“We’re goin’ home. I ain’t never goin’ to fight ag’in under a politician or an officer without guts. I believe me and Dooly and Twiggs together can hold on to at least two hundred men that will keep on fightin’, and I don’t believe any Redcoats or Burnfoot’s Rangers can tangle with us in our own hills and swamps.”

What was left of a Georgia government convened in Augusta to face the prospect of a total and permanent loss of their state to the British. An executive council condemned General Howe, expressed confidence that recently appointed General Benjamin Lincoln would serve well as commander of the Southern Department of the United States, adopted a site in Wilkes County as the state capital, and made other rudimentary decisions. In reconstituting the state’s defenses, they commissioned Clarke as colonel, and both Twiggs and Dooly as lieutenant colonels, with the militia in Burke and Wilkes counties under their command.

The British found little opposition in the state. Colonel Campbell’s troops waited a month and then pushed all the way up the Savannah River to Augusta without the loss of a single soldier. British dragoons were ordered to scour the countryside within thirty miles of the river to confiscate as many supplies as possible and to enforce loyalty to the crown. Campbell issued a stern and binding order that the Quaker settlement be spared as an example of benevolence, and expressed confidence that the Indians and the loyalists in the backcountry of Georgia and South Carolina would rally to the British flag if they were treated well and that all opposition to the king’s forces would disappear.

More than 1,300 new loyalists came out of the farms and woods of north Georgia and swore allegiance to the king, and were formed into twenty militia companies for the protection of British-held Georgia from South Carolina raids. For all practical purposes, there were now only twelve states. British officials honored Colonel Campbell as the first military commander to have “taken a stripe and star from the rebel flag of Congress.” It seemed obvious that the Redcoats would soon take Charles Town and control South Carolina, and the British commanders were confident that only a mopping-up exercise would be necessary to assure a solid base for military moves northward into North Carolina and Virginia.

They considered themselves to be embarked on the final stages of the war.

CHAPTER 35

The Hornet’s Nest

1779

Ethan Pratt had seen the Quakers, Morrises, and many of his other neighbors swear allegiance to the crown, believing that the war was over and that the Declaration of Independence had been in vain. Along with a few other families along the more remote frontier, the Pratts still tried to avoid an alignment with either Whigs or Tories.