By late 1778, the war in the North had stalled, and the British shifted their focus south, betting that Georgia's smaller population and large Loyalist sympathies would make it an easier target than Boston or New York had been. They were right, at first. A force under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell took Savannah from Major General Robert Howe's badly outnumbered garrison in a single afternoon. Ten months later, Benjamin Lincoln and a French fleet under the Comte d'Estaing tried to take it back, and the attempt became one of the costliest defeats of the war. The full chain of letters reporting both battles to Washington survives at Founders Online.
Archibald Campbell landed roughly 3,000 British troops below Savannah on December 29, 1778. Robert Howe had perhaps 850 Continentals and militia to defend the city, and positioned them on the high ground in front of it. Campbell found a path through a swamp Howe had judged impassable and turned his flank, forcing a retreat that cost the Americans 453 men captured against just 26 British casualties. Howe wrote his own account of the defeat the very next day, from a camp four miles outside the city, and Benjamin Lincoln forwarded it to Washington within the week.
Yesterday about three o'clock in the afternoon we were attacked in great force by the enemy. I was induced to throw myself between them and the Town of Savannah, not only to preserve the Town till reinforcements came up, but to keep out of their possession, if possible, a considerable quantity of provision and other stores, the property of the United States, and which for want of boats it had been out of my power to have removed. The situation I chose was the most defensible I could find.
Lincoln's covering letter to Washington, written from Purrysburg on the Savannah River, also preserved a piece of British propaganda distributed in the city after its capture: a proclamation issued in Campbell's name promising Georgia's residents protection from what it called the "bloody persecutions" of their own Congress, and inviting them to "rescue their friend from oppression, themselves from slavery" by joining the king's forces.
Ten months later, Admiral d'Estaing's fleet, fresh from capturing Grenada in the Caribbean, sailed unexpectedly for the Georgia coast in response to Lincoln's appeal. Lincoln wrote excitedly to Congress on September 5, 1779, the moment the French fleet appeared offshore.
I have the pleasure to congratulate Congress on the arrival of Count D'Estaing's Fleet off Savannah, but am sorry to inform them that his stay on this coast will be but short, and the aid we can afford him very inconsiderable.
D'Estaing's haste, driven by his own concern for hurricane season and his ships' exposure on an open coast, shaped everything that followed. After a brief and ineffective bombardment of the city failed to force a surrender, he pushed for an immediate assault rather than a longer, more careful siege. Lincoln agreed. The attack went in before dawn on October 9, against British defenses that, thanks to information from American deserters, were fully prepared and waiting.
News traveled slowly enough that, more than two weeks after the failed assault, Washington was still writing to Lincoln as though the operation against Savannah was ongoing or recently successful. His October 26 letter, sent from his headquarters in the North, discusses routine training matters and contains no hint that the battle had already been lost on October 9.
D'Estaing returned to France soon after, having lost both the battle and much of the goodwill the alliance had built since 1778. Lincoln retreated to Charleston with what remained of his army. Savannah stayed in British hands until July 1782, and the defeat opened the door for the British campaign against Charleston itself the following spring, a siege this archive covers separately.
If you learned something new or just enjoyed the content, please share it and follow along on X and Substack.