The Oglethorpe Plan

James Edward Oglethorpe founded the Georgia Colony, and the town of Savannah, on February 12, 1733 (February 1, 1732 by the Julian calendar used in the British colonies until September 2, 1752). The new Georgia colony was authorized under a grant from George II to a group constituted by Oglethorpe as the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America, or simply the Georgia Trustees. The new colony was bounded by the Savannah River on the north and the Altamaha River to the south, while the western boundary reached almost to the Mississippi River and lands claimed by France as part of Louisiana. Not until 1763 did the French formally cede this territory east of the Mississippi to Great Britain, but Spain still claimed a considerable portion of it. Much of the territory ultimately became American in 1795, when the United States resolved its West Florida boundary dispute with Spain.

Oglethorpe's plan for settlement of the new colony had been in the works since 1730, three years before the founding of Savannah. The multifaceted plan sought to achieve several goals through interrelated policy and design elements, including the spacing of towns, the layout of towns and eventually their surrounding counties, equitable allocation of land, and limits to growth to preserve a sustainable agrarian economy.

The Oglethorpe Plan was an embodiment of all of the major themes of the Enlightenment, including science, humanism, and secular government. Georgia became the only American colony infused at its creation with Enlightenment ideals: the last of the Thirteen Colonies, it would become the first to embody the principles later embraced by the Founders. Remnants of the Oglethorpe Plan exist today in Savannah, showcasing a town plan that retains the vibrancy of ideas behind its conception.

At the heart of Oglethorpe’s comprehensive and multi-faceted plan there was a vision of social equity and civic virtue. The mechanisms supporting that vision, including yeoman governance, equitable land allocation, stable land tenure, prohibition of slavery, and secular administration, were among the ideas debated during the British Enlightenment. Many of those ideals have been carried forward, and are found today in Savannah’s Tricentennial Plan and other policy documents.

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