Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 273
Tories and Bluecoats; and they rendered efficient service to Georgia, for
which they received due recognition. In the final capitulation of Savan
nah, Maj. John Habersham bore the negotiations and Gen. James Jack
son was deputed to receive the keys of the city.
Not long after the adjournment of the famous convention, Governor
Wright was arrested and imprisoned in the executive mansion by the
same daring party of volunteers who had broken into the powder maga
zine in the early summer. In spite of the most vigilant effort to capture
the raiders, Governor Wright was himself captured by the very patri
ots whose punishment he sought. Walking up to the surprised vicar of
royalty, who was surrounded at the time by several members of the
king's council; Maj. Joseph Habersham, the leader of the patriotic
posse, quietly said:
'' Sir James, you are under arrest.''
Taken wholly unawares, Sir James was probably for the first time
in his life bereft of the king's English. But he soon found himself at
the same moment quite as helplessly abandoned by the king's council.
For, the sage advisers of the administration, applying the prudent max
ims of wisdom to the practical ends of self-preservation, happened to
remember that they .had pressing engagements elsewhere in Savannah,
and, without ceremonious adieus, left Sir James to entertain the unan
nounced arrivals.
Supposing that Major Habersham was heavily supported by military
re-enforcements in the background, the royal governor offered no resist
ance to the interesting program arranged by the captors. The fortunes
of war had converted the executive mansion into the colonial bastile.
But, luckily for Sir James, he subsequently escaped and took passage
for England, leaving Georgia to work out her own salvation, which she
proceeded to do with orthodox zeal.
However, on the fall of Savannah into the hands of the British, in
1778, Sir Jam.es recrossed the Atlantic and resumed once more the reins
of government. The first act of the returning chief magistrate was to
offer amnesty to all who were willing to renounce the Whig cause; and
the temporary success of the Redcoats resulted in the manufacture of
Tories in wholesale quantities. At one time when the state was com
pletely overrun by the British, it looked as if the flag of England was
again to become the imperial guardian of Georgia soil, hut gradually the
fortunes of war restricted inch by inch the domain of the royal governor
until he found himself once more impaled within the boundaries of
Savannah. In vain he summoned the Rump Parliaments and issued the
executive edicts to punish the rebellious subjects of King George. The
shadow of Yorktown was beginning to fall across the royal arms.
Towards the last, disasters multiplied thick and fast about the old
vicegerent, whose splendid estates one by one fell into the hands of the
Americans, and whose numerous official titles became at last the grim
mest of mockeries. He could see from his open window the smoke of
his burning barns. He could feel the tightening cordon. He could hear
the approaching tramp of the victorious cohorts. But he bore himself
like one of the princes of the blood, and Georgians in unaffected admira
tion for Sir James cannot fail to be proud of the fact that the name of
the colony is indissolubly associated with the name of the English noble-
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