sed for the defence and protection of the
Colony. This was granted. Oglethorpe was appointed General and
Commander-in-Chief of his Majesty's forces in Carolina and Georgia;
and commissioned to raise a regiment for the service and defence of
those two Colonies, to consist of six companies of one hundred men
each, exclusive of non-commissioned officers and drums; to which a
company of grenadiers was afterwards added. "This regiment he raised
in a very short time, as he disdained to make a market of the service
of his country, by selling commissions, but got such officers
appointed as were gentlemen of family and character in their
respective counties; and, as he was sensible what an advantage it was
to the troops of any nation to have in every company a certain number
of such soldiers as had been bred up in the character of gentlemen, he
engaged about twenty young gentlemen of no fortune, to serve as cadets
in his regiment, all of whom he afterwards advanced by degrees to be
officers, as vacancies happened; and was so far from taking any money
for the favor, that to some of them, he gave, upon their advancement,
what was necessary to pay the fees of their commissions, and to
provide themselves for appearing as officers."[1]

[Footnote 1: _London Magazine_, for 1757, p. 546.]

"He carried with him, also," says a writer of that day, "forty
supernumeraries, at his own expense; a circumstance very extraordinary
in our armies, especially in our plantations."

With a view to create in the troops a personal interest in the Colony
which they had enlisted to defend, and to induce them eventually to
become actual settlers, every man was allowed to take with him a
wife; for the support of whom some additional pay and rations, were
offered.[1] In reference to this, Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts,
in writing to Lord Egmont, respecting the settlement of Georgia, has
these remarks; "Plantations labor with great difficulties; and must
expect to creep before they can go. I see great numbers of people who
would be welcome in that settlement; and have, therefore, the honor to
think, with Mr. Oglethorpe, that the soldiers sent thither should all
be married men[2]."

[Footnote 1: _Gentleman's Magazine_, Vol. VIII. p. 164.]

[Footnote 2: Manuscript Letter Book of Governor Belcher, in the
archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.]

Early in the spring of 1738, some part of the regiment, under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel