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Thomas Parker to Sarah Madsen Parker, Savannah, October 12, 1814
Dear Mam,
I leave this for you in case we don't meet again in this world. Please know that I haven't always honored my mother, still less my father, so my days may not be long. But I loved you both and I am sorry for all the disappointments and heartaches I caused you.
Please, I beg you, don't take my bequest to Caroline Pineraft Bearkiller as another heartache. There is nothing about her you could possibly object to, if she was white. Also, please note that this and all other fair copies of the bequest are signed by both me and Joshua and witnessed by Commodore Decatur. I didn't think this was the time to ask General Jackson to witness that kind of an agreement between one of his officers and a Cherokee woman.
They are beating the Assembly, and the signal guns are firing both to the south and along the river. That means the British are in sight in force in both quarters. God grant that I can soon write of a victory.
With affection,
Your son Thomas
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Thomas Parker to Sarah Madsen Parker, Savannah, October 14, 1814
Dear Mother,
I write in haste, so that this letter may go with the first courier to leave Savannah for the north. We have won a great victory, but at a high price. Many brave men are fallen and General Jackson is gravely wounded. The British not killed or taken are in flight by land and sea, the Seminoles mostly dead, and the Dons we could persuade the Cherokees to spare mostly taken.
I write this letter instead of Joshua, because he has a flesh wound in his right arm and cannot write anything a Christian could read with his left hand. His arm is in no danger, still less his life, and I am sure he will write the next letter at greater length.
But the prayers of us all for a victory have been answered.
Thankfully,
Thomas
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Thomas Parker and Joshua Parker to their respected mother, Sarah Madsen Parker, Savannah, October 24, 1814
Dearest Mother,
We write this letter together, Tom penning and Joshua dictating. This is because Joshua understands more of the sea fighting but still cannot write a legible hand.
Shoal water made the British cautious about a close blockade of the mouth of the Savannah River, so the squadron ran in with only the loss of a Charleston privateer to the British. Several other privateers and one of the transports ran ashore and could not be got off, but we were able to take out their guns and gear and land most of the transport's stores. Then we set the ships on fire, placed the guns in battery to cover the mouth of the river, and proceeded up to Savannah in local boats.
A thousand men of Maryland and Virginia made a considerable difference to the American strength in Savannah, where General Jackson had been trying to hold with no more than three thousand. A quarter of these were the all but useless Georgia militia and a similar part the Cherokees. Those who knew of their fighting in the north thought well of the Cherokees but the Georgians had no faith in them. Nor did they care for French volunteers who came in the squadron, or for a company of free Negroes General Jackson organized.
Savannah lies on the south bank of its river. To the southwest is forest and farmland, to the southeast swamp with a few trails across dry ground. The city itself is well laid out for defense, with many of the houses arranged around squares. General Jackson proposed to demolish some of the houses outside the squares, to clear fields of fire and procure material for building revetments, but the citizens would not permit it until he threatened to declare martial law and take everything and everybody he needed.
The British came against Savannah ten days after the reinforcements arrived, enough time to let us arrange a warm reception for them. Half of the Cherokees scouted the swamps and kept watch from the islands on the river for enemy landing parties. The militia and a naval landing party under Commodore Decatur held the entrenchments around Savannah, with the Maryland and Virginia regiments in reserve. The rest of the Cherokees formed a skirmish line to the west. Upriver from the city, we hid General Scott, under Captain Allen. She was left with her rigging all a-cockbill and firepots burning on her deck, to let spies believe she had been abandoned.
General Jackson and Commodore Decatur were not fast friends, being rather too unlike in temperament. But they both believed that victory meant leaving none of the enemy fit to fight. They were resolved to do this even if we ran out of powder and had to finish the battle with bayonets and boarding pikes.
At the coming of the British, Thomas took his Rangers out to join the Cherokee skirmishers, while Joshua took a position beside Commodore Decatur, to record his orders. Soon we heard firing both on the river and inland, musketry and cannon both. Then the Cherokee guarding the trails past White Marsh Island came tumbling back, firing as they went, to report Seminoles approaching Augustine Creek.
The Georgia militia from the settlements along that creek immediately wished to advance against the Seminoles to save their homes. General Jackson said that homes could be rebuilt if Savannah held, but if they ran off now the Seminoles would kill most of them and he would shoot any survivors. Rightly enough, they took him at his word.
The British had two regular regiments, the 44th and the 71st, coming overland, and two more on the river, the 42nd and another whose number I never learned. None of them were at full strength, but add together Seminoles, Dons, West Indian Negroes, and a naval landing party as large as ours, they probably outnumbered us by half again.
They tried to land in the town of Gerardus on our left flank, but the citizens there had their wits about them. They fired several warehouses filled with combu Decatur persuade him to a different plan. Certainly the militia would never have stood except in entrenchments with naval guns, and we had nothing like that except at the city itself.
So the good folk of Gerardus and the Cherokees came tumbling back together, into the entrenchments, leaving Gerardus burning behind them. The Gerardus militia were so proud of the fight that they had made that we had several brawls between them and the Savannans.
So the British came up to Savannah and on the sixth day of the campaign launched their principal attack. They put three regular regiments and two of what the Dons called regiments against the entrenchments. Meanwhile, they tried to ferry the last regiment across the river to the island behind Savannah, along with some artillery to take the city in the rear.
It was not a bad plan, for we held the island lightly, with a few sharpshooters from the militia and some Cherokees, also a few South Carolina militia who had just come in the day before. They looked better than the Georgians, but Jackson and Decatur were agreed on not putting them in the forefront.
The British had two armed luggers guarding the river crossing. These beat down the water battery, or at least thought they did. (Joshua again says that Commodore Decatur gave the idea for the stratagem.) The British storming columns advanced, as the regiment in flatboats put out on to the water.
Then, relying on a favorable wind, General Scott swept down the river into the middle of the British. Most of her guns were ashore to lighten her and strengthen the batteries, but Captain Allen had twelve carronades and a hundred men armed with swivels, muskets, and thrown combustibles and was the man to know what to do with all of them. We do not say this to disgust you, Mother, or as a poetic figure, but the Savannah River did run red that day.