White House, a mile and a half west of the town. The Indians reached it first, and were joined by a company of King's Rangers, under Captain Johnson. Ignorant of the approach of other parties, Brown and Grierson went to the aid of Johnson and the Indians. While absent, the few men left in garrison were surprised by Clark and M'Call, and Forts Cornwallis and Grierson fell into their hands. A guard was left to take charge of the prisoners and effects in the fort, and Clark, with the remainder, hastened to the assistance of Taylor. Brown and Grierson, perceiving their peril, took shelter in the White House. The Americans tried in vain to dislodge them. A desultory fire was kept up from eleven o'clock in the morning until dark, when hostilities ceased. During the night the besieged cast up a slight breast-work around the house, made loop-holes in the building for musketry, and thus materially strengthened their position. Early in the morning,Sept. 15 Clark ordered field-pieces to be brought from Grierson's redoubt, to be placed in a position to cannonade the White House. They were of little service, for Captain Martin, of South Carolina, the only artillerist among the besiegers, was killed soon after the pieces were brought to bear upon the building.
No impression was made upon the enemy during the fifteenth. On that morning, before daylight, the Americans drove a body of Indians from the river bank, and thus cut off the supply of water for those in the house. Colonel Brown and others had been severely wounded, and now suffered great agony from thirst. On the night of the fifteenth, fifty Cherokee Indians, well armed, crossed the river to re-enforce Brown, but were soon repulsed. Little was done on the sixteenth, and on the seventeenth Clark summoned Brown to surrender. He promptly refused; for, having sent a messenger to Colonel Cruger at Ninety-Six, on the morning when the Americans appeared before Augusta, Brown confidently expected relief from that quarter. Nor was he disappointed. On the night of the seventeenth, Clark's scouts informed him of the approach of Colonel Cruger with five hundred British regulars and Loyalists, and on the morning of the eighteenth this force appeared upon the opposite side of the river. Clark's little army was greatly diminished by the loss of men who had been killed and wounded, and the desertion of many with plunder found in the forts. At ten o'clock he raised the siege, and departed toward the mountains. The American loss on this occasion was about sixty killed and wounded; that of the British is not known. Twenty of the Indians were killed. Captain Ashby and twenty-eight others were made prisoners. Upon these Brown and his Indian allies glutted their thirst for revenge. Captain Ashby and twelve of the wounded were hanged upon the stair-way of the White House, so that the commandant might have the satisfaction of seeing their sufferings. Others were given up to the Indians to torture, scalp, and slay. Terrible were the demoniac acts at Augusta on that beautiful autumnal day, when the white and the red savage contended for the meed of cruelty!
The British remained in possession of Augusta until the spring and summer of 1781, when their repose was disturbed. After the battle at Guilford Court House, and when the determination of Greene to march into South Carolina was made known, Clark and M'Call proceeded to co-operate with him by annoying the British posts in Georgia. M'Call soon afterward died of the small-pox, and Clark suffered from the same disease. After his recovery, he, with several other partisans, were actively engaged at various points between Savannah and Augusta, and had frequent skirmishes with the British and Tory scouts. In an engagement near Coosawhatchie, in Beaufort District, South Carolina, where Colonel Brown then commanded, the Americans were defeated; and several who were taken prisoners were hanged, and their bodies given to the Indians to scalp and otherwise, mutilate. *
* Among the prisoners taken on this occasion was a young man named M'Koy, the son of a widow, who, with her family, had fled from Darien, in Georgia, into South Carolina. She went to Brown and implored the life of her son, who was only seventeen years of age. The miscreant's heart was unmoved, and the lad was not only hanged, but his body was delivered to the Indians to mutilate by scalping and otherwise. All this occurred in the presence of the mother. Afterward, when Brown, as a prisoner, passed where Mrs. M'Koy resided, she called to his remembrance his cruelty, and said, "As you are now a prisoner to the leaders of my country, for the present I lay aside all thoughts of revenge, but if you resume your sword, I will go five hundred miles to demand satisfaction at the point of it for the murder of my son.—See M'Call's Georgia, ii., 365; Garden's Anecdotes.
Siege of Augusta.—Colonel Pickens.
This was Brown's common practice, and made his name as hateful at the South as that of "Bloody Bill Cunningham."
On the sixteenth of April,1781 the Georgia militia, under Colonels Williams, Baker, and Hammond, Major James Jackson (afterward governor of the state), and other officers, assembled near Augusta, and placed the garrison in a state of siege. Williams, who had the general command during Clark's sickness, encamped within twelve hundred yards of Forts Cornwallis and Grierson, and fortified his camp.
