For the immediate protection of Sunbury a fort was built just below the town upon the point where the high ground ended and the wide impracticable marshes between the main and Bermuda island commenced.
A small defensive work may have existed here at an earlier date. The Record Book of Midway Church discloses the fact that in 1756 a letter was received from the honorable Jonathan Bryan,—one of his Majesty’s council for the Colony,—conveying the intelligence that the Indians were much incensed at several of their people having been killed by some settlers on the Great Ogeechee river in a dispute about cattle, and advising the Midway congregation, with expedition, to construct a fort for their protection. “People,” continues the Journal, “are very much alarmed with the news, and consultations were immediately had about the building and place for a fort, and it was determined by a majority that it should be at Captain Mark Carr’s, low down, and upon the river near the sound, at about seven or eight miles distance from the nearest of the settlement of the Society, which accordingly was begun on the 20th September, 1756.”[194]
On the 11th of July following, apprehending an attack from a French privateer, the Midway people were summoned to Sunbury, where they “raised a couple of batteries and made carriages for eight small cannon which were at the place.” These were probably nothing more than field works thrown up on the bluff just in front of the town. It is to these little forts that Governor Ellis alluded when, upon his second tour of inspection through the southern portion of the Province, he “was pleased to observe that the inhabitants of the Midway District had enclosed their church within a defence, and had erected a battery of eight guns at Sunbury in a position to command the river.”[195]
The State of Georgia being under consideration, it was resolved by Congress, on the 5th of July, 1776, to raise two battalions (one of them to consist of riflemen) to serve in Georgia; that blank commissions be sent to the Convention of Georgia to be filled up with the names of such persons as the Convention should deem proper; that the Legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina be recommended to allow recruits for these battalions to be enlisted in their several States; that four galleys be built for the defense of the sea-coast, and that two artillery companies, of fifty men each, be enlisted to garrison two forts which the State was to erect at Savannah and Sunbury.[196]
It may, we presume, be safely asserted that the heavy earthwork on Midway river, just south of Sunbury, was laid out and erected about the period of the commencement of the Revolutionary war. If any prior defense there existed, it was so modified and enlarged as completely to lose its identity.
The names of those who were specially charged with the construction of this fort have not been perpetuated, but it lives in tradition that the planters of Bermuda island and of the Midway District, and the citizens of Sunbury contributed mainly to its erection. It was built chiefly by slave labor, and was armed with such cannon as could be procured on the spot, or obtained elsewhere.[197] That its armament was by no means inconsiderable will be conceded when it is remembered that twenty-five pieces of ordnance were surrendered by Major Lane when he yielded the ownership of this work to Colonel A. Prevost. These guns, however, were small, consisting of 4, 6, 9, 12, and 18-pounders, with perhaps one or two 24-pounders. It was called by the Americans, Fort Morris;[198] but, upon its capture by Colonel Prevost, its name was by him changed to Fort George.
At the inception of the Revolutionary war the coast defenses of Georgia were in a most pitiable and dilapidated condition. All her forts were in ruins, or nearly so. On the 20th of September, 1773, Sir James Wright,—who makes no mention of any defensive work at Sunbury,—reports Fort George on Cockspur island, which was built in 1762 of mud walls faced with palmetto logs, with a caponiere inside to serve for officers’ apartments, as “almost in ruins, and garrisoned only by an officer and three men, just to make signals, &c.” Fort Halifax, within the town of Savannah, constructed in 1759 and 1760, and made of plank filled in with earth, with the exception of two of its caponieres, was totally down and unfit for use. Fort Frederick, at Frederica, erected by General Oglethorpe when his regiment was stationed there, had been without a garrison for upwards of eight years, and although some of its tabby walls remained, the entire structure was fast passing into decay. Fort Augusta, in the town of Augusta, made of three-inch plank, had been neglected since 1767 and was rotten in every part. Fort Barrington on the Alatamaha river was in like condition. Of the fort at New Ebenezer, of Fort William on the southern extremity of Cumberland island, of Fort Argyle, and of the other minor defenses erected in the early days of the Colony, scarce a vestige remained.
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