As the weather warmed, Elijah began feeling better and he decided to return to his men on the Carolina side of the Savannah River before Easter Sunday. The first information he received was that Dunlap had been assigned to conduct a pillaging operation against any Whigs who were still operating against the British. He did not know Dunlap’s specific destination. After a few days with his men, Clarke decided to go to General Pickens’s headquarters to thank him for his hospitality, report that he was ready for duty, and to suggest that the Georgia militia might hunt down Dunlap and his dragoons.

When Clarke arrived he found Pickens fuming with anger and despair. Before Clarke could utter a word, the general shouted at him, “The son of a bitch has burned my house and everything else I own!”

His overseer had reported to him that morning that Dunlap had come to the plantation, demanded Clarke’s surrender, and had become enraged when informed that he had departed. He permitted his dragoons to loot the buildings and then ordered that everything be burned to the ground. Despite his best efforts to reassure Clarke that he did not hold him responsible, both men knew that the destruction was a result of the personal animosity between Thomas Brown and Elijah Clarke.

Certain that Dunlap would be returning to Augusta to report to Brown, Clarke sent pickets to monitor all the trails and soon learned that Dunlap and his men were encamped at Beattie’s Mill. Shortly before daybreak, Clarke’s militia surrounded the mill house and began steadily firing at their quarry. At about noon, a white flag appeared, and Dunlap shouted that thirty-four of his men were dead and he and the others were ready to surrender. When they walked out into the open and threw their weapons on the ground, Clarke had them lined up alongside the mill house and then ordered that they all be executed. Although Clarke was still not able to engage in hand-to-hand combat, he had directed the fight from his saddle, and both rebels and loyalists equated him with the massacre. From then on, loyalists understood that a “Georgia parole” meant death.

CHAPTER 51

A Victory at Augusta

JUNE 1781

As the Continental and British armies maneuvered farther north, near Virginia, the Georgia militia leaders realized that their fighting should now be concentrated nearer their own homes, and the scattered groups of militiamen began to reestablish a strong camp in the relatively secure area of the Hornet’s Nest. With their families safe in the Watauga Valley, the defense of their own area would be much easier. Cornwallis had pulled all available men to support his move against Greene, and Elijah Clarke was convinced that Augusta was vulnerable if he could marshal enough support. He sent James Jackson, accompanied by Ethan Pratt, to present his proposal to General Greene.