Key figures: Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, Major General Robert Howe, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, Brigadier General Augustine Prevost, Captain Sir James Baird, Quamino Dolly
Summary
The Capture of Savannah, fought on December 29, 1778, was the first major engagement of the British “southern strategy” of the American Revolutionary War. A seaborne expedition of roughly 3,000 troops under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, dispatched from New York by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton, landed below Savannah and overwhelmed the small American garrison of about 850 Continentals and Georgia militia commanded by Major General Robert Howe. Guided through a wooded swamp by an enslaved man named Quamino Dolly, a British column turned the American right flank while the main force attacked from the front, routing Howe’s line in a single day. The fall of Savannah — Georgia’s largest city and its principal port — gave Britain a secure foothold in the South from which it would attempt to roll up the southern colonies one by one over the following two years.
Background and Context
The Turn to the South
By late 1778 the war in the northern theatre had settled into a stalemate. The French entry into the war earlier that year had transformed the conflict into a global one, forcing Britain to disperse its strength to defend the West Indies and other possessions and abandoning any realistic hope of a decisive victory in the north. British strategists increasingly looked south, where they believed Loyalist sentiment ran strong and where a foothold on the Atlantic seaboard could be supplied by sea and supported from British East Florida. Georgia — the youngest, least populous, and most exposed of the rebellious colonies — was chosen as the point of attack.
In November 1778 Sir Henry Clinton ordered Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of the 71st Regiment of Foot to embark a force at New York and sail for Georgia, coordinating with Brigadier General Augustine Prevost, who was to march north from St. Augustine in East Florida. Campbell’s command comprised roughly 3,000 men — British regulars of the 71st (Fraser’s Highlanders), Hessian troops, and Loyalist provincial units including the New York Volunteers.
The American Position
The Southern Department was thinly held. Major General Robert Howe, a North Carolinian commanding Continental forces in the South, could muster only about 850 effective men — a mix of Continental regulars and largely untrained Georgia and South Carolina militia — with which to defend Savannah. Aware that his force was badly outnumbered, Howe nonetheless resolved to make a stand outside the town rather than abandon it without a fight, positioning his troops along the road leading up from the British landing site with the militia posted on his right.
The Battle
The Landing
Campbell’s transports reached the mouth of the Savannah River in late December and, on December 29, 1778, the troops came ashore at Girardeau’s plantation, a rice landing a short distance below the town. A small American outpost contesting the landing was quickly driven off, and Campbell advanced toward Howe’s main line drawn up before Savannah.
The Flanking March
The decisive stroke came from local knowledge. An enslaved man named Quamino Dolly, from the estate of the former royal governor Sir James Wright, offered to lead the British through a wooded swamp that ran around the American right. Campbell detached a column of light infantry and New York Volunteers under Captain Sir James Baird to follow the path while he demonstrated against the American front. Baird’s men emerged in the rear of the American line near the town’s barracks, and Campbell’s main body attacked simultaneously. Caught between the two forces, Howe’s line collapsed almost at once.
Rout and Casualties
The American retreat quickly turned into a rout. Soldiers fled through Savannah and across the marshy ground toward the causeway leading to South Carolina; a number drowned attempting to cross Musgrove Creek. The engagement was extraordinarily lopsided: British losses amounted to roughly 7 killed and 19 wounded, while the Americans lost about 83 killed, 11 wounded, and 453 captured, together with the town’s cannon, military stores, and several vessels in the harbour. In a single afternoon Britain had taken Georgia’s capital at almost no cost.
Aftermath
The Conquest of Georgia
The capture of Savannah was the opening move of a campaign that briefly reversed the course of the war in the South. Prevost’s force arrived from Florida in January 1779 and took the fort at Sunbury, and Campbell then marched up the Savannah River to occupy Augusta. With the principal towns in hand, the British restored royal civil government in Georgia — the only rebellious colony in which the Crown succeeded in doing so — and Sir James Wright resumed his post as governor in July 1779.
The Southern Strategy and the Siege of 1779
Savannah became the base from which Britain prosecuted the southern campaigns of 1779–1781, culminating in the capture of Charleston in 1780. It also became a target in its own right: in the autumn of 1779 a combined Franco-American army under Major General Benjamin Lincoln and Admiral Comte d’Estaing laid siege to the town and, on October 9, 1779, launched a costly assault that failed to retake it. Robert Howe, blamed for the loss of the city, was later tried by court-martial and acquitted, but he was superseded in the southern command by Lincoln. The ease of Savannah’s fall confirmed the British in their conviction that the South could be won, a belief that shaped their strategy until the disaster at Yorktown.
See Also
- The Military Turning Point of 1778 — the broader shift in the war of which the turn south at year’s end was the closing act
- Treaty of Alliance (France–United States) — the French entry into the war that pushed Britain to disperse its forces and look south
- Comte d’Estaing — the French admiral who would help besiege Savannah in the failed Franco-American assault of October 1779
- St. Lucia Campaign — the concurrent December 1778 Caribbean campaign that reflected the same dispersal of British effort after French entry
- Battle of Rhode Island — the inconclusive northern operation whose stalemate helped turn British attention toward the southern colonies
Sources
- Capture of Savannah — Wikipedia
- The Capture of Savannah — American Battlefield Trust
- Capture of Savannah (1778) — Encyclopædia Britannica