Ethan said, “I can give you one answer, and maybe another. Almost every merchant in the colonies has been bypassing Britain and getting tea from other sources. Now they have a pretty good inventory, and the new cut price is probably under what they’ve paid for the stock they have on hand. It’s likely that the Boston merchants want to see British tea destroyed to keep the price up. This is all a matter of money. The other answer is that there have long been a few hotheads that just want to show disloyalty to the king. Many colonists became organized in years past to oppose the Stamp Act and the Townshend Act, which involved special taxes, and the one on British tea is about the only one still in effect. These hotheads have to have some reason for a crusade. They should be made to pay for the tea they destroyed, and that will be the end of it.”

Maddock said, “Well, my hope is that there will be no violence.”

Ethan responded, “It’s just a brief skirmish and we’ll hear no more of it.”

Within a few months, the Pratts and Morrises began to hear about military clashes between colonists and the king’s forces in the north, and the two families agreed that these were unfortunate and unwarranted acts of disloyal British citizens. The laws passed in London concerning trade and taxation had relatively little impact on them. They produced on their farms almost everything they needed and, like most other frontier families, their natural duty was to mind their own business, support the crown as they had always done, and express their views strongly but peacefully.

CHAPTER 15

A Special Colony

Georgia was a special colony. Europeans had first settled on the Georgia coast in 1565, almost half a century before the first British adventurers landed farther north at Jamestown in what was to be Virginia. Spanish explorers, traders, and missionaries flourished on the coastal islands and up the inland rivers for more than two decades, but persistent attacks by Creek and Cherokee Indians finally forced the Spaniards to withdraw southward into Florida. The British, French, and Spanish all attempted to use the native warriors as surrogates to control the territory between Charles Town and St. Augustine, but none was successful. Finally, as far as Europeans were concerned, Georgia became a wilderness dominated by natives and inherently hostile to white settlers.