Foreword

WHEN MRS. EUGENIA DOROTHY BLOUNT LAMAR ESTABLISHED the memorial lectures at Mercer University she doubtless intended that they cover the whole breadth and scope of southern history and culture from the beginning. For various reasons most of the lectures have been studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Not since Bernard Mayo, the second lecturer of the series, has attention been largely focused on colonial history or personages.

Anxious to redress this imbalance and very much aware of the approaching bicentennial of the American Revolution, the Lamar Memorial Lectures Committee began to turn to early American historians. The committee was fortunate in being able to bring to the Mercer campus Clarence L. Ver Steeg, professor of history at Northwestern University and a noted colonial scholar. It was a source of great pleasure to all that Professor Ver Steeg chose to devote much attention in his lectures to the origins of the colony of Georgia. The present volume thus marks an auspicious beginning of the celebration leading to 1776 and beyond. As the bicentennial approaches, other well-known specialists in early American history will visit the campus and their lectures will be added to the growing list of Lamar publications.

Professor Ver Steeg’s reputation as a colonial historian preceded him to the Mercer campus by many years. His publications, including much southern history, are innumerable, and more are happily expected. He has served the historical and educational professions in many posts, including that of chairman of the executive committee of the Institute of Early American History and Culture. His talent for research and his genius for extrapolating ideas will be readily apparent in this volume to both laymen and scholars. Of especial interest are his conclusions about precisely why Georgia and the Carolinas developed as they did (or did not), and his comments on the origins and economics of the Carolina slave system deserve close attention. Professor Ver Steeg’s success as a lecturer was delightfully demonstrated when at the end of his second lecture a member of the audience spontaneously called out, “Why did you stop so soon?”

Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar (1867–1955) was a prominent, civic-minded middle Georgian who sought to preserve the values of southern culture by creating and endowing the annual Lamar Memorial Lectures. Her faith and farsightedness have been more than justified. Professor Ver Steeg’s contribution, the seventeenth in the series, continues unbroken the high level of scholarship called for in Mrs. Lamar’s will.

This printed edition of four lectures is an expanded form of the original three lectures delivered on the Macon, Georgia, campus of Mercer University, 25 and 26 March 1974.

       Henry Y. Warnock
       Lamar Memorial Lectures Committee

Mercer University
Macon, Georgia