XIII

Lights and Shadows of a Warm October Morning

IN MY opinion” General Prevost’s troops “have preserved the Empire,” wrote the Chief Justice of New York on learning of the victory at Savannah.¹ The news was celebrated in New York by a feu de joie participated in by the entire garrison drawn up in review. “A tremendous acclamation proclaimed the heart-felt and universal gladness of the whole city,” declared the editor of the Mercury, who stated that it was “impossible to describe the joy which sparkled in every countenance.” A long poem of exultation appeared in Rivington’s Royal Gazette.

At London the Park and Tower guns were fired, a rare display reserved for great occasions. In the best vein of English understatement General Prevost had informed Lord Germain that “we got both them [the French] and their American allies off our hands, in a manner which we humbly hope our gracious Sovereign will not think unhandsome.” “The siege has rendered famous a sickly hole, which was in the woods, and had only one white man in it at the time General Oglethorpe landed,” wrote Anthony Stokes. The outcome was “Providential,” thought Governor Wright, who reported to Germain that “the Southern Parts of N°. America I conceive are now in Your Lordships Power whereas had the French got Footing here, I fear they wou’d have been Lost.” In contemporary British eyes it was “the ever famous 9th of October” or the “Glorious Ninth.”

A day of Thanksgiving was decreed by the Governor and Council of Georgia. “The Preservation of this Town, Garrison, and Inhabitants, from the formidable combined Force of French and Rebel Enemies who came against us” was “an Act of divine Providence,” declared Sir James Wright. Many skeptics acknowledged, said Chief Justice Stokes, that “our deliverance was miraculous, and arose from the immediate interposition of God in our favor.”

Meanwhile the widow of the aide to General McIntosh was reading a letter dated October 5th. “We have the prayers of the Church & I hope from the justness of our cause that God will decide in our favor,” Major John Jones had written. Prayer proved equally barren for Polly Jones. “Consider,” she had admonished her husband during the Siege, “you have two dear children and a wife whose whole happiness depends on yours. May Heaven guard you, and give me once more a happy sight of you.”² On the 9th Jones’ body would be dumped into a burial pit so shallow a friend is said to have recognized his protruding hand and accorded his shattered remains a decent burial.

For the Americans the defeat was a calamity which left the lower South in a worse way than before the French came. “The most gloomy apprehensions respecting the Southern States took possession of the minds of the people,” wrote David Ramsay. That section now lay wide open to expanded British operations to the southward. A new and bloody phase of the American Revolution was about to begin. To the failure of the Allied forces to take Savannah may be traced all the bloodshed and excesses of the civil war that was to be waged in the Carolinas and in Georgia during the next three years. A victory at Savannah, to use the expressive language of Judge William Johnson, would have inflicted “a wound upon royal power from which it would scarcely have recovered in that quarter; and which would have saved oceans of blood, and prevented the exhibition of scenes of barbarous warfare of which the details would shock an Arab.” For with General Clinton’s springboard for invasion of South Carolina gone it may well be doubted whether the British would have been in position again to attempt a large scale offensive in that direction. A defeat would have upset Clinton’s time-table. He himself declared that the loss of Savannah would prevent his proceeding with the projected attack on Charlestown. The arrival in the North of French troops under Rochambeau some months later made a Southern expedition even less feasible. The sum and substance of it was that their victory at Savannah enabled the British to proceed with their new plan of warfare in America, the reduction of the Southern colonies one by one.

The dark wine of youth had been riotously spilled on the 9th. With the fresh breeze that sprang up from the east this warm October morning the fog lifted and the sun shone bright upon a terrible spectacle. “Such a Sight I never saw before,” said Prevost’s aide, Major Moore, who rode up just as the battle ended—“The ditch was filled with dead” and “Many hung dead and wounded on the Abattis.” Several hundred men lay dead “in a space of a few hundred Yards,” declared another Britisher to whose “feeling mind” the “cries of many hundred wounded was still more distressing.” To one Tory officer, however, the spectacle was more inspiring than horrendous. As he walked about the scene of carnage Captain Roderick McIntosh was heard to exclaim, “A glorious sight—our enemies slain in battle!”³

Upon the mind of a young Whig in Colonel William Skirving’s militia the bloody spectacle left a deep and abiding impression. The “immediate emotion” aroused in seventeen year old Paul Hamilton by this “slaughter of my countrymen . . . and the loss of some of my particular friends and school fellows” was a thirst for a quick opportunity of “avenging with Interest the stroke we had received at Savannah.” From that day on Hamilton possessed an “unconquerable hatred to the cause of Britain.” October 9th convinced him once and for all that the “Cause of America was that of Justice.”⁴ It was the implacable enmity of Americans like this future South Carolina governor that made the British cause utterly hopeless.

