XVI

And What of Colonel Maitland?

THE story of the subsequent careers of the Americans who fought at Savannah is drab reading beside the turbulent, often tragic chronicle of the French. Many of them were to make their bright mark in public life in the days to come.

Thomas Pinckney was Governor of South Carolina, Congressman, Minister to Great Britain and the head of an important mission to Madrid. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney also became a diplomat, winning fame for his role in the “XYZ Affair.” He was twice the unsuccessful Federalist candidate for the Presidency. William Few, Pierce Butler, and James Jackson were to be United States Senators. Jackson also served as Governor of Georgia and in Congress. Four veterans of the Siege—Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Pierce Butler, John F. Grimké, and William Few—became members of the Federal Constitutional Convention. Joseph Habersham was Postmaster-General under Presidents Washington, John Adams, and Jefferson. The catalogue of disasters of Benjamin Lincoln during the Revolution in no way diminished Washington’s esteem for him. The New England General was accorded the honor of receiving Lord Cornwallis’ sword at Yorktown. He was Secretary of War for a time during the Confederation. Lincoln quelled Shays’ Rebellion in 1787. David Meriwether and Samuel Hammond represented Georgia in Congress, Hammond later serving as President of the Territorial Council which governed Missouri. Hugh Rutledge, Grimké, and William Hasell Gibbes distinguished themselves in the judicial field. Paul Hamilton became Governor of South Carolina and Secretary of the Navy under Madison.

Many a county bears the names of men who fought on the American side at Savannah. The memory of Jasper was so honored in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. Marion is close behind in such honors. Such was the influence of Weems’ book upon Americans of his day that Georgia even named a county for a veteran of the Siege whom General Horry called “a Thief & a Villain.” John Newton took part in a guerrilla exploit near Savannah in company with Sergeant Jasper, an incident which Weems dramatized in his Life of Gen. Francis Marion. On the margin of the book Horry wrote the terse commentary, “Jasper was an honest Man; but Newton was a Thief & a Villain—”

One of the first Frenchmen to come to the aid of America during the Revolution had been Pierre-Charles L’Enfant. The day before the attack on the lines at Savannah the Major led five men through a brisk fire in a futile attempt to ignite the abatis in front of the British works. Severely wounded during the assault, he was left for dead on the field. It was months before he could walk. No map-books of America bear his name. But L’Enfant has left a greater memorial, for it was he who laid out Washington, D. C., “the city of magnificent distances.”

To Governor James Wright and Lieutenant Governor John Graham the decision to abandon Georgia in 1782 was a bitter disappointment which left propertied Tories the “Melancholy Alternative,” they complained, “either of leaving the Province, in a destitute Condition, to pine under Want in a Strange Country or else stay behind & fall into the hands of their inexorable enemies.” Sir James lived out the rest of his days in England struggling to obtain compensation from the British Government for his extensive property losses. He lies in Westminster Abbey, a tribute to his role in the defense of Savannah. Lord Germain informed him after the Siege that, “His Majesty commands me to express to you His particular satisfaction in your firm and spirited Conduct, and to assure you that He imputes much of the successful Resistance made to the Enemy to that Ardour and Resolution of which you gave the Example.”¹ His son, Major Wright, who was an officer in the Georgia volunteers, commanded a British redoubt during the Siege of Savannah. He, too, retired to the mother country, his exile embittered by recollections of his family’s great prestige in America.

Augustin Prevost took home with him from Georgia a testimonial of his officers to his “polite, disinterested and impartial behaviour.” According to General Henry Lee, he had gained “distinguished applause” for the “wisdom, vigilance, and courage” displayed by him in the Siege of Savannah. General Prevost died in 1786, awaiting a promotion that never came.

A few weeks after the Allies departed, gazing at the sand defenses that had turned them back, Captain Johann Hinrichs observed that “There is no more fascinating sight for a soldier than that of the demolished works of the truly great Moncrieff.” Another officer who went out the same day and took what he called “a Peep at the Works on the Ebenezer Road” was not as impressed as this Hessian officer. “The Ditch of the Lines [is] easily to be leapt over,” observed Captain Peter Russell—“the Abbatis trifling and the right of the Works may be doubled without Difficulty.” “Astonish^g.,” he exclaimed, “how they were defended!”² Moncrief won equal laurels at Charlestown in 1780, General Clinton’s gratitude to him for his services there being “greater” than he was “able to express.” Moncrief died in 1793 as a result of wounds received in a French sortie at Dunkirk. “When such an officer as Colonel Moncrieffe falls,” declared the English press, “and at such a moment as he unfortunately fell, the misfortune may be great indeed, because, it may be irreparable.”

Several of the British officers who participated in the Siege later became governors of Crown possessions on this side of the Atlantic, among them John Skinner, whom we met at Savannah as a lieutenant in the Sixteenth Regiment. General Skinner is credited with saving Jamaica from the fate of San Domingo and commanding the expeditions that captured Guadeloupe and Surinam.

When the French left Georgia, Sir James Wallace and his wife were taken to France aboard the Sagittaire.³ He reaped satisfying revenge on his captors during the Battle of the Saintes in which he commanded the Warrior. Wallace later served as Governor of Newfoundland.

Stephen De Lancey became Chief Justice of the Bahamas and Governor of Tabago. Lord Wellington has touchingly described the death of his son, Sir W. H. De Lancey, who was mortally wounded at the side of the Iron Duke during the Battle of Waterloo. John Harris Cruger, who married a De Lancey, commanded the redoubt which was attacked by General Williamson’s troops at Savannah. The brilliant and successful defense of Ninety-six by this former Mayor of New York ranks him with the greatest British heroes of the War.

And what of Colonel Maitland, who had “heroically reestablished,” said Colvill, “the declining glory of the British arms, in one of those most important and critical moments which decide the fall or the rise of nations”? “Like the gallant Wolfe,” wrote another Britisher, he had the satisfaction of seeing “the most brilliant success accompany his exertions in behalf of his country.”⁴ And like that hero Maitland did not survive his day of glory. “Though the vigor of his mind was unabated” he had been “feeble” during the Siege, according to reports that came back to England. When it was all over he retired to his quarters, not to leave. Colonel Maitland died on October 26th, 1779.

Contemporary accounts attributed his death to the fever he had contracted in Carolina and to his over-exertions. He had remained almost constantly in the trenches throughout the Siege. But there is another version. In his History of Georgia, Hugh McCall asserted that Colonel Maitland “had long been in the habit of indulging himself freely with his glass” which had become “constitutionally necessary for the preservation of health.” He abstained during the Siege, only to return “to his former habits” when the enemy left, gratifying them “to such an extent,” asserted McCall, “as to produce convulsions, of which he died suddenly.”⁵ To the same effect was the earlier statement in Weems’ Life of Gen. Francis Marion that Maitland became “so elated” by the victory that he “took to hard drinking, and killed himself in a single week.”

The origin of the story cannot be tracked. One suspects that its source was a letter appearing in an issue of Mrs. Crouch’s Charlestown Gazette during January, 1780, which is no longer extant. It was described by the Royal Georgia Gazette as a “scurrilous” one about a “late honourable Colonel” who had fought at Savannah on October 9th, its authorship being attributed to a “Renegade and impudent Rebel.” One can only surmise that the communication in question was a slander of Colonel Maitland. To this dead end of uncertainty comes the search for the source of the tale Weems and McCall repeated.

But one may well ask how such a man would have been given or could have discharged so well the large responsibilities confided to Lieutenant Colonel Maitland. How could such an individual as these American writers describe have been so universally respected in life or so widely lamented in death? It is true that General Prevost in his official report to Lord Germain failed to mention the services of the Scotch officer, though he generously meted out praise to others. In his poem “Savannah” the Reverend Robert Colvill refers to the “vengeful fangs” of “Envy’s insidious harpies,” exclaiming, “Felon! to reap where OTHERS sow!” Could he have been alluding to Prevost who might well have resented Maitland’s strong comments to his superiors about surrender? The Colonel had used equally vigorous language at Charlestown the previous May. However, one finds it hard to believe that the General’s oversight was attributable in any way to Maitland’s conduct. Spite was not one of his failings. While he did not mention Colonel Maitland in his official report, Prevost informed Clinton on November 6th that he was “extremely sorry” to announce his passing, a fact “very much, and very justly regretted by all who knew him, both as a Gentleman, and as an Officer.” He went on to say that his death could be described as “literally to have happened on Actual Service,” the “fatigues” of which left him in “a very declining way.”⁶

In fact, nothing but praise and no shred of anything derogatory to Maitland’s character or personal habits came from those who served with him at Savannah. “What a providential thing was it that he lived so long,” wrote a grateful Scotch merchant of the town. English officers acknowledged on their return to London that they owed everything to his “bringing 800 men across the swamps, deemed almost impassable, and forcing his way through the enemy’s troops to join Gen. Prevost; who without them, could hardly have made any resistance.”⁷ In Charlestown the defeat was attributed in large part by the press to the fact that the British possessed the “advantage of the presence, skill, and activity of so able and indefatigable an officer as the Hon. Col. Maitland.” His memory, said the historian Stedman, “will be dear to Britons so long as manly fortitude, unstained honour, and highly-improved military talents, are held in estimation.”

No British soldier of the Revolution received higher contemporary accolade. At least five poems, including Colvill’s lengthy “Savannah,” were inspired by his death. In “Lines written by a Young Gentleman on hearing of the death of Colonel MAITLAND” a Savannahian poeticized,

“If Britain’s love to Patriot Zeal be true,

And Steady Courage what her Troops revere;

To thee, Good Spirit, shall be paid as due,

A Nation’s sorrow, and a Soldier’s tear.”⁸

The “Brave and Free” would “yearly pilgrims come,” predicted Colvill, “To weep at MAITLAND’S hallow’d tomb”—

“The Realm you sav’d with loss of life,

Each spring shall flow’ry wreaths bestow:

Her village maids, with pious strife,

Fresh garlands on thy marble throw.”

In similar vein, Mrs. De Lancey in some lines entitled “On the Death of Colonel Maitland,” wrote,

“Yet while a grateful King and Country sighs,

O’er the lov’d Ashes, Marbles proud, shall rise.”

Another admirer of the Colonel answered Mrs. De Lancey’s poem with some stanzas in which Maitland’s shade suggested that though Caesar’s “haughty tomb” had

“Fall’n beneath the ruthless Hand of Age!

Yet Caesar lives in Maro’s sacred Page!

So when in Ruin Lies the laurel’d Bust,

And Tombs and Statues moulder in the Dust,

Thy Verse, D—y, shall transmit to Fame

Immortal as your own, your Maitland’s Name.”⁹

Mrs. De Lancey’s lines fell somewhat short of immortalizing her Maitland. His fame was soon forgot. His has been the fate of most British heroes of the American Revolution—unrecognized in this country, forgotten at home. No marble tomb commemorates his memory, not even a tablet. No stone marks his burial place.

“Last Monday,” reported the Royal Georgia Gazette at the time, “died here, greatly lamented by the whole army and inhabitants, the Hon. Lieut. Co. MAITLAND, of the 71st Regiment, brother to the Right Hon. the Earl of Lauderdale: and the next evening his remains were deposited with all the honours of war in the family vault of the Hon. John Graham, Esq.—; We must leave to some able pen the drawing the character of this truly brave and valuable officer.”¹⁰ Several years later the body of Nathanael Greene was interred in the same vault. That fact was forgotten after a few decades and a long speculation began as to the burial place of the New England General. During the course of a search for his ashes the Graham vault was opened in 1901. The bones of the American hero were found and identified by means of a coffin plate. But the official report of the Committee negatives the fact that the remains of the Scotch officer were within the vault. There is no record of Colonel Maitland’s burial elsewhere. Somewhere in a nameless grave this great but forgotten soldier of the Empire sleeps the long and dreamless sleep.

So, too, dust of our dust, sleep many a brave Frenchman and American who fell at Savannah for the cause of America on a foggy October morning long, long ago.