Briar Creek, Georgia

views updated

Briar Creek, Georgia

BRIAR CREEK, GEORGIA. 3 March 1779. As recruits flocked to General Benjamin Lincoln's camp at Purysburg, South Carolina, he made preparations to recover Georgia. Having already posted General Andrew Williamson across the Savannah River from Augusta with one thousand men, he ordered General John Ashe to join him with his fourteen hundred North Carolina militia and Colonel Samuel Elbert's one hundred Georgia Continentals. Ashe reached Williamson's post on the evening of 13 February, and the British evacuated Augusta that night. Crossing into Georgia on the 25th, Ashe descended the Savannah. At Briar Creek, on the morning of Saturday, 27 February, he found the bridge demolished; the creek in this area, close to its junction with the Savannah, ran through a deep swamp about three miles wide.

Ashe ordered the bridge rebuilt and also started work on a road to the Savannah so that General Griffith Rutherford and his North Carolina militia could reinforce him from Mathew's Bluff, South Carolina, about five miles to the east. However, his troops moved very slowly on these preparations.

Colonel Archibald Campbell interrupted his retreat at Hudson's Ferry, a fortified British outpost fifteen miles south of Briar Creek. General Augustine Prevost received intelligence that Ashe was stalled at Briar Creek and sent reinforcements to Hudson's Ferry with orders for a counterstroke to check the rebel advance. The plan was for Major William Macpherson's First Battalion of the Seventy-first Regiment, with a reinforcement of Loyalist militia and two cannon, to occupy the south bank of Briar Creek as a diversion. The general's younger brother, Lieutenant Mark Prevost, would execute a wide circuit westward and attack the American rear with his Second Battalion of the Seventy-first, Captain Sir James Baird's light infantry, three companies from the Sixtieth Regiment, a troop of mounted Loyalists, and 150 militia infantry—about 900 in all.

The American force against whom this surprise attack was directed comprised the brigade of General David Bryant, the light infantry of Lieutenant William Lytle, Colonel Elbert's Georgia Continentals, three small cannon, and two hundred mounted Georgia militia under Colonel Leonard Marbury. The latter unit was on Briar Creek when Ashe's troops arrived from the north.

In a remarkable fifty-mile march, Lieutenant Colonel Prevost crossed Briar Creek fifteen miles above the enemy camp and was only eight miles to its rear when detected. Marbury's horsemen had picked up the enemy movement on the afternoon of 1 March, but the messenger was intercepted before he reached the American commander. Backed up against the swamp and with the bridge not yet finished, Ashe was faced with annihilation; yet he took no steps to meet the attack other than to form his troops in column with the Continentals out front.

The British deployed at a range of 150 yards. Elbert's regulars advanced on the British and fired two or three volleys before shifting left to mask the fire of the advancing New Bern Regiment. The Edenton Regiment also got off course and moved right so that a gap was created in the North Carolina militia line of battle. When the British capitalized on this error and rushed into the gap with fixed bayonets, the Halifax Regiment, on the left, broke without firing a shot, most throwing down their guns, and panic quickly spread through the other militia units. The Continentals held for some time but were finally surrounded by the British; Elbert and many of his men were captured. Ashe tried to rally his fleeing men, but they were too fast for him. The militia headed for the swamps and the Savannah River where many drowned, though large numbers escaped by swimming or crossing on crowded rafts.

In a brilliant little operation that restored their hold on Georgia, the British suffered only five killed and eleven wounded, despite the claims of Ebert and Perkins to having many marksmen in their ranks and having fired several volleys. The Americans lost between 150 and 200 killed or drowned and over 200 captured. Most of the surviving militia, who abandoned their guns and other military stores for the British to claim, did not stop running until they reached their homes. After the battle the British counted more than five hundred captured muskets.

The Patriots howled for Ashe's hide. He demanded a court-martial, which cleared him of cowardice but censured him for failing to take proper military precautions. Briar Creek was a staggering defeat that cost the Patriots heavily, setting the stage for the even greater catastrophe at Charleston the following year. As Page Smith has written, "The simple moral to be drawn from the Briar Creek disaster was that there is no real substitute for military training and experience" (A New Age, vol. 2, p. 1316).