Those Sneaky Patriots!
27 JUNE 1775
THOSE SNEAKY PATRIOTS!
“Our Liberty Folks are really very active in Fomenting a Flame throughout the Province… but [with] 200 Soldiers & a Sloop of War I think that I should be able to keep every thing quiet & orderly.” Such was the plea of the Crown’s governor of the colony of Georgia, Sir James Wright, to Lord Dartmouth, the British Secretary of State, in December 1774. Since the Stamp Act in 1765, the Sons of Liberty and the independence-minded Whig political party had been strengthening in Georgia. An extra-legal congress of the Whigs had formed a Council of Safety–intent on countermanding the power of the governor’s Royal Council. Patriots had forced a trade ban with the mother country under which all goods bound for England were blocked from leaving port. Savannah patriots staged their own “tea party” in February 1775, dressing as sailors with blackened faces, to reclaim sugar and molasses awaiting shipment to England in dockside warehouses. Two British guards were thrown into the river in this raid; one drowned. Dispossessed of a military force except his militia (who shared rebel sympathies), Wright’s only option was to ask repeatedly for naval and military support from British officials. On June 27th he wrote, yet again, to Royal Navy ADM Samuel Graves asking that a cruiser call on Savannah to show the Crown’s resolve.
No such ship appeared. For serendipitously, the Royal Mail from colonial Georgia all routed through the post office in Charles Town, South Carolina. Here members of the South Carolina Committee of Safety intercepted Wright’s letter and read the governor’s concern that 100 armed rebels were poised to ambush a gunpowder shipment at the mouth of the Savannah River. The governor had been, “long expecting and impatiently looking for…a sloop of war of some force,” to deal with these insurrectionists. The South Carolinians drafted their own version of the governor’s letter, copying paragraphs word-for-word except at key sentences. At the above, they substituted, “It gives me the highest pleasure to acquaint you, that I have not any occasion for any vessel of war, and I am clearly of the opinion that his Majesty’s service will be better promoted by the absence than the presence of vessels of war in this port.” The patriots sealed their substitute letter in Wright’s envelope and sent it on to Admiral Graves.
The seemingly transparent ploy worked! History records that Graves believed he was supporting Governor Wright by not sending a cruiser. Not until January of 1776 did any warships arrive, but then only to buy rice for British forces in Boston. The Whigs retained control of Georgia until December 1778, ultimately forcing the Tory governor to flee the colony in March of 1776.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 3 JUL 25
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Johnson, James M. Militiamen, Rangers, and Redcoats: The Military in Georgia, 1754-1776. Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1992, pp. 105-13.
Letter of Governor James Wright to Adm. Graves, dtd 27 June 1775. IN: Clark, William Bell, (ed.), Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Naval Documents of the American Revolution Vol 1 1774-1775. Washington, DC: GPO, 1964, pp. 764-65.
Letter of Governor James Wright to Adm. Samuel Graves as Substituted by the South Carolina Committee of Safety, dtd 27 June 1775. IN: Clark, William Bell, (ed.), Department of the Navy, Naval History Division. Naval Documents of the American Revolution Vol 1 1774-1775. Washington, DC: GPO, 1964, p. 765.
ADDITIONAL NOTES: This letter reinforced errant British beliefs about the southern colonies. As the hotbed of revolution had been the New England area, British leaders mistakenly assumed the southern colonies remained Loyalist. This misconception prompted the invasion of South Carolina in 1780-81 in an effort to rally support for the Crown. That invasion ultimately led to Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.
