Savannah

Savannah and the Revolution: The Forgotten Battleground That Shaped a War

Long before Sherman's march made Savannah synonymous with Civil War destruction, this elegant port city on the Georgia coast served as one of the most consequential and dramatic theaters of the American Revolution. The story of Savannah between 1778 and 1782 encompasses a stunning British victory, one of the bloodiest allied assaults of the entire war, the death of two legendary soldiers, and a prolonged occupation that tested the loyalties of an entire colony. It is a story that, for too long, has been overshadowed by the more celebrated campaigns in the northern states, yet it was here, in the humid lowcountry of Georgia, that British strategic ambitions reached their zenith and the Franco-American alliance suffered one of its most devastating setbacks. Understanding what happened at Savannah is essential to understanding why the war lasted as long as it did and why the road to Yorktown was far less certain than hindsight suggests.

The origins of the Savannah campaign lie in a fundamental shift in British war planning. By the autumn of 1778, the conflict in the northern colonies had ground to a frustrating stalemate. The catastrophic British surrender at Saratoga in October 1777, followed by the Franco-American alliance formalized in February 1778, had changed the calculus entirely. The British ministry, now led by Lord George Germain's war office, adopted what historians call the Southern Strategy — a calculated pivot toward the Carolinas and Georgia, where the Crown believed large populations of Loyalists would rise to support the King's forces once a British military presence was established. Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton that capturing the Southern Colonies was "considered by the King as an object of great importance in the scale of the war."

Germain's instructions to Clinton, framed as recommendations, were that he should abandon Philadelphia and then embark upon operations to recover Georgia and the Carolinas, whilst making diversionary attacks against Virginia and Maryland. The concern over French-held ports along the southern coast threatening England's precious holdings in the Caribbean added further urgency to the pivot southward. Georgia, the youngest and most sparsely populated of the thirteen rebellious colonies, appeared to be the weakest link in the Patriot chain. Savannah, as the colony's capital and principal port, was the obvious prize. The basic plan to begin with the capture of Savannah had first been proposed as early as 1776 by the Loyalist leader Thomas Brown, and Royal Governors Lord William Campbell of South Carolina and Sir James Wright of Georgia had submitted an appeal to Germain in August 1777, urging that if a proper number of troops were sent south, "the whole inhabitants in both Provinces would soon come in and submit."

The blow fell with remarkable speed. On December 29, 1778, a British expeditionary force of roughly 3,500 troops under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell arrived at the mouth of the Savannah River after sailing south from New York. Campbell was a seasoned and ambitious Scottish officer who had been captured by Patriot forces in Boston Harbor on June 16, 1776, and spent two years as a prisoner of war before being exchanged for the famous American hero Ethan Allen on May 6, 1778. Burning with a desire to prove himself, Campbell boasted that he would be "the first British officer to [rend] a star and stripe from the flag of Congress." The force consisted of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 71st Regiment of Foot, Hessian troops of von Wöllwarth's Grenadier Regiment and von Wissenbach's Garrison Regiment, and several Loyalist units which included a battalion of New York Volunteers, two battalions of DeLancey's Brigade, and one battalion from the New Jersey Volunteers. The fleet set sail from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, on November 27, 1778, escorted by a Royal Navy squadron under Commodore Sir Hyde Parker.

He was to be assisted by troops under the command of Brigadier General Augustine Prévost, who was marching up from Saint Augustine in East Florida. Clinton also sent orders to Indian agent John Stuart to rally Muscogee and Cherokee warriors to assist in operations against Georgia.

Campbell's fleet arrived off Tybee Island on December 23. Opposing him was Major General Robert Howe, who had been in command of the entire American Southern Department and had only a paltry garrison of roughly 700 to 900 men — a mixture of Continental Army soldiers and Georgia militia — to defend Savannah. Howe was already a beleaguered figure. He had clashed with Georgia's Governor John Houstoun over command authority, and their past joint expeditions against East Florida had ended in failure. The Continental Congress had, in fact, already decided in September 1778 to replace Howe with Major General Benjamin Lincoln, who had distinguished himself during the Saratoga campaign. But Lincoln had not yet arrived when the British fleet appeared.

Houstoun refused to allow Howe to direct the movements of the Georgia militia, assigning him only 100 militiamen on December 24. Howe positioned his small force on the road south of Savannah, anchoring his flanks on swamps he believed impassable. But the decision to stand and fight proved disastrous. Campbell landed his forces at Girardeau's Plantation, roughly two miles below the city. After observing the American defenses, he judged them strong — until an enslaved man named Quamino Dolly approached him and revealed a hidden path through the swamp that led behind the American right flank. Campbell immediately dispatched Captain Sir James Baird with 350 light infantry and 250 New York Loyalists along this route while the main British force made a diversionary assault against the center. The flanking column burst upon the American militia, who broke and ran almost immediately. The entire Patriot line collapsed. Howe's defense crumbled in less than an hour of fighting. The Georgia Brigade under General Lachlan McIntosh was cut off during the retreat and suffered heavy casualties. American losses were devastating — approximately 83 killed, 11 wounded, and 453 captured — while the British suffered only about 7 killed and 17 wounded. Howe and roughly 350 survivors escaped into South Carolina. It was one of the most lopsided British victories of the entire war.

Campbell and Prévost quickly followed up the victory. They captured Sunbury and launched an expedition to Augusta, which fell on January 29, 1779. But Campbell held Augusta for only a few weeks before retreating to Savannah, citing insufficient Loyalist and Native American support and the threat of Patriot forces gathering across the Savannah River in South Carolina. Savannah, however, was now firmly in British hands, and the Crown used the city as a base to conduct coastal raids targeting areas from Charleston to the Florida coast. In July 1779, Royal Governor James Wright returned to Savannah and resumed his role as governor — making Georgia the only colony to have lost its royal government during the Revolution and then re-established it.

Washington, watching from the north, recognized the gravity of the crisis. In April 1779, he pressed John Jay, President of the Continental Congress, to mobilize the Continental Navy against the British in Savannah. He laid out his thinking to Gouverneur Morris on May 8, 1779, writing that the relief of the southern states appeared to him "an object of the greatest magnitude." If the combined operations with the French "should fail," Washington warned, "our affairs, which have a very sickly aspect in many respects, will receive a stroke they are little able to bear."

The attempt to retake Savannah in the autumn of 1779 became one of the great multinational dramas of the Revolutionary War — and one of its most devastating failures. By June 1779, American forces guarding Charleston numbered between 5,000 and 7,000 men under General Benjamin Lincoln, who knew he could not recapture the city without French naval support. French Admiral Charles Hector, Comte d'Estaing, who had spent the first part of 1779 in the Caribbean monitoring British fleet movements and capturing Grenada in July, agreed to American requests for support. On September 3, word reached Lincoln that d'Estaing was sailing for Georgia with twenty-five ships of the line and 4,000 French troops. Lincoln left Charleston on September 11 with over 2,000 Continentals.

The multinational allied force that converged on Savannah was remarkable in its diversity. It included French regulars, Irishmen of the Dillon Regiment under Colonel Arthur Dillon, Pulaski's Legion of mixed cavalry led by Polish aristocrat Casimir Pulaski, and — in what constituted one of the most significant foreign contributions to the American cause — approximately 545 soldiers of the Chasseurs-Volontaires de Saint-Domingue, a regiment of free Black men (gens de couleur) recruited from the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti). It was the largest Black regiment to serve in the War of Independence. Among those who served in its ranks was a twelve-year-old enslaved boy named Henri Christophe, who served as a drummer and would later become King of Haiti. When fully assembled, the allied force numbered roughly 6,000 to 7,000 men.

General Augustine Prévost, commanding the British garrison at Savannah, was caught unprepared when d'Estaing's fleet