The Hillsborough Recorder

AMERICAN ANECDOTE.

Just before the commencement of the siege of Savannah in 1779, an enterprise was achieved by six Americans, remarkable for the address and daring intrepidity with which it was planned and executed. Capt. French, of the British army, with about one hundred men, had taken post on the Ogeechee river, where were also forty sailors on board of five British vessels, four of which were armed, the largest mounting fourteen guns. Col. John White, of the Georgia line, with capt. Elholm, and four other persons, one of whom was the colonel's servant, after kindling at night a number of fires, exhibiting the parade of a large encampment, and using other stratagems, peremptorily summoned the British commander to surrender. Capt. French in order to save his men from being cut to pieces by a force which he supposed to be superior to his own, surrendered (1st of October) without the smallest resistance. Col. White having thus far succeeded, pretended he must keep back his troops, lest their animosity, already stifled by great exertions, should break out, and an indiscriminate slaughter take place in defiance of his authority, and therefore he would commit his prisoners to three guides, who would conduct them safely to good quarters. This humane attention of White was thankfully received.—He immediately ordered three of his attendants to proceed with the prisoners, who moved off with celerity, anxious to get away, lest the fury of White's corps, believed to be at hand, might break out, desirous as he was to restrain it—White, with the two men retained by him, repaired, as he announced to the guides and prisoners, to his troops, for the purpose of proceeding in the rear.—He then employed himself in collecting the militia of the neighbourhood, with whom he overtook his guide and prisoners. This affair, says gen. H. Lee, in his memoirs, approaches too near the marvellous to have been admitted by him, had it not been uniformly credited, and never contradicted.