Georgia, in its early years, is to have the solitary honor of being an antislavery and prohibitionist colony.
But the four earlier Southern colonies are unlike their Northern neighbors in this, that the institution of slavery dominates their whole social life.

The unit of the social organism is not the town, for there are no towns; it is the plantation.

In a population thus dispersed over vast tracts of territory, schools and churches are maintained with difficulty, or not maintained at all.

Systems of primary and secondary schools are impracticable, and, for want of these, institutions of higher education either languish or are never begun.

A consequent tendency, which, happily, there were many influences to resist, was for this townless population to settle down into the condition of those who, in distinction from the early Christians, came to be called _pagani_, or "men of the hamlets," and _Heiden_, or "men of the heath." Another common characteristic of the four Southern colonies is that upon them all was imposed by foreign power a church establishment not acceptable to the people.