Revolutionary

James Jackson was a pugnacious politician with a fiery temper. Born in England in 1756, he came to Savannah as a teen and fought in the American Revolution. Jackson served in the first Congress under the new U.S. Constitution, and supported Thomas Jefferson’s fledgling Democratic-Republicans against Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists. Jackson was in the U.S. Senate […]

As first president, George Washington was the living symbol of the independent United States. After his inauguration, he embarked on a grand tour designed to cement allegiance to the fledgling American nation. He toured the New England states first and then traveled south. In May 1791, Washington came to Georgia for the first and only […]

Lyman Hall was an ordained minister, a doctor and one of three Georgians to sign the Declaration of Independence, quite a resume for a man born in Connecticut in 1747. Hall was from old New England stock and graduated from Yale. He abandoned the congregational ministry for medicine and moved South, eventually settling in Georgia […]

The U.S. Constitution has always been contentious. Our sacred charter was born in controversy and remains so to this day. Georgia elected six delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Only four went. And only two—Abraham Baldwin and William Few—signed the final document. The convention, chaired by George Washington, had […]

He was the other signer from Georgia of the U.S. Constitution. William Few was born in 1748 in Maryland and moved to Richmond County near Augusta in the 1770s. Few was an active Patriot during the American Revolution. He served in the military, in the state legislature, and as a delegate to the 1777 Georgia […]

Samuel Elbert had every reason to support the British during the American Revolution. A successful and conservative Savannah businessman, he might favor security over revolution, but Elbert, like many Americans, chose a different path. His business made him a colonial leader in the colony, and his revolutionary fervor made him a captain in the militia. […]

He was the last Georgia governor who answered to the King. James Wright, born in London in 1716, came to South Carolina as a teenager when his father became the colony’s chief justice. In 1760, he was named by King George III as the third royal governor of Georgia. He thoroughly invested in the colony, […]

Georgians might have been speaking with a different accent had it not been for a key Patriot victory in Augusta during the American Revolution. In 1778, the British launched their southern campaign, hoping to break the stalemate in the northern states and rally loyalists to their cause. Savannah fell and later, Charleston. Augusta then became […]

Casimir Pulaski came from Poland to fight in the American Revolution and is one of only seven people to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship. Pulaski was born an aristocrat in Warsaw in 1745. He first led men in battle as a freedom fighter in Poland. After meeting Ben Franklin in France, he came to America […]

On September 16, 1779, the Siege of Savannah began during the American Revolution. Captured in December 1778, Georgia was the only colony the British re-conquered. The following September, America's new French allies anchored a fleet of 47 ships offshore carrying 5,000 soldiers, including 500 Haitians.  Their commander, Admiral Charles–Hector d'Estaing, linked up with American General […]