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.
The three columns going against the city were British on the left and the right and Dons in the middle. The Dons showed more stoutly than we had expected, nearly made it to the trenches, but fell back under our musketry and broke when we opened with grape.
The British on the right came along the riverbank, and of course expected the guns of the luggers and the river crossers to help them. They had no such help, as General Scott put both luggers out of action, then opened fire on the redcoats. They withdrew inland, losing a good half of the regiment.
The two regiments in the leftmost column were the most dangerous, as they came in at an angle that left them almost immune to artillery. Commodore Decatur and the sailors worked like Trojans to shift guns, but for nearly half an hour it was hand-to-hand fighting, with General Jackson in the vanguard taking the first of his wounds.
Thomas says that if it had not been for the Rangers and the Cherokees in the rear of the British on the left, they might have won. Of course, the Virginians and Marylanders also say it was their counterattack that saved the day.
Certainly, with neither foe against them, the British might have prevailed, or at least drawn off in better order. As it was, when repelled, they like the other enemies fled southward, to the banks of Augustine Creek. There Admiral Cockburn had prudently left boats and a few Marines to guard the line of retreat, but the Cherokee burned the boats and drove off the Marines.
The fighting went on into the night, to be ended more by the rain than by anything else. The Spanish surrendered as fast as they could to anyone who would let them, but the British regulars upheld their reputation. They fought us all the way to Augustine Creek, shooting from every kind of cover that they could find although not being the masters of open fighting that our best men were. We even had to bring up a six-pounder to blast them out of a farmhouse.
Our leaders were again in the forefront. General Jackson rode about, guiding his horse with his knees because he would not put down his sword and one arm was in a since Yorktown.
Then the rain started. By the time it finished at dawn, the British were holding a last-ditch position on the banks of Augustine Creek, which had gone out of its banks, was too swift to swim, and was threatening to drown the wounded. A few lucky survivors may have slipped down to the river under cover of the rain, riding on planks or driftwood. But near fifteen hundred unwounded British and Dons surrendered before noon, we took near four hundred wounded, and we have counted many more than a thousand bodies.