Many a Carolina home was left in mourning by the news that came back from Georgia. In the Cheraws District, which suffered heavily, the Reverend Evan Pugh selected a highly appropriate text for the memorial sermon preached by him “for those youths lost at Savannah, 9th October past, from these parts.”⁵ “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down.” Job, XIV, 1, 2.

The battle was one of the bloodiest of the American Revolution. Only Bunker Hill exceeded it in casualties sustained by a single side. Scarcity of surgeons and lack of linen prevented wounds from being treated or dressed in many cases. Only the less seriously wounded were saved, declared Captain de Tarragon. Estimates of French losses vary but an official summary signed by M. de Fontanges lists 11 officers killed and 35 wounded and 140 of the rank and file killed and 335 wounded—a total of 521 casualties. The American losses were 231 men including both regulars and militia. For their part the British suffered only 18 killed and 39 wounded on October 9th.⁶

To Prevost’s losses should be added 110 Tory troops who capitulated to 6 Americans on October 1st near the Thomas Savage plantation on the Ogeechee River. The detachment, which consisted largely of the convalescents of the Sunbury garrison, had not been able to reach Savannah by water before the blockade became effective. The entire force was captured along with several vessels through an extraordinary ruse by Colonel John White, Captains Elholm and Melvin, and three soldiers who deluded Captain Thomas French into thinking he was confronted by a superior force.⁷

Many anecdotes have been handed down about October 9th. One of the best known and widely publicized turns out to be an unashamed invention by Mason L. Weems, rivaling in every way his fable of young Washington and the cherry tree. In his Life of Gen. Francis Marion, Weems told a dramatic story of how Colonel Peter Horry saw the wounded Jasper limp by after the retreat bearing the regimental colors he had saved and of how that night as the immortal Sergeant’s life ebbed away Horry listened to his death-bed words, moving phrases that have been repeated by many a historian. If Jasper’s highly literate sentiments sound somewhat strange in the mouth of one whose letters, according to General Moultrie, were “ill written and worse spelt,’’ they sound even stranger in the light of Horry’s own comment on the subject. Across the margin of his copy of the book where the scene was described he tersely commented, “N.B., I saw Jasper on the Enemies Lines wounded & never Saw him afterwards. M^r. Weems Inventions are Great.”⁸ Higher than any tribute Weems could pay Sergeant Jasper with make-believe dialogues was a four word eulogy by Isaac Hayne, South Carolina’s famous martyr of the Revolution. Colonel Hayne had a sort of hobby of keeping vital statistics. He never recorded more than the bare name and the date of the event. But in his list of those killed at Savannah on October 9th he departed for once from custom. The entry reads: “The Brave Serg^t Jasper.”

After the battle Pulaski was carried back to camp where Dr. James Lynah extracted the fatal grapeshot. John Bee Holmes, of Charlestown, and Major Thomas Glascock have each been credited with his rescue. The hero bore the ordeal with what the surgeon called “inconceivable fortitude.” He preferred, however, to take his chance of recovery with the French, afraid that if he became a litter case he might be captured and turned over to the Russians, a fate the Polish hero abhorred. Lynah always believed that he might have saved his life had the wounded officer continued under his care.⁹ Romantic stories, which time will not quiet, have grown up about the circumstances of Pulaski’s death and burial. According to one tale, he died at Greenwich plantation near Thunderbolt and was buried in the dead of night near the house. Many years later a skeleton said to be his was exhumed and reinterred beneath the handsome monument reared at Savannah to the memory of General Pulaski. But the more acceptable version, supported by the newspapers of the day and by Captain Bentalou, is that he died from gangrene aboard a ship en route to Charlestown.

