Brown, Thomas

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Brown, Thomas

BROWN, THOMAS. Southern Tory partisan leader. As a young man he reached Georgia after 1773 to take up five thousand acres near the confluence of the Broad and Savannah Rivers as an investment for his family of wealthy Yorkshire merchants. Rather than use black slaves, the Browns brought in about eighty-five indentured servants, most of them Orkney Islanders.

As a recent British immigrant in Georgia, he was naturally opposed to revolutionary agitation. Young Brown made himself conspicuous by cleverly ridiculing the Whigs and their cause. For this he was tarred and feathered, publicly exposed on a cart, and forced to profess support of the Whigs. At the first opportunity he fled. In British East Florida, Brown started partisan operations and raised a body known variously as the East Florida or King's Rangers. He took part in the capture of Fort McIntosh, Georgia, in February 1777 and with the rank of lieutenant colonel led his regiment on raids in Georgia. In 1779 he was defeated by inferior forces near Waynesboro on two occasions. He took part in the defense of Savannah in October 1779. In 1780 he established himself at Augusta, ran the Whigs out of town, sequestered their property, and successfully defended this strategic town against the abortive attack of Elijah Clarke and James McCall in September 1780. The next year he repulsed a night attack by Colonel Harden but was forced to surrender after a heroic defense of Augusta from 22 May to 5 June 1781.

Popular hatred of this successful Tory leader was so great that a special guard had to be assigned to guarantee his rights as a prisoner of war. That he was not hanged as an outlaw was probably the result of the British threat to retaliate by hanging six Whigs. After his release he was colonel of the Queen's South Carolina Rangers and superintendent of Indian Affairs for the South. In the final defense of Savannah, his attempted sortie was defeated by Wayne's night bayonet attack.

Brown's forces then were dispersed, his South Carolina and Georgia properties were confiscated, and he took refuge in the Bahamas. He was given a land grant on St. Vincent in 1809 and died there in 1825.

His biographer, Edward J. Cashin, has observed that "in 1775, when … most Loyalists were inclined to maintain a prudence silence, Brown plunged boldly into the fray…. Whig spokesmen William Henry Drayton and William Tennent recognized Brown as their most implacable and dangerous opponent" (Cashin, p. 223). Though not the only advocate of the reconquest of Georgia in 1778, he was an early and vigorous advocate for it in the early stage of the southern campaign.