The Province (and later State) of Georgia in the American Revolution was a significant battleground in the war for independence. Initially, Georgia's population was divided on how to respond to revolutionary activities and heightened tensions in other colonies. As the only colony not represented at the First Continental Congress in 1774, Georgia remained hesitant to join the revolutionary cause, owing to its prosperity under British rule and reliance on British protection against Native American attacks. However, after the outbreak of hostilities in 1775, radical Patriots (also known as Whigs) gained control of the provincial government, driving many Loyalists out and eventually joining the Second Continental Congress.
Georgia played a key role in the southern theater of the war, serving as a staging ground for Patriot raids into British-controlled Florida in 1776 and 1778. The British captured Savannah in 1778, and despite the American and French forces' combined efforts, the Siege of Savannah in 1779 failed to reclaim the city. Georgia remained under British control until their evacuation of Savannah in 1782. Throughout the war, the state witnessed significant battles and skirmishes, such as the Battle of the Rice Boats, the battles of Kettle Creek and Brier Creek, and two sieges of Augusta. The British withdrawal from Savannah marked the restoration of Georgian self-governance, and the state ultimately joined the United States as part of the newly independent nation.
Beginning of the revolution
Though Georgians opposed British trade regulations, many hesitated to join the revolutionary movement that emerged in the American colonies in the early 1770s and resulted in the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). The colony had prospered under royal rule, and many Georgians thought that they needed the protection of British troops against a possible Indian attack. Georgia did not send representatives to the First Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1774. The Congress asked all colonies to form a group, called the Association, to ban trade with Great Britain. Georgia delegates gathered in a provincial congress at Tondee's Tavern in Savannah on January 18, 1775, to discuss whether to join the Association and to elect representatives to the Second Continental Congress. Those who were elected declined to go to Philadelphia, however, because the delegates were divided on the action to be taken. St. John Parish, acting alone, sent Lyman Hall to the Second Continental Congress.Edward J. Cashin. "Revolutionary War in Georgia" (March 26, 2005). New Georgia Encyclopedia. This article incorporates text from this source, which has been released under a Creative Commons license (see talk page). All derived works must credit the NGE and the original author.
News of the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts caused many Georgians who were wavering in their allegiance to join the radical movement. A group called the Sons of Liberty broke into the powder magazine in Savannah on May 11, 1775, and divided the powder with the South Carolina revolutionaries.
Though Georgians continued to drink to the health of the king, they took the government into their own hands when the Second Provincial Congress met in Savannah on July 4, 1775. The Congress named delegates to the Second Continental Congress, which was already sitting in Philadelphia, and adopted the Association's ban on trade with Britain. The single most important democratic action of the Congress was the establishment of local committees to enforce the Association's ban. Thus political power devolved upon artisans and farmers, considered by the royal governor James Wright to be the "wrong sort" to be allowed in government. The Congress adjourned, leaving executive authority in a standing Council of Safety.
Violence in the backcountry
The heavy-handed tactics of the local committee in Augusta led to the first violence in the backcountry. On August 2, 1775, members of the committee confronted Thomas Brown at his residence on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River above Augusta. Brown had come to Georgia with seventy or so indentured servants in November 1774 in answer to Governor Wright's advertisement of the advantages of the newly Ceded Lands above Augusta and founded a settlement called Brownsborough. He attracted the anger of the Whigs by publicly denouncing the Association and summoning friends of the king to join a counterassociation. When he refused to swear to honor the Association, the crowd of Liberty men tortured him in various ways, scalping and fracturing his skull, burning his feet, and hauling him, unconscious, through the streets of Augusta as an object lesson to those who would denounce the Association.
When he recovered, Brown retired into the Carolina backcountry, where he and other leaders enlisted hundreds of Loyalists and threatened a march on Augusta. After much marching about and some skirmishing around the town of Ninety Six, Brown and his friends heeded South Carolina governor Sir William Campbell's advice to await the arrival of the British. Brown retreated to East Florida and persuaded its governor, Patrick Tonyn, to allow him to recruit a corps of rangers who would lead Indians to fight on the frontiers in conjunction with the expected landing on the coast. Meanwhile, rumors of a British-instigated plot to enlist slaves and Indians to help defeat the American patriots alarmed Georgians and Carolinians. Though false, the rumors were generally believed, and John Stuart, the Indian Commissioner, fled in fear for his life from Charleston, South Carolina, to Florida.
Battle of the Rice Boats
British warships that arrived in the Savannah River in January 1776 caused the first crisis in Savannah. The Council of Safety, convinced that Savannah was to be the object of a British attack, placed Governor Wright under house arrest and instructed Colonel Lachlan McIntosh to take charge of the defense of the city. There followed the so-called Battle of the Rice Boats on March 2–3, 1776, when British marines seized rice-laden merchant ships in the Savannah harbor, some of which the militia burned. In fact, the object of the British fleet was the acquisition of provisions for the beleaguered army besieged in Boston. The fleet sailed off with some of the rice, along with the fugitive Governor Wright and his chief councilors.
In the absence of the governor, the next provincial congress met in Augusta and proceeded to draft a simple framework of government called "Rules and Regulations" that went into effect on May 1, 1776. The congress elected Archibald Bulloch president and commander in chief of the militia. George Walton joined Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett as Georgia delegates to the Philadelphia convention in time to sign the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Three invasions of Florida
By August, Major General Charles Lee, military commander in the South, allowed himself to be persuaded by Georgians to stage an invasion of British East Florida. Lee had little hope of conquest, but he thought the military demonstration might impress the Indians. Unfortunately, he was recalled to the North, taking his Virginia and North Carolina troops with him, and the expedition got no farther than Sunbury, just south of Savannah, when South Carolina ordered her militia to return. Georgians under Lachlan McIntosh, who was recently promoted to brigadier general, skirmished with the Florida Rangers and their Indian allies on the Satilla River and then abandoned the southern borderlands.
Congress recommended that the newly independent states adopt a permanent frame of government. Accordingly, Georgians elected delegates to a state constitutional convention that met on October 17, 1776, in Savannah. Radical leaders of local committees dominated the convention and produced one of the most democratic constitutions of any state. The electorate included all men over twenty-one who possessed property worth ten pounds or were employed as artisans. A one-house assembly enacted legislation, and elected the governor, judges, and other officials. Georgia's constitution, adopted on February 5, 1777, created the state's first counties: Burke, Camden, Chatham, Effingham, Glynn, Liberty, Richmond, and Wilkes, all named for friends of the colonies in British Parliament, except Liberty, a title that honored St. John Parish's early zeal for American rights.
Button Gwinnett acted as speaker of the convention. He and his fellow radical Whigs suspected many conservative Whigs of being secret Tories. Gwinnett's arrest of George McIntosh, the brother of General Lachlan McIntosh, fueled animosity between radical and conservative Georgians. At the height of the controversy, Gwinnett decided upon an invasion of Florida. Gwinnett considered himself commander in chief of the Georgia militia and refused to cooperate with General McIntosh, who commanded the brigade of Continental soldiers. After the failure of the expedition, the two principals quarreled about which one was to blame. They fought a duel, both were wounded, and Gwinnett died. The radical Whigs raised such a cry against McIntosh that Congress transferred him out of Georgia for service under General George Washington at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
The first two failures did not dissuade Georgians from a third attempt upon Florida in 1778. This time Governor John Houstoun commanded the Georgia militia, Major General Robert Howe the Continentals, and General Andrew Williamson the Carolina militia. The expedition suffered from the same lack of coordination that doomed the previous assault on the southern borderlands. Howe's regulars managed to drive Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown and his East Florida Rangers from Fort Tonyn on the St. Marys River. The Georgia militia skirmished with the Rangers and a company of Royal Americans on Alligator Creek. With that limited success, the invaders returned to Georgia.
Other than the three abortive invasions of Florida and the patrolling of the western frontier, the Whigs accomplished little during the first three years of independence except survival. However, they gained experience in self-government and a determination not to surrender their new independence, and that was no small achievement. The Indians would have created greater havoc in the backcountry as the result of the instigations of John Stuart and Thomas Brown, but for the efforts of Continental Indian Commissioner George Galphin. Galphin used his enormous influence to persuade many of the Lower Creeks to remain neutral.
Return of the British Army
By 1778, the war in the North had reached a stalemate. The British high command decided to try a southern strategy. Southern governors like Sir James Wright had assured Lord George Germain, the American Secretary in Britain, that hundreds of Loyalists bided their time in the backcountry, waiting for the king's troops. General Sir Henry Clinton in New York ordered Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell to invade Georgia with 3,000 troops and to restore the state to British rule, thus setting an example for the restoration of other former colonies.
Prior to Campbell's attack upon Georgia, General Augustine Prevost conducted a cattle raid into the lower Georgia counties. As a diversion, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Fuser demonstrated against Fort Morris at Sunbury. When Fuser demanded the surrender of the fort, its commander, Lieutenant Colonel John McIntosh, bravely answered, "Come and take it!" Fuser withdrew and Georgia honored McIntosh as a hero.