The Republicans were exceedingly indignant; and when, a day or two afterward, it was known that Captain Maitland had arrived at Tybee Island, at the mouth of the Savannah, with thirteen thousand pounds of powder and other articles for the British and Indians, it was determined to seize the vessel. The Georgia Assembly was then in session. ** The leading Whigs approved of the enterprise, and on the night of the tenth of July, thirty volunteers, under Commodore Bowen and Colonel Joseph Habersham, embarked in two boats, took possession of the ship, discharged the crew, and placed the powder in the magazine in Savannah, except five thousand pounds, which they sent to the army then investing Boston, under General Washington. ***
The Indian hostilities, which occurred at this time on the western Miles frontiers, we have considered in preceding chapters.
The spirit of resistance waxed stronger and stronger during the autumn of 1775. In January, 1776, it assumed a form of strength and determination hitherto unknown in Georgia. On the eighteenth of that month, Colonel Joseph Habersham, **** who was a member of the Assembly, raised a party of volunteers, took Governor Wright a prisoner, and paroled him to his own house, (v) before which a sentinel was placed, and forbid all intercourse between him and persons inimical to the Republican cause. On the night of the eleventh of February,1776 during a storm, the governor escaped from a back window of his house, with John Muloyne, and went down the river five miles, to Bonaventure, the residence of that gentleman. There a boat and crew were waiting for him, and he was conveyed to Tybec Sound, and took shelter on board the armed ship Scarborough.
Royal rule had now actually ceased
* The Secret Committee at Charleston, who intercepted this letter, placed another in the cover, with Governor Wright's name counterfeited, and sent it on to Gage. In that letter they said (as if Governor Wright was penning it), "I have wrote for troops to awe the people, but now there is no occasion for sending them, for the people are again come to some order." Gage was thus misled.