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The other corps was stopped at the
Ogeechee.
On
their return they burned at Midway the church, almost every dwelling-house, and all stores of rice and other cereals within their reach; and they carried off with them all negroes, horses, cattle, and plate that could be removed by land or water.
Screven, a gallant American officer, beloved for his virtues in private life, was killed by them after he became their prisoner.
Roused by these incursions into
Georgia,
Robert Howe, the
American commander in the southern district, meditated an expedition against
St. Augustine.
This scheme had no chance of success.
At
St. Mary's river an epidemic swept away one quarter of his men, and, after slight skirmishes, he led back the survivors to
Savannah.
Immediately after his return, on the twenty-third
of December, three thousand men, despatched from New York under
Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, arrived off the island of
Tybee; and soon afterwards, passing the bar, approached
Savannah.
Relying on the difficulties of the ground,
Howe offered resistance to a disciplined corps, ably commanded, and more than three times as numerous as his own. But on the twenty-ninth one party of British, guided by
a negro through a swamp, turned his position.
A simultaneous attack on the
Americans in front and rear drove them into a disorderly and precipitate retreat.
With a loss of but twenty-four in killed and wounded, the
British gained the capital of
Georgia, four hundred and fifty-three prisoners, forty-eight pieces of cannon, several mortars, a field-piece, the fort with its military magazines, and
