“COME AND TAKE IT!”

The colony of Georgia was a late arrival to our Revolutionary War, her citizens needing British protection from hostile Creeks and Cherokees to their west.  Nevertheless, the Continental Congress authorized the construction of forts to protect Georgia’s (then) two most important coastal centers, Savannah and Sunbury.  Sunbury, on the Medway River, was a thriving export center for lumber, rice, and indigo, and the southern Georgia entry port for manufactured goods.  Fort construction began on a bluff jutting into the Medway just below the town.  Protected on three sides by impassable marsh, the unusually large earthen fort enclosed an acre-sized parade ground–large enough to accommodate most of the town’s residents.  The longest wall (275 feet) faced the river and mounted the largest of 24 cannon.  A surrounding moat further discouraged unwanted entry.  The fort was completed in the summer of 1777 and garrisoned with a newly formed company of artillery under CAPT Thomas Morris, for whom the fort was named.

It was British Florida, and its garrison at St. Augustine, that was the most immediate threat.   When MGEN Sir Henry Clinton sent a force from New York to the Carolinas in 1778, British BGEN Augustine Prevost, in St. Augustine, was ordered to push north in a coordinated attack to open an additional front and divide the southern colonies.  Prevost dutifully marched 400 troops against the Medway basin by land.  As a diversion he detached 500 men under LCOL Lewis Fuser to sail up the intercoastal waterways and “present themselves” off Sunbury.  Prevost’s march went better than expected, ahead of schedule.  The only resistance he encountered, on November 24^th, was a series of easy skirmishes with poorly organized colonials along the Savannah-Darien road (known as the “Battle of Medway”).  Not finding Fuser of Sunbury as expected, he burned the Medway Meeting House, “liberated” livestock, and turned back southward on the 25^th.

Contrary winds delayed Fuser’s arrival until this day, and when he disembarked his troops at Sunbury, he found that news of Prevost’s march had scurried the townspeople into Fort Morris.  He sent a note to the new commander, LCOL John McIntosh, demanding the 200-man garrison surrender the fort–to which McIntosh boldly replied, “Come and take it!”  When Fuser next turned and sailed away, elated Americans cheered McIntosh for his bravado against the vaunted Royal Army.

But Fuser’s mission was to link-up with his boss, and hearing that Prevost had doubled-back on his withdrawal and was returning north, Fuser had simply moved to a new rendezvous at Cumberland Island.  From there Prevost struck Sunbury again, overpowering Fort Morris on 10 January 1779 after a three-day siege.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  7-8 DEC 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Guss, John Walker.  Fortresses of Savannah Georgia.  Images of America Series, Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub., 2002, pp. 17-18.

Searcy, Martha Condray.  The Georgia-Florida Contest in the American Revolution, 1776-1778.  Tuscaloosa, AL: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1985, pp. 118-19, 165-67.

Site visit, Fort Morris State Historical Site, Sunbury, GA, 17 September 2005.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Colonel McIntosh’s full reply was, “We, sir, are fighting the battle of America… As to surrendering the fort, receive this laconic reply:  Come and take it!”

The British occupied Fort Morris for the rest of the war.  They renamed it Fort George in honor of King George III.  The fort fell into disrepair over subsequent decades, but with the War of 1812, Americans reconstructed a smaller earthen fort at the same site, Fort Defiance.  This 1812 construction has been preserved today at Georgia’s Fort Morris State Historical Site, which can be easily reached off I-95 at Georgia Exit 67.

In its heyday, Sunbury was a booming commercial center, though it is difficult to locate on modern maps.  Having been sacked in the Revolutionary War, lashed by hurricanes in 1801 and 1804, scourged with yellow fever in subsequent years, and suffered the erosion of its economic base, the town has all but disappeared.  Only a small cemetery and Fort Morris State Park mark the site today.

“Come and take it!” is a phrase also remembered from the battle of Gonzales, the first battle of Texas’ struggle for independence from Mexico on 2 October 1835.  In reply to the Mexican Army’s request that the Texas garrison surrender their single cannon, the Texans made the famous reply.

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                                      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 27^th 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.

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