Savannah Stories
THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
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Last week, there was time in between events at the Savannah Book Festival to do some strolling in the historic district. One park that I stopped in featured an impressive statue of William Jasper. During the Revolutionary War, he was a sergeant in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment. This discovery yielded the first of two stories about Savannah that I think are mostly unknown to many people. The first is that the Siege of Savannah was a major engagement in the war.
Sergeant Jasper first distinguished himself in the defense of Fort Moultrie (then called Fort Sullivan) on June 28, 1776. When a shell from a British warship shot away the flagstaff, he recovered the South Carolina flag, raised it on a temporary staff, and held it under fire until a new staff was installed. Governor John Rutledge gave his sword to Jasper in recognition of his bravery. It was three years later that Jasper participated in the Siege of Savannah, which was led, on the American side, by General Benjamin Lincoln. Alas, the attack failed to recapture the city from the British. The valiant sergeant was mortally wounded during an assault on the British forces there.
Following the failures of military campaigns in the North earlier in the war, British military planners decided to embark on a southern strategy to conquer the rebellious colonies, with the support of Loyalists in the South. Their first step was to gain control of the southern ports of Savannah in Georgia and Charleston in South Carolina. An expedition in December 1778 took Savannah with modest resistance from ineffective militia and Continental Army defenses.
The Continental Army regrouped, and by June 1779 the combined army and militia forces guarding Charleston numbered between 5,000 and 7,000 men. General Lincoln knew that he could not recapture Savannah without naval assistance so he turned to the French, who had entered the war as an American ally in 1778. French Admiral the Comte d’Estaing spent the first part of 1779 in the Caribbean, where his fleet and a British fleet monitored each other's movements. He took advantage of conditions to take Grenada in July before acceding to American requests for support in operations against Savannah. On September 3, a few French ships arrived at Charleston with news that d'Estaing was sailing for Georgia with 25 ships of the line and 4,000 French troops. Lincoln and the French emissaries agreed on a plan of attack on Savannah, and Lincoln left Charleston with over 2,000 men on September 11.
The next day, D'Estaing began landing troops below the city and they began moving in by September 16. Confident of victory and believing that British reinforcements would be prevented from reaching Savannah by Lincoln, the French admiral offered General Augustine Prevost, the British commander, the opportunity to surrender. Prevost delayed, asking for 24 hours of truce. Owing to miscommunication about who was responsible for inhibiting reinforcements, the waterways separating South Carolina's Hilton Head Island from the mainland were left unguarded, and British troops were able to reach Savannah hours before the truce ended. Prevost's response to d'Estaing's offer was a polite refusal, despite the arrival of Lincoln's forces.
On September 19, the British scuttled a damaged ship in a narrow part of the channel leading to Savannah, effectively blocking it. Consequently, the French fleet was unable to assist when the Americans began their assault. Also, over the next few days of the siege, British shore batteries took dead aim at the French ships, forcing them to move farther away from the city.
However, though Admiral d’Estaing rejected the idea of assaulting the British defenses, he had cannons unloaded from his ships and rowed to a landing place from which they began a bombardment of the city. Savannah itself, rather than the entrenched defenses, bore the brunt of this bombardment, which lasted from October 3 to 8. "The appearance of the town afforded a melancholy prospect, for there was hardly a house that had not been shot through,” wrote one British observer.
But the bombardment failed to have the desired effect. D'Estaing changed his mind, deciding he would lead an assault. He was motivated in part by the desire to finish the operation quickly, as scurvy and dysentery were becoming problems on his ships and some of his supplies were running low. While a traditional siege operation would likely have succeeded eventually, it would have taken longer than d'Estaing was prepared to stay.
Against the advice of many of his officers, d’Estaing launched the assault against the British position at 4 a.m. on October 9. Fog caused troops attacking the Spring Hill redoubt to get lost in the swamps, and it was nearly daylight when the attack actually got underway. The redoubt on the right side of the British works had been chosen by the French admiral in part because he believed it to be defended only by militia. In fact, it was defended by a combination of militia and Scotsmen from the 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser's Highlanders. The militia included skilled riflemen who easily picked-off the white-clad French troops during the assault. Admiral d'Estaing himself was twice wounded, and Polish cavalry officer Casimir Pulaski, fighting with the Americans, was mortally wounded. By the time the second wave of attackers arrived near the redoubt, the first wave was in complete disarray and the trenches below the redoubt were filled with bodies. Attacks intended as feints against other redoubts of the British position were easily repulsed.
The second assault column was commanded by the Swedish Count Curt von Stedingk, who managed to reach the last trench. He later wrote in his journal, "I had the pleasure of planting the American flag on the last trench, but the enemy renewed its attack and our people were annihilated by cross-fire.” He was forced back by overwhelming numbers of British troops, left with some 20 men, all of whom were wounded, including von Stedingk. He later wrote, "The moment of retreat with the cries of our dying comrades piercing my heart was the bitterest of my life.”
After an hour of carnage, d’Estaing ordered a retreat. On October 17, he and Benjamin Lincoln abandoned the siege.
Though often something of a footnote in Revolutionary War accounts, the Siege of Savannah was one of the bloodiest of the war. While Prevost claimed Franco-American losses at 1,000 to 1,200, the actual tally of 244 killed, nearly 600 wounded, and 120 taken prisoner was severe enough. British casualties were comparatively light: 40 killed, 63 wounded, and 52 missing. Sir Henry Clinton, the overall British commander, wrote, "I think that this is the greatest event that has happened the whole war.” Celebratory cannons were fired when the news reached London. Because of the siege's reputation as a famous British victory, Charles Dickens chose Savannah as the place for Joe Willet to be wounded (losing his arm) in the novel Barnaby Rudge.
Back to William Jasper. During the siege, the 29-year-old sergeant received his death wound while fastening to a parapet he had been able to reach the standard which had been presented to his regiment. He took a bullet in his side. His hold, however, never relaxed, and he bore the colors to a place of safety before he died.
The second story: During one of the festival presentations, an author was hissed when he happened to mention General William Tecumseh Sherman. This reaction was both unfair and understandable.
During the War for Southern Independence (as some in Georgia still call it), Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864. He did not plan to stay for long. There was still the Confederate army of General John Bell Hood in the area as well as cavalry leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, who could threaten his supply lines. In November, Sherman dispatched part of his force back to Nashville to deal with Hood while he cut free from his supply lines and headed south and east across Georgia. During the “March to the Sea,” his troops destroyed nearly everything in their path. Sherman’s intent was to wreck the morale of the South and bring the war to a swift end.
For nearly six weeks, nothing was heard from Sherman’s army. Finally, just before Christmas, word arrived that the Union army was outside Savannah. A Union officer reached the coast and found a Union warship that carried him to Washington, D.C., to personally deliver news of the success. Sherman wired President Lincoln with the message, “I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”
For this, the hissing was understandable. However, it was also unfair because Sherman did no damage to the city. It has been speculated that Savannah was spared because the city was too beautiful to burn. And some stories forward the notion that a Mason rode out to ask for leniency knowing that Sherman was also a member of that brotherhood. Another theory is that a deal had already been struck and approved by Sherman. Brigadier Gen. John W. Geary and the mayor of Savannah, Dr. Richard Arnold, had met and settled upon terms of surrender of the city in exchange for the promise by Geary to protect the city's citizens and their property. Geary telegraphed Sherman and the latter accepted the terms.
One group of scholars says we have the U.S. Department of the Treasury to thank for the decision not to ignite the city. Treasury agent A.G. Browne arrived in Savannah several days before Christmas 1864 for the purpose of laying claim to certain highlights of the spoils (including over 30,000 bales of cotton) captured by the Union. It was really his idea that Sherman should present the city as a gift to President Lincoln. Sherman agreed: Why destroy it if you are going to gift wrap it?
Ironically, Savannah was actually not spared. There was, in fact, a huge fire that destroyed as many as 200 buildings and killed several people on the night of January 27-28, 1865. However, this could not be blamed on General Sherman.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including the just-published The Last Hill, with Bob Drury. To purchase a copy or to pre-order Follow Me to Hell (to be published on April 4), please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com.