Brown's Reprisals After the Failed Assault

After Clarke's militia withdrew, Thomas Brown hanged thirteen of the wounded Patriots who had been left behind when Clarke retreated. Some accounts hold that Brown had them hanged from the staircase of the building where they had been held prisoner. The killings deepened the cycle of reprisal that characterized the Augusta backcountry — Patriot militiamen who might have accepted British parole instead continued fighting, because the message from Brown's conduct was clear: capture meant death.

Brown's actions were consistent with British policy in the southern backcountry that treated Patriot militia as rebels rather than prisoners of war, but the consequences were strategically counterproductive. The reprisals made it impossible for moderate Georgians to accept British authority, and they fed the partisan resistance that eventually made Augusta indefensible.