appointed
Dennis's Mill, on Little River, as a place of meeting. "When these small
parties entered the settlements where they had formerly lived," says
Captain McCall, "general devastation was presented to view; their aged
fathers and their youthful brothers had been murdered; their decrepit
grandfathers were incarcerated in prisons where most of them had been
suffered to perish in filth, famine, or disease; and their mothers,
wives, sisters, and young children had been robbed, insulted, and
abused, and were found by them in temporary huts more resembling a
savage camp than a civilized habitation." Though Captain McCall was
an eyewitness of some of the scenes he describes, the picture he draws
might seem to be too highly colored were it not supplemented by a great
mass of evidence. One more instance out of many may be given. In a
skirmish with the Americans under Colonel Harden, Brown captured several
prisoners. Among them was a youth only seventeen years old named Rannal
McKay, the son of a widow who was a refugee from Darien. Being told that
her son was a prisoner in the hands of Brown, Widow McKay, providing
herself with some refreshments that she thought might suit the taste of
the British commander, went to Brown's headquarters, and begged that
her son might be set free. The cruel wretch accepted the present she
had brought him, but refused even to let her see her son, and caused the
sentinels to put her out of the camp by force. Next day young McKay and
four other prisoners were taken out of the rail pen in which they had
been confined. By Brown's order they were hanged upon a gallows until
they were nearly strangled. They were then cut down and turned over to
the tender mercies of the Indians, by whom they were mutilated, scalped,
and finally murdered in the most savage manner.

The cruelty of Colonel Brown and the Tories acting under him was so
unbearable that the patriots of that region felt that their existence
depended on the capture of Augusta. They decided on an aggressive
movement when they met again at Dennis's Mill, on Little River.

Colonel Clarke, who was suffering from the results of smallpox, was
too feeble to lead them. His place was taken for the time by Lieutenant
Colonel Micajah Williamson; and on the 16th of April, 1781, the
Americans moved to the vicinity of Augusta. They were there reenforced
by a detachment from southern Georgia under Colonel Baker, and by a
number of recruits from Burke Co