre is an acre to begin with, so let’s call this a teachable moment, shall we?

 

An acre is the amount of land one man could till in a single day.  In other words, in the day and age when all labor was manual, no man could plausibly work more than an acre in a day, so anything more was deemed unproductive holdings, or, no holding at all.

 

Skeptics will insist that is a low-ball estimate, given that draft animals were in use far earlier than 1700.  And the Skeptics would be correct.  In fact, the Skeptics are anticipating the mule to which “40 acres and a mule” speaks.  I ask the Skeptics to be patient with me.  We will get around to the mule after we deal with the people.

 

What is critical to understand, in the colonial era, when ownership was not determined by lines drawn on a map, but acres under tillage, slavery was the only way a colonist could claim more land than he or his family could till.

 

Fail to understand this and you fail to understand all that follows from this.

 

In its briefest form, Lord Oglethorpe proposed a bold, new vision for governing Georgia.  Lord Oglethorpe proposed that every new colonist would be given fifty acres of land.  Under Lord Oglethorpe’s Plan, every colonist would be given 5 acres in town, and 45 acres in the country.

 

Why 50 acres in all? 

 

Because Lord Oglethorpe realized that making everyone an owner of their own family plot of five acres would provide the food security everyone deserves without relying on the assistance of others.  As for the 45 acres in the country, clearly nobody could till both their family garden and work 45 acres in the country, but with draft animals, that would be possible.

 

Lord Oglethorpe did not include livestock since he was not in the livestock business.  Lord Oglethorpe was in the Land Stewardship business.  One must admit Lord Oglethorpe’s Plan was overly generous, at least as compared to what we were taught about the British in grade school.

 

Lord Oglethorpe’s Plan envisioned America’s colonies becoming full-fledged dominions of Britain, those of demonstrable, moral leadership her Nobility, and, first and foremost, every family self-sufficient, thriving in an age where most where just surviving.

 

Obviously, we cannot return to Lord Oglethorpe’s day and do it right.  That is not my intent even where it is my desire.  I am replaying American history to recall how land rights came into being and to witness how the state divested its holdings in favor of individual ownership.  Oglethorpe’s Plan was equitable and brilliant.  Make everyone, including emancipated slaves and Native Americans, landlords in a Kingdom of citizen farmers.

 

Oglethorpe’s Plan was to turn the American Colonies into the Shire.  Planters in subsequent generations called their version “Dixie”.

 

In 1735, when Oglethorpe convinced the British Parliament to abolish slavery in the American Colonies, pernicious, evil forces went into motion in each of the thirteen colonies.  Colonists who had subscribed to the dehumanizing theses of the Enlightenment were completely dependent on slaves to assert their extensive land claims.  Even if the Agnostics had identified the seat of the soul, it was too late. 

African slaves were already tilling the land.  No tillage, no land claim.

 

Get it?  Got it?  Good!

 

In one fell stroke, Oglethorpe was going to deprive the Planters of their functional claim to the land in question, while simultaneously making every colonist independent farmers.  In an age when agriculture was the only form of commerce, a chicken in every pot meant nobody was going to be selling chickens. 

 

Oglethorpe’s 5 acres per family was enough to make tilling all that illicitly acquired land pointless.  The forty-five additional acres in the country?  That was going to make every citizen farmer a direct competitor of the planters.  Oglethorpe was destroying an illicit market from both the supply and demand end of the equation simultaneously. 

 

Thusly was the American Revolution born.  Just don’t tell the Teacher’s Union.

 

If I am correct in my guesswork, which I will never be able to prove, it was not Lord Oglethorpe’s Plan at all, but King George’s plan from the start.  King George worked in collaboration within the Order of the Garter to ensure the American colonies got off to an equitable start. 

 

Parliament wanted nothing to do with the colonies or its colonists.  As long as the colonists kept paying Parliament’s taxes, the colonies were of no concern to Parliament.

 

Personally, I believe the American Colonists missed a golden opportunity.  If Lord Oglethorpe had realized his plan, every family in the American colonies would thrive but, ultimately, it would be the Crown which reaped the reward.  I am convinced King George realized, once the colonies matured into dominions in their own right, and deserved leadership of their own, the newly established Kingdom would require a King. 

 

At that juncture in history, with two Parliaments to support the Crown, the Kingdom of America would provide the balance that the Parliament lacked.  One can argue all day long whether or not I can read that much into what is known, but all the historians agree Oglethorpe’s brain trust at Cambridge was a member of the Most Noble Order of the Garter.  Connect the dots as you see fit, but that dot leads in one direction only, to King George II.

 

But why, Skeptics will demand, would King George II not take the credit for Oglethorpe’s plan? 

 

Cromwell, that is why.

 

George I, George the II and George III were all post-Cromwellian Monarchs in Britain.  Although Britain had immediately come to regret trusting a populist like Oliver Cromwell, and took their sweet time restoring the Monarchy, the trauma to both England and Her Nobility resonates to this very day. 

 

Cromwell, though defeated ultimately, gave body to a populist impulse which exists within every nation, an impulse which threatens every nation in every age when times are difficult.  No matter what system of government is operative, or who is in charge, there is never any shortage of accusers who blame the system, and cry havoc in vain attempts to grab power for themselves. 

 

Oliver Cromwell cloaked his personal lust for power in the heady affectations of the human rights movement of his age, but he was not so quick to abandon Monarchy once he was in charge.  After murdering Charles I on the streets of London, Oliver Cromwell himself donned the Crown, and all titles and styles incumbent therein.  Cromwell had himself proclaimed Lord Protector and, when his health failed, instead of turning power over to the English people, anointed his own son as his successor.

 

Cromwell, despite being recalled in history books today as a champion of democracy, was a damned dictator.  Like all dictators, Cromwell sought to control the society over which he ruled from beyond the grave.  Just don’t count on that appraisal in English school books.  Just mark my words, that is precisely what Lord Oglethorpe and nearly every Crown agent in the colonies thought of Cromwell following the Restoration of the Monarchy. 

 

The American Revolution is, in any honest reading of British history, the second phase of the English Civil War.  King George III was not at all inclined to follow in his father’s footsteps, so His Majesty worked through proxies to trial land reforms.  If Oglethorpe’s plan worked in the Americas, it would be adopted in Britain.

 

Lord Oglethorpe was King George’s proxy here in the American Colonies, of that I remain absolutely convinced.   Not just the Skeptics, but all will correctly ask, who, then, would plausibly oppose Lord Oglethorpe’s plan?

 

The Planters of course.

 

The more prosperous colonists were not idle in the early colonial period.  Many were acting as agents of mercantile interests trading commodities across the Atlantic, and from their combined capital the larger plantations of the age originate. 

 

Slavery had already acquired de facto legitimacy, for who was there to stop the slave ships?  Lord Oglethorpe began working at the behest of the Noble Order of the Garter immediately to put an end to that sadistic practice, but the Enlightenment had already poisoned too many minds in favor of “species”.  By the time righteous men like James Oglethorpe began opposing slavery, the fortunes of too many mercantilists and too many planters were on the line.

 

Mind you, none of these larger land holders had any authority on which to assert land rights over their plantations, and that is precisely what ensured an existential battle from the start.  Without slaves to till the land, the Planters would not have had even de facto claims. 

 

The day James Oglethorpe advanced his plan for the Colonies as a whole, what he was actually proposing, though he did not state it in the text, was the dissolution of the plantations and the reallocation of all lands to individual, family parcels. 

 

The status of slaves is never addressed in the plan, leaving the plantation “owners” to imagine their African imports possibly acquiring land rights, but the explicit danger in the Oglethorpe Plan was the reallocation of lands to individual family plots.  Cities like London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin were teaming with “unemployables” and Oglethorpe had just demonstrated they were no such thing.

 

The American Revolution began immediately, and for these precise reasons:  To legitimize the land already claimed by planters, and to safeguard their source of free labor.  In this soldier’s humble opinion, all other “reasons” documented in history books are the excuses the planters sold their fellow colonists to incite them to open revolt against the Crown.

 

This is not the place or the time to revisit the American Revolution in a comprehensive effort, just be aware my discovery requires just such a comprehensive effort will take place. 

 

Why? 

 

Because the history of the United States begins with maps drawn by the British Crown, and the maps drawn by Planters.  Between the American Revolution and the outbreak of the American Civil War the map of the United States of America was redrawn, over and over again.  The distinction between man and animal, between civilized and savage defining the border between every new state along the way.

 

I cannot explain how maps of the colonies will become so important until Christmas Day, 2023. 

 

Following the Christmas Reveal, my focus on colonial mapmaking will fall into crisp focus.  Suffice it to say, at this juncture, forty acres and a mule was a promise made to every family in the colonies, not just freed slaves following the American Civil War. 

 

General Grant’s promise to the freed slaves was just a reiteration of Lord Oglethorpe’s Plan.  General Grant, predictably, was opposed by the Planters during the nineteenth century for the same reasons Lord Oglethorpe and the Most Noble Order of the Garter was opposed in the eighteenth century. 

 

Reforms to land ownership, even where not in direct conflict with existing deeds, threatened all land values and the balance of all land-based production.  Disastrously, General Grant chose to implement land reforms west of the Mississippi rather than forcing land reforms east of the Mississippi, for who could possibly oppose land grants beyond the pale of civilization?

 

If only Native Americans had accurate maps, history may have been kinder. 

 

I am willing to bet Native American maps would have clearly identified the seat of the soul.

 

Wagers anyone?

 

Oglethorpe’s name may not have resounded across the ages, but the next dot to be connected, Thomas Malthus sure did.  Next