Women and the American Revolution in Georgia

Abstract

First paragraph: On a brisk Savannah morning in October 1779, Elizabeth Lichtenstein, then aged just fourteen years, waited anxiously with her guardians, the Johnstons. In the distance, the assembled French and American forces were adjusting the elevation of their siege artillery. Her fiancé William Johnston suddenly arrived to inform her that the enemy was about to open a heavy cannonade, an event which Elizabeth would never forget. At the age of eighty-four, she recalled: We set off without delay, and just as we turned the first corner of the street their batteries were opened, and the balls whizzed about our ears at an awful rate. The firing was kept up fiercely for a good while, and at last Mrs. [Laleah] Johnston stopped in the middle of the street, and said: “My boys, I was about to disgrace you; go and join your brothers.” 1 Laleah Johnston had previously refused to allow her two youngest sons (aged ten and fifteen) to join the Tory militia; she relented only in the fury of the Patriot assault. It was to cost her the lives of two of her children. This was, in Elizabeth’s words, the ultimate manifestation of “heroism of the mother.”