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.

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 by loyalist Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown, leading the East Florida Rangers, began on January 31, 1779. The British were not simply garrisoning a small river town; they were anchoring an entire strategic vision for winning the war from the South.

But that first British hold on Augusta proved tenuous. The Battle of Kettle Creek, the first major victory for Patriots in the back country of Georgia, took place on February 14, 1779, fought in Wilkes County about eleven miles from present-day Washington, Georgia, where a militia force of Patriots defeated and scattered a Loyalist militia force that was on its way to British-controlled Augusta.

Around 340 militiamen led by Elijah Clarke and John Dooly of Georgia, and Andrew Pickens of South Carolina attacked 600 American supporters of the British cause, led by James Boyd.

The Patriot victory at Kettle Creek convinced the commander of Augusta, Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, to abandon the city.

In a council held in Augusta on February 12, Campbell decided to abandon Augusta and began the withdrawal to Savannah on February 14 at 2AM, the morning of the battle. Contrary to opinions expressed by some historians, Campbell did not leave because of the battle's outcome — he did not learn of the battle until after he had already left Augusta; his departure was prompted by the arrival of 1,200 of patriot General John Ashe's forces, a shortage of provisions, and uncertainty over whether Boyd would be successful.

The success of Kettle Creek was undone to some extent by the subsequent British victory at the March 3 Battle of Brier Creek. An uneasy stalemate followed, with the rebels controlling the backcountry and the royal government ruling Savannah and its environs. Brown and his militia unit, renamed the King's Carolina Rangers, retook Augusta on June 8, 1780 , after the catastrophic fall of Charleston broke Patriot resistance across the South.

The man who came to personify British authority in Augusta was Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown, and his story illustrates the deeply personal nature of the Revolution in the southern backcountry. Thomas Brown was born in Whitby, Yorkshire on 27 May 1750 into a prosperous merchant family; his father Jonas owned a successful shipping company. In 1774, aged 24, Thomas recruited colonists and indentured servants from Whitby and the Orkney Islands, and emigrated with them to the Province of Georgia. Financed by £3,000 of family capital, he established the community of Brownsborough and a 5,600-acre plantation northeast of present-day Augusta, anticipating life as a gentleman planter.

Governor James Wright appointed him a magistrate in that region. But Brown's arrival coincided with the rise of Revolutionary sentiment in Georgia. On August 2, 1775, Sons of Liberty members headed for his home. They ordered Brown to join the patriot cause. When he refused, the mob turned to violence, seizing Brown and inflicting brutal practices on him. He was partially scalped, burned, and tarred and feathered. His injuries also resulted in the loss of two toes and a fractured skull which left him with headaches for the rest of his life.

The Sons of Liberty actually made Brown — who they dubbed "Burnfoot" — something of a sympathetic figure. The experience transformed him into one of the most relentless Loyalist partisans in the South. Finding refuge in British-held St. Augustine, Florida, Brown was commissioned