Several of the anecdotes that have come down from October 9th involve the sayings, some no doubt apocryphal, of those who took part in the attack. There is the story of Lieutenant Vleland of the Second Carolina Regiment, who received a severe wound. An amputation became necessary. While the operation was in progress a groan escaped Vleland’s lips. Laurens was standing by him. “Pardon, I beseech you, my dear Colonel, this weakness,” apologized the wounded officer—“My resolution was overcome by the severity of the agony I suffered. I will no more shrink from the trial ordained me.” Death helped Vleland keep his word.

James Jackson watched a similar operation performed on Lieutenant Edward Lloyd whose right arm was almost carried away by a shot. While the stump was being dressed someone commiserated with the wounded officer in regard to the unhappy situation that confronted him so early in life. “As bad a prospect as it presented to so young a man” he would not “change situations,” replied Lloyd, with an American officer named Stedman who had not “acted the soldier.”¹⁰

A macaberesque story has been handed down about Samuel Warren, of St. James, Santee. He had formerly been an officer in the British army, but during the Revolution took up arms against the King. Chagrined to hear that her nephew was fighting on the rebel side, an English aunt sent word to him that if the report was true she hoped he would have his leg or arm shot off in his first battle. As a result of a wound received on October 9th Warren’s leg had to be amputated. Remembering the wish expressed by his relative, he asked the surgeon to keep the bone. After the War he placed the remnants of the limb in an elegant mahogany case to which was affixed a plate bearing the date of its loss. He sent the box to his aunt with a note. While her wish had been fulfilled he would rather, Warren informed her, be a Rebel with one leg than a Royalist with two.¹¹

Count von Stedingk always recalled with satisfaction in later years the sayings of two men who served under him in the attack. During the retreat he came upon a badly wounded French soldier who was stretched beside a number of other men. They blocked the way and Colonel Stedingk stopped short so as not to trample upon their feet. Summoning all his strength, the dying man motioned to him to proceed. “Passez, mon commandant,” he said, “thirty men like me have made a road for you.”

Another story Stedingk never tired of telling concerned a French soldier who managed to reach an almost impregnable British post during the assault. Asked how he had done it, the hero tersely replied, “C’est que l’ennemi s’y trouvait” [“The enemy happened to be there”].¹²

In similar vein was the retort Isidore de Lynch is reputed to have made to General d’Estaing during the attack. Count de Ségur tells the story in his Memoirs. The Irish-born officer was dispatched in the heat of the battle with an urgent message to the left column. Instead of passing to the rear of the advancing troops the debonair Lynch proceeded straight across the front, through the cross-fire, ignoring shouts to take a safer path. Having delivered the dispatch, he calmly returned the same way. To the amazement of all he arrived safe and sound. “Morbleu!” d’Estaing reprimanded him, “you must have the devil in you. Eh! Why have you selected a route along which you should have died a thousand times?” “Because,” replied the happy-go-lucky officer, “it was the shortest.”

Count Dillon was anxious for his troops to distinguish themselves in the assault. A story is told that he offered 100 guineas reward to the first man to brave the hail of fire from the British entrenchments and plant a fascine in the ditch below the works. Not a soldier moved. Much mortified, Colonel Dillon began to upbraid them for cowardice. A sergeant-major stepped forward. “Had you not, sir,” he protested, “held out a sum of money as a temptation, your grenadiers would, one and all, have presented themselves.”¹³ With this, the soldiers to a man advanced. Of one hundred and ninety-four only ninety were to return, it is said.

But it was Major d’Erneville of the Volunteers from the Windward Isles who made the most gallant reply credited to these Frenchmen. Severely wounded in the right arm while leading the vanguard, he was taken as a prisoner into Savannah. As the weeks passed his condition did not improve. General Prevost urged the Chevalier to submit to an amputation of his arm which might have saved his life. The brave Frenchman refused. “With but one hand,” protested d’Erneville, “I could not serve my prince in the field; and if so disabled, life is not worth preserving.”¹⁴ He died on Christmas day and was buried with full military honors by the British.