This letter is going south in a coasting vessel, so that I shall not add to it anything that might be useful to the enemy if the letter should fall into the wrong hands.
Do be careful with your Cherokee wench. Even if her people do not pr
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Thomas Parker to Joshua Parker, Savannah, August 20, 1814
Esteemed Brother,
Don't call Caroline Pineraft Bearkiller a wench. I've already knocked one man down for doing that.
I am leaving this letter where it will be safe if we hold off the British but I do not survive the Battle of Savannah. I will hope and even pray that you come in time-your Commodore Decatur sounds like a good hand in a fight. We have only about three thousand militia that are of any use at all, and this includes Americans from the Floridas and the Indian territories. We also have practically no field artillery and not much in the forts around Savannah that would stand up through a good fight.
That's not enough to hold the city against an attack from the sea and a second one from overland by way of Mobile or the Floridas. The British are sending regulars and some Dons from the Floridas, with the Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles to make a bad bargain worse.
The Cherokees can't hold the land route all by themselves, either. If they stay away from their crops and villages too long, they'll starve during the winter. Or their white neighbors will try to take over their land.
At least Old Hickory will do something about ungrateful bastards like that if he catches them! Nobody could ever call him an Indian lover, but he can tell people who've helped him from people who've hurt him. And people who've hurt him are safe, maybe, in the next territory.
Brother, you seem to have come home from the sea with more money than anybody in the family has seen in quite a while. Do you think you could loan me some of that pirate's gold to buy land for Caroline and her kin? A proper purchase with a legal title and everything will make it easier for them to keep off trespassers. Also, if I don't end the campaign in this world, Caroline will have something to call her own. The Cherokee sometimes make all kinds of noise about one of their women going with a white man.
Now please don't ask any questions where you wouldn't want Mother to hear the answers, even if you find me alive and in a state to answer them. Just say yes or no, and we'll part friends as well as kin.
Your grateful brother,
Tom
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Joshua Parker to his mother, Sarah Madsen Parker, aboard General Scott, Norfolk, September 15, 1814
Dearest Mother,
I write to you to hope that you are well. I also enclose a promissory note to Thomas, to pay him eleven thousand dollars out of my share of the prize money and cargoes from the European cruise. I expect that both of us shall survive the coming campaign in the south, I to pay him and he to be paid and to buy the land in Tennessee on which he has set his heart. However, God is the Great Disposer of all things, and not only in war.
You ask how I see the progress of the war. It seems to me that we have gained much in the north, with General Harrison besieging Detroit and Chauncey's victory on Lake Ontario. Neither the Northwest nor New England can have much to fear from British offensives. Indeed, if New England's embodied militia is sufficiently reinforced by regulars and by our victorious Lake Ontario squadron, they may be able to sail down the St. Lawrence and threaten Montreal, as well as the supply line of the British forces in the Lake Champlain country. General Brock will do all that mortal man can do with his men-but that will be little enough if the Richelieu River is closed to reinforcements and supplies.
On the other hand, we may yet lose enough in the South that the British will claim territory there, if not for themselves then for the Spanish or the Indians. We sail for Savannah tomorrow to "spike that gun," as Tom would say it, by seeing that the British effort against that city comes to nothing.
We are four frigates and five fast-sailing armed merchantmen, carrying among them a thousand men, five thousand stand of arms, and much else by way of military stores. Commodore Rodgers flies his broad pennant in United States, which Commodore Decatur has given up in favor of the lighter frigate General Scott, fitter for work close inshore or even up the Savannah River. Other squadrons from New York and Boston will seek to draw the British blockaders north, by seeming to threaten their ships off Long Island and the Penobscot.
I understand that we have Secretary of State Monroe to answer for much of this scheme. I trust his share in the victory at Bladensburg has not given him a folie de grandeur, as I believe those reports you have, that General Smith did the greater part of the work. But we shall do our best, and pray that along with the efforts of those already around Savannah, it will be good enough to loose the British hold on the South.
Pray for us, Mother, for it is the hour of our need and our country's, and will be so for some while yet.
Your loving son,
Joshua
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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.