It was an early protector of coastal Georgia.

It stood firm in the face of the British during the American Revolution and during the war of 1812, rebranded itself as Fort Defiance, a fitting name for a place in an army that refused to flinch and wouldn't back down.

This is Marked!, a series that zooms in on Georgia and its backstory, one historical marker at a time.

I'm Maiya May and I'm here in Midway, Georgia at Georgia Historical Marker 089-12 to tell you the story of a revolutionary fort, the communities it protected and what it really means to stand defiant in the face of an enemy.

As the largest settlement in Georgia during the 1700s, Savannah gets a lot of attention as one of the largest seaports in the original 13 colonies.

It's also a prime target for those looking to stir things up, and that's what brings us here 40 miles south of downtown Savannah to the Fort Morris historic site.

If you want to know anything about Fort Morris, there's one person you go to, ranger Jason Baker.

He works here.

He lives here.

He knows nearly everything about this place.

This area is vital, not only when the Europeans came, but to the American Indians that were here first.

And it's all because of the location, the location, the location.

It's here on the Midway River, which is a natural deep water harbor.

This was a Muskogee speaking indigenous person's village for millennia before European contact.

Some of the earliest European activity here was by Mark Carr and his son Thomas Carr.

They had been granted land by King George II down around Brunswick.

As time went by, Mark Carr thought the grass was a little bit greener up on this side of the river.

He became displeased with Brunswick and said, up on the Midway River, there's a beautiful area.

Perhaps I could trade my 500 acre grant for 500 acres up here.

Now his plantation is actually raided in 1741 by indigenous people living in the area.

So the attack on Carr's property really kind of exposes this area.

Coastal Georgia is vulnerable because you have so many wide rivers here, but you also have a lot of tidal creeks 'cause of all the marshes and it's kind of like a maze.

So you have all sorts of places where ships can hide, where troops can hide, and you could have ambushes.

You have a lot of these bluffs, so you really needed to develop fortifications to protect a lot of these settlements and a lot of these harbors, et cetera.

- There's a few things to know about location in the 1700s.

The Georgia Coast is really, really important and very, very valuable.

And there's a couple different reasons for that.

The reason these locations are important is because of trade.

Savannah, Sunbury, are ports.

