Augusta

Augusta's Revolutionary War: The Siege That Broke British Power in Georgia

Long before Sherman's march or the cotton boom that would define Georgia in later centuries, the town of Augusta sat at the edge of the colonial frontier, a trading post where the fall line of the Savannah River met the backcountry wilderness. Founded in 1736 and named in honor of Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the bride of Prince Frederick, Prince of Wales , Augusta quickly grew into a vital crossroads. Built in 1735, at the falls of the Savannah River, Fort Augusta was a center for trade with the Native Americans in the region. It was a place where Cherokee and Creek traders bartered deerskins, where Scots-Irish settlers carved homesteads from thick pine forests, and where, beginning in the late 1770s, some of the most brutal and consequential fighting of the American Revolution played out in a campaign that remains too little known. Among the figures who shaped Augusta's role in colonial Indian diplomacy was George Galphin, an Irish-born trader who had established a trading post at Silver Bluff on the Savannah River and during the American Revolution sided with the Continental Congress, serving as one of its Indian Commissioners for the South — convincing the Creek Nation as a whole to remain neutral in the burgeoning conflict between the British and the revolutionaries.

Henry Laurens credited Galphin for helping to secure both Georgia and South Carolina for the Revolution. Augusta's Revolutionary story is not a tale of great Continental armies maneuvering in formation. It is a story of guerrilla warfare, personal vengeance, shifting loyalties, and a final siege that helped break the British grip on the Deep South — a grip that, by 1781, had seemed almost unshakable.

The personal vengeance that would fuel Augusta's most bitter fighting began early. On August 2, 1775, a patriot mob descended on the home of Thomas Brown, a young English-born planter who had established a 5,600-acre settlement called Brownsborough northeast of Augusta. When Brown defiantly refused to pledge himself to the Patriot cause, the crowd turned violent — he was partially scalped, burned, and tarred and feathered, suffering a fractured skull and the loss of two toes.

Brown escaped under cover of night, fleeing to the decidedly Loyalist colony of East Florida and vowing vengeance upon his attackers. The Whigs of Augusta had created their own worst enemy.

In June 1776, Brown received authorization from Florida Governor Patrick Tonyn to form and lead a loyalist unit named the East Florida Rangers — a regiment that would terrorize the Georgia backcountry for years and that Brown would eventually lead back to Augusta in triumph.

To understand Augusta's significance, one must first understand the British southern strategy. After years of frustrating stalemate in the northern colonies, British commanders turned their attention south beginning in late 1778, banking on the assumption that large populations of Loyalists in Georgia and the Carolinas would rally to the Crown once royal authority was restored. On December 29, 1778, a British expeditionary force of 3,500 men from New York, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, captured Savannah, Georgia.

They were later joined by a British force marching overland from British East Florida, commanded by Brigadier General Augustine Prevost. Prevost sent Campbell with 1,000 men to capture Augusta, Georgia on the Savannah River and to recruit local loyalists. Within months Georgia's royal government was nominally re-established — the only colony where the British achieved this dubious milestone. Augusta, roughly 130 miles upriver from Savannah, was the key to controlling Georgia's interior and maintaining alliances with the Cherokee and Creek nations whose warriors could threaten Patriot settlements across the entire southern frontier. The occupation of Augusta, however, was soon disrupted by a crucial Patriot victory in the Georgia backcountry. After crossing the Savannah River, Boyd ordered his men to rest and make camp on the north side of Kettle Creek in Wilkes County, Georgia. Unbeknownst to Boyd, about 350 Patriots under the overall command of Colonel Andrew Pickens were close by, preparing to strike. Splitting his men into three columns, Pickens attacked at 10 A.M. on the morning of February 14, 1779.

The Battle of Kettle Creek lasted about four hours and ended with significant casualties for the Loyalist militia, including the death of their commander John Boyd. The Patriot victory at Kettle Creek convinced the commander of Augusta, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, to abandon the city.

Pickens later wrote that Kettle Creek "was the severest check and chastisement, the Tories ever received in South Carolina or Georgia."

But the British were not finished with Augusta. Brown and his unit, renamed the King's Carolina Rangers, retook Augusta on June 8, 1780 — returning to the very town where he had been brutalized five years earlier. The First American Siege of Augusta (September 14–18, 1780) was a partisan militia clash pitting Georgia and South Carolina Patriots against Tory and Native American defenders. The siege was called off after a stiff defense by the Tory garrison and the sudden arrival of a British relief force from Fort Ninety Six.

Colonel Elijah Clarke, along with Colonel Thomas McCall of South Carolina, attacked Augusta on September 14, 1780, taking the town, but they failed to dislodge Brown and his Creek allies from the McKay Trading Post a mile and a half outside of Augusta, where Brown had barricaded his men.

Clarke had to leave behind 29 wounded, who were hanged or brutally killed by Brown and his Creek allies — an atrocity that only deepened the cycle of retribution in Georgia's savage civil war.

The decisive reckoning came in the spring of 1781. In May 1781, patriots led by Elijah Clarke and Andrew Pickens fought to regain control of Augusta. General Nathanael Greene, commander of the Southern Department, sent an army under Colonel Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee to support the revolutionaries. As the first troops of the Continental Army to enter Georgia in more than a year, they boosted the morale of Georgia residents.

When threatened by Patriot forces, Brown had built a bastioned fort of earth and logs on the site of the earlier Fort Augusta. Named after Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the South, Fort Cornwallis was supported by two smaller outposts: Fort Grierson about one-half mile away and the stockaded home of Loyalist trader George Galphin about 12 miles away.

The siege began in a small way on April 16, 1781. The famed Georgia leader Elijah Clarke had contracted smallpox and was sick in camp, so Lt. Col. Micajah Williamson assumed command of his force of militiamen. In company with the forces of Colonels John Baker and LeRoy Hammond, he arrived outside Augusta on April 16.

To prevent support from reaching Augusta from the British post of Ninety Six in South Carolina, General Andrew Pickens placed himself between the two points with 400 men. Colonel Clarke recovered sufficiently from his smallpox by May that he arrived in Augusta with 100 additional men and assumed personal command of the Patriots there. The siege now began in earnest.

In Fort Cornwallis, the larger of the two posts, was Col. Thomas Brown with 240 men, including the King's Carolina Rangers, and an additional 200 blacks, some of whom may have been armed. Fort Grierson was defended by Lt. Col. James Grierson with two pieces of artillery and about 80 Georgia Loyalists.