While studying the American Revolution, you'll hear about the battles at
Lexington and Saratoga and Bunker Hill. But the bloodiest single hour in the
American Revolutionary War happened right here in Georgia. In that hour there
was great tragedy and great heroism.
*Battlefield Whistle and Drum Music*
September 1779, the city of Savannah. Inside the city there are 2,000 British
redcoats trying to keep the port city from the American patriots. The Americans
want the city back. With their allies, the French, they have surrounded the town
with an army of men and canons. For three weeks, the Allies fire on the city trying
to convince the British to surrender.
Years ago it was much more common to
surround a town with a bunch of cannon and just basically try and bombard it
out of existence and make the, uh, starve the defenders out by cutting them off
and just putting him under a cannonball attack. Which they did something like
it's estimated a thousand cannonballs came roaring into the little town of
Savannah. Nearly every house was hit. Now a cannon fire was very very inaccurate
back then and they didn't have explosive shots. They just had solid shots, which
just tore holes in things.
It didn't work.
The cannonballs killed a number of
women and children, but only one British soldier. So, on the morning of October 9th,
the Americans and the French decided to attack.
This is Martin Luther King jr. Boulevard on the west side of Savannah, but 200
years ago it was a wilderness and on the edge of one sloping field called Spring
Hill the British had built a mound of dirt and logs called a redoubt. The
Spring Hill redoubt that's where the Patriot Army would make their charge.
*Yelling and Gunfire*
The attack was supposed to be a surprise but a deserter had tipped off the British
that the attack was coming. It was supposed to begin in the dark but by the
time the Allies, the French, and the Americans found their way through the
marshes the sun was already up. The British were supposed to be greatly
outnumbered but because the Allies took so long to get organized that morning
the British had time to bring in reinforcements.
And every minute the
battle lasted, there were more British muskets on this side and you had the
Spring Hill redoubt with infantrymen in artillery position next to. It in the
Musgrove Creek over in this direction, there was a galley and it's cannons, a
galley is a small ship. Its cannons could fire down the creek and the troops are
attacking in lines like this and that ships cannon fires just sweeping down
those lines. So they were, that's called in filleted, you know, and it means you
just caught him on the edge and you can tumble five or six guys with one shot.
And that was happening, so the attack was the attackers were at a tremendous
disadvantage. Their advantage of surprise was gone. The advantage of darkness was
gone. The advantage of superior numbers was gone, and but they kept plugging at it.
And they kept dying.
The leader of the Polish cavalry helping the Americans,
General Casimir Pulaski, was shot in the side and later died. The commander of the
French forces, Count D'Estaing was wounded twice and there was another hero
that morning, Sergeant William Jasper from South Carolina. He charged forward
toward the British lines carrying the flag of his regiment.
He's a hero in my
eyes. The way I see it, any man who is willing to put his life on the line, not
just on the line but just literally know that he's going to die.
I mean he's looking at a thousand muskets firing at him and he sees a point
that he wants to get and once he gets to that point his sole object is to plant
that flag and to prove to the world that his regiment lives and his ideals live.
He doesn't care what happens to him and he gets to that point and he does it and
he's shot down in the midst of doing that act. A greater hero doesn't live.
*Gunfire*
The fighting was desperate and heroic. There's one story about a company of
grenadiers fighting on the side of the Patriots.
Their commander was an Irishman named Arthur Dylan.
So Arthur Dylan says a gold
coin to the first man who gets on top of that earth work and he says come on and
nobody moves and he's going what are you scoundrels and cowards and the
grenadiers start sergeant steps out and says you insult us with your gold. It is
our duty to attack. And then the grenadiers sergeant said follow me and
they all went, about a hundred and forty men went up, less than half came back. And
Less than half?
Less than half.
The British lost fifty five men but there were over 750 allied
casualties. Men either killed or wounded and even more would have died, hundreds
more, in fact the whole Patriot Army might well have been captured had it not
been for another regiment of brave men.
This is a diorama of the battle on
display at the Savannah History Museum. The miniatures are only two and a half
inches tall, all them painted by Dr. Preston Russell. The job took thousands
of hours. Dr. Russell practices medicine in Savannah but the passion in his life
is history. He reads and writes about history and he paints miniature soldiers
with incredible accuracy and detail and these are our heroes. Black soldiers
called Chesores. They came from an island in the Caribbean we now call
Haiti and during the battle 800 of them held off the bridge so the Patriot arm,
what was left of it, could get away.
And as the Americans and the French were were
retreating and still taking horrible loss then the British decided to
out of their trenches and just completely wipe them out with bayonets.
They were just going to track them down and just kill them all where they
whatever was left.
Imagine a battlefield now where the the Colonials are now
laying sprawled all over the battlefield, blood everywhere. They're crawling and
they're trying to get away. Their heroes have been shot down, Casimir Pulaski and
William Jasper. Their leaders are now dead, dying, or wounded all over the
battlefield and the British who have suffered very little casualties to this
point are now, the command is given "fix bayonets".
And an all-out massacre was
about to ensue as they forced their way across but they didn't know who was
waiting in the reserve. The Chesores.
They were highly polished highly
disciplined black soldiers and now was their their moment in glory, now was
their opportunity to prove what type of men that they were, and they stood
shoulder-to-shoulder firing their smoothbore muskets into the British
volley after volley after volley after volley, constantly reloading taking hits
also but standing fast not running in between because they knew what their
mission was at that point. They knew that if they fell apart, they knew that if
they ran out the battlefield, they knew that the Allies would suffer heavier
casualties, more loss of life than what they had suffered at that point and they
knew that their pride and they knew that because they were men of color they had
to make their stand right there and that's exactly what they did.
*Gunfire*
It was one battle in a long war. We lost the battle, we won the war, and because
all of those men and women fought and died, we won the right to say to the
world, call us now America. A free nation
no longer a colony, no longer subject to a king,
finally and from now on we will govern ourselves.
*End Screen Music*