While attempting to encircle Charles Town with his main army, General Greene decided that James Jackson should begin marshaling additional Georgia troops and then move downriver from Ebenezer to plan for a future effort to take Savannah. Jackson still had only a few troops and minimal supplies, while British General Alured Clarke defended the city with seven hundred loyalist militia, two hundred Hessians, and one hundred British troops, assisted by four hundred slaves, some provided with weapons. Brown and his five hundred Rangers were ordered to help defend the outskirts of Savannah, to keep the city supplied with food, and to harass rebels wherever possible. It was obvious that, with both their forces outside Savannah, the primary active conflict would be between Brown and Jackson. Having been frustrated in his plan to kill the Ranger commander in Augusta, Ethan saw this as a special opportunity to realize his goal.

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In November 1781, after receiving a dispatch from General Nathanael Greene, Lieutenant Colonel Jackson assembled his key officers and enlisted leaders to share the news. Captain Ethan Pratt was pleased to have been given a preview of the general’s report. Referring frequently to the message in his hand, Jackson reported that the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse had arrived in the Chesapeake Bay in September, had fought off a British naval force from New York, and then landed 3,500 troops, who reported to Lafayette. Within two weeks, the allied forces surrounded Yorktown and began an intense bombardment. Without support from the sea and facing a combined force of sixteen thousand French and Americans, Cornwallis and his seven thousand men had surrendered on October 19, 1781.

The Georgia troops cheered when they received this information, but Jackson cautioned them that the British still held New York, and they all knew that the war was not over in South Carolina or Georgia, where the British controlled the port cities.

General Greene felt that the battles that had been fought by him and others in the south were crucial in the final defeat of Cornwallis and his British army. To a friend, he wrote, “We have been beating the bush, throughout the Carolinas and Georgia, and General Washington has come to catch the bird.” The commander in chief sent a message to his Quaker general in South Carolina: “General Washington wishes not only from his personal regard to General Greene, but from principles of generosity and justice to see him crowned with those laurels which from his unparalleled exertions he so richly deserves.”

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Thomas Brown felt constrained to explain the defeat at Yorktown, and sent this report to Governor Tonyn:

Your Excellency: