Battle of Brier Creek
Screven County, Screven County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
Battle of Brier Creek MAR. 3, 1779. In early February, 1779, the Southern Armies of the United States and Great Britain were facing across the Savannah River on a battle line reaching from Savannah to the Broad River above Augusta. The British controlled Georgia and the Americans South Carolina. A victory for the American forces meant an early end to the war. Each side, realizing the importance of the impending struggle, was carefully maneuvering troops for an opening blow. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, Commander of the American forces of six or seven thousand men, decided to flank the British above Augusta in an attempt to drive the Red Coats, under Gen. Augustine Prevost, into the malarial swamps of the Georgia coast. The first objective was accomplished when Col. Elijah Clarke and Col. Andrew Pickens overtook and defeated the forces of the Tory Gen. Boyd at Kettle Creek. Meantime, Gen. Lincoln, from his headquarters at Purysburg, ordered Gen. John Ashe to join Gen. Andrew Williamson opposite Augusta. Col. Archibald Campbell, commanding British forces in Augusta, saw his position become precarious, evacuated the city, and marched down the river on the Georgia side to join Gen. Prevost, whose headquarters were at Hudson's Ferry. Gen. Lincoln then ordered Gen. Ashe, with 1,800 men, to cross the Savannah River, follow Col. Campbell as far as Freeman-Miller Bridge on Brier Creek, and secure his position there. Gen. Ashe arrived there on February 27 and found that Col. Campbell had burned the bridge. Col. Campbell crossed Brier Creek just before the arrival of Gen. Ashe, losing a cannon that became buried in the mud of "Cannon Lake." On February 28, Gen. Ashe left for a Council of War with Generals Lincoln, Moultrie, and Rutherford at Black Swamp, S.C. Gen. Bryant, left in charge of the American forces, moved the camp up the creek, for security, to near this spot (A). He established a picket line up the creek and a company of infantry at the burned bridge. He ordered Col. Leonard Marbury to take a position at Paris' Mill, 14 miles up the creek. On March 1, Gen. Bryant was joined by Maj. Ross with 300 horsemen who were too fatigued for immediate duty. After reconnoitering Gen. Ashe's position, Gen. Prevost determined to strike him from the rear in a surprise move before he cold consolidate his position. Col. Mark Prevost commanded the British in one of the most skillful military maneuvers of the Revolution. Maj. McPherson was placed with the First Battalion of the 71st Regiment at Buck Creek, three miles south of the burned bridge, as a decoy (B). Col. Prevost led the main force of the British army, about 1,500 men, up the west side of Brier Creek. Traveling all night, he arrived on the west bank of the creek at Paris' Mill mid-morning of March 2. He found the bridge destroyed. Dispatching his Infantry and Light Horse across the creek, he soon encountered Col. Marbury's Dragoons (C), cutting them off from Ashe's forces. He captured some, while others succeeded in getting safely across Burton's Ferry. Col. Prevost built a bridge and crossed the creek on the morning of the 3rd. Gen. Ashe returned midday of the 2nd. It was agreed, at the Council of War, that Ashe was to make secure his position and wait until joined by Generals Williamson, Rutherford and Lincoln. Then a general offensive would be launched to drive the British seaward. On the morning of March 3rd, Ashe, unaware of the British movements, sent Maj. Ross, with his Light Horse of 300 men, to reconnoiter the position of Prevost at Hudson's Ferry. He soon encountered McPherson's men at Buck Creek (D). His failure to advise Gen. Ashe came near being the decisive blunder of the Revolution. About 2:30 P.M. on March 3, Gen. Ashe received a message from Col. Smith, who was guarding the wagons and baggage left at Burton's Ferry, warning him of the approach of the British. Within a few minutes the British appeared, coming down the main road six abreast. They deployed, right and left, forming a battle line from the position of this marker to the Savannah River swamp. Hastily, Generals Ashe, Samuel Elbert and Bryant reversed their front, prepared to meet the enemy by taking positions in battle line across the British front. Confusion and hysteria reigned among the American soldiers as their officers vainly tried to keep them in line while ammunition was being distributed. Gen. Elbert's and Col. McIntosh's command formed on the American left next to the creek, Gen. Bryant's command formed the center and Col. Young's the right. The British opened on the American center with cannon. Gen. Bryant, still trying to get ammunition to his men, was unprepared. With dead and wounded falling on every side, the center broke and retreated in riot. The British poured through the hole in the American center and within a few minutes, the right under Col. Young broke and ran into the swamps of the Savannah. Gen. Elbert and Col. McIntosh, with 60 Continentals and 150 Georgia Militia, made one of the valiant stands of military history. So fiercely did these Georgians fight that the British had to bring up reserves. Asking no quarter, they fought until nearly every man was dead or wounded. Gen. Elbert saved himself by giving a Masonic sign from the ground as he was about to be bayonetted. Gen. Elbert, Col. McIntosh and the rest of his command surrendered. Thus ended, in disaster, the well laid plans to win control of the South and bring the war to an end. Only the matchless bravery of the Georgians in the last stand gave solace and inspiration in an almost hopeless situation. 124-20 GEORGIA HISTORICAL COMMISSION 1956
Erected by Georgia Historical Commission
The Story
In the winter of 1779, British and American armies faced each other across the Savannah River, with control of Georgia and possibly the whole war in the balance. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln maneuvered to flank the British, but on March 3 Gen. Augustine Prevost's forces executed a bold night march and surprise assault that shattered Gen. John Ashe's American command. The rout ended in disaster, redeemed only by the desperate last stand of Georgia Continentals and militia under Gen. Samuel Elbert and Col. McIntosh, who fought until nearly all were dead or wounded.
Why it matters
Brier Creek was a crushing Revolutionary setback that prolonged British control of Georgia and dashed hopes of an early Southern victory, making the eventual American triumph in the South all the more hard-won.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the winter of 1779, the Revolutionary War had shifted decisively into the South. After years of stalemate in the North, the British had adopted a "southern strategy," gambling that Loyalist support ran deep in Georgia and the Carolinas and that recapturing them one by one could unravel the rebellion from below. Savannah had fallen at the end of 1778, and Georgia — the youngest and most thinly settled of the thirteen colonies — was the first American state the Crown managed to reclaim.
The geography here shaped everything. The armies faced each other along the Savannah River, the boundary between British-held Georgia and American-held South Carolina, in a landscape of black-water creeks, cypress swamps, and few good roads. Rivers and their crossings were the highways of this war, and a burned bridge or a hidden ford could decide a campaign. Brier Creek, winding down toward the Savannah, was exactly the kind of obstacle around which whole armies maneuvered.
For the American command, the stakes felt enormous. Control of Georgia, and perhaps the momentum of the entire war in the South, seemed to hang on the coming clash. Both sides understood it, and both moved with unusual deliberation, probing for the opening blow along a front that stretched from the coast to the upcountry above Augusta.
People & events
The American plan was ambitious. General Benjamin Lincoln, commanding the southern army, aimed to flank the British above Augusta and press them back toward the unhealthy coastal lowlands. An early success came at Kettle Creek, where backcountry leaders Elijah Clarke and Andrew Pickens broke a force of Loyalist militia — a reminder that much of this war in the South was a bitter fight between neighbors.
When the British abandoned Augusta and fell back down the Georgia side of the river, Lincoln sent General John Ashe with a substantial force to follow and secure a position at the crossing of Brier Creek. Ashe found the bridge burned and made camp. Then, at the worst possible moment, he left for a council of war with the senior generals, leaving his command in other hands with its front facing the wrong way.
The British seized the chance. In one of the boldest maneuvers of the war, a column under Mark Prevost marched all night, crossed the creek far upstream, and swung down to strike the American camp from the rear, while a decoy detachment held attention elsewhere. On March 3, 1779, the blow fell. The surprised Americans scrambled to reverse their line and distribute ammunition even as the enemy came on. The center broke, then the right, and much of the army dissolved into the river swamps.
What redeemed the day was the stand on the American left. Continentals and Georgia militia under Samuel Elbert and Colonel McIntosh fought on when the rest had fled, refusing to give way until nearly every man was down. The marker recalls that Elbert, about to be bayoneted, saved his own life with a Masonic sign — one of those small, human details that survive when so much of a battle is smoke and confusion.
Its place in the American story
Brier Creek was a disaster for the American cause, and its consequences reached far beyond one Georgia creekbank. The defeat shattered a field army, scattered its survivors, and let the British tighten their grip on Georgia at the very moment the Americans had hoped to loosen it. Plans to drive the Crown's forces to the sea and end the southern war early collapsed in an afternoon.
The battle belongs to a hard chapter in the Revolution — the long, grinding southern campaign that would run through the fall of Charleston, the guerrilla war of the backcountry, and eventually the road to Yorktown. Victory in the South was not won in a single stroke; it was clawed back over years, at great cost. Brier Creek is part of the reason the eventual American triumph felt so dearly earned.
It is also a reminder that the story of the Revolution is not only Lexington, Saratoga, and Valley Forge. It was fought just as fiercely in the swamps and river crossings of the Deep South, by Continentals and militia whose sacrifices are easy to overlook precisely because the battle they fought was lost.
If you visit
This is quiet, low country — creek bottoms, pine, and swamp along the Savannah River in rural Screven County. Standing here, it takes some imagination to picture two armies maneuvering through this terrain, but the landscape itself tells much of the story: the water, the soft ground, and the vanished bridges that once decided where men could and could not go.
Read the marker slowly. It is unusually detailed, walking you step by step through the night march and the surprise attack, and even keying places on the ground to letters. Let it orient you to the direction the blow came from, and you begin to feel why a rear attack across an uncrossable creek was so devastating.
Brier Creek pairs naturally with the other Revolutionary sites of the Georgia and South Carolina backcountry — Kettle Creek and the fought-over crossings around Augusta among them. If you're building a road trip through the southern Revolution, this is a sobering counterpoint to the victories: a place to stand where a bold plan came apart, and where a doomed rear-guard bought honor out of catastrophe.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Benjamin Lincoln
- · John Ashe
- · Augustine Prevost
- · Mark Prevost
- · Elijah Clarke
- · Andrew Pickens
- · Samuel Elbert
- · Archibald Campbell
Related events
- · Battle of Brier Creek
- · Battle of Kettle Creek
- · American Revolution in Georgia
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