A Passage To Georgia

Originally Aired: April 14, 1941 Cavalcade of America #222, "A Passage To Georgia," tells the story of General James Oglethorpe's transformation from disengaged member of Parliament to passionate reformer. When Anne Castell arrives at his door with news that her husband Bob, a talented architect and Oglethorpe's friend, has been imprisoned for debt, the complacent MP is shocked into action. What he discovers at Fleet Street Prison horrifies him: debtors chained alongside felons, subjected to torture and extortion by the brutal Warden Bambridge, and left to die of disease in filthy conditions. Bob Castell succumbs to smallpox in his chains, a victim of a system that treats poverty as a crime. Galvanized by his friend's death, Oglethorpe rises in Parliament to expose the appalling conditions in England's debtors' prisons. He challenges his fellow MPs to live up to England's ideals of liberty and justice, arguing that even in a land more free than the despotisms of Europe, there remains room for improvement. As skeptical members question whether he has a solution to the problem of debtors, Oglethorpe begins to propose an answer that will ultimately lead to the founding of Georgia as a colony of second chances.