Savannah and the Multicultural American Revolution

The siege of Savannah lasted from September 16 to October 18, 1779, and essentially ended on October 9 when a joint French-American assault on a fortified British position ended in disaster, claiming among others, the Polish general Casimir Pulaski.  The French forces included some 500 Haitian volunteers from Saint-Domingue.  A monument in Savannah memorializes this contribution.

Though still under French authority at this time, the Les Chasseurs Volontaires de Saint Domingue were free men who fought on the American side.  It provides a contrast to the ambivalence, if not original hostility, of Washington to allowing slaves or freed slaves to fight in the Continental Army.l

Nathanael Greene Monument

So this is where Nathanael Greene, brilliant, self-taught Revolutionary War General, spends eternity, his ashes below the monument to him in Johnson Square, Savannah, Georgia.  This is the man who said: "We fight, get beaten, rise, and fight again."

Greene settled in Georgia after the war, about fourteen miles north of Savannah.  He died suddenly of sunstroke at the age of 43.

The plaque on this memorial states: "General Greene's remains were originally interred in the burial ground now known as Colonial Cemetery. His exact resting place was a matter of doubt and speculation for many years. The remains of the famed Revolutionary hero were found in the Graham vault in 1901, and were reinterred beneath this monument the following year."

I find this spot compelling.  One of the themes of this blog has been the force of place.  Here, we are in the physical proximity of the one of the greatest military figures of the Revolution, the man Washington would have had succeed him were he killed. 

Sergeant William Jasper and the Man of Action

One of the most gallant soldiers of the American Revolution was Sergeant William Jasper; remarkably, he has two memorials to him in Savannah, more than Casimir Pulaski and more than General Nathanael Greene.  One, in Madison Square, shows him holding a flag; the other, surrounded by interstate and local highways, is a more classical monument

His birthdate unconfirmed (some sources put 1750, another 1756), there is no doubt as to his death--October 9, 1779, during the failed assault by the Americans at the besieged British position at the Battle of Savannah.  At the Battle of Sullivan's Island, he retrieved a fallen flag of the 2nd South Carolina while exposed to enemy fire and restored it to its prominent position, proclaiming "God Save Liberty and my Country forever!" He successfully conducted a variety of raids that resulted in British prisoners.  Offered a lieutenant's commission, he turned it down, saying "Were I made an officer, my comrades would be constantly blushing for my ignorance, and I should be unhappy feeling my own inferiority.  I have no ambition for higher rank than that of a Sergeant."

While it is hard to admire foolhardiness with the consciousness of today, and with Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est ringing in our ears, it is nonetheless possible to think about Jasper as a man who put his "money where his mouth was," who acted and did not just talk, and who did so with a marked humility that is completely absent from most public figures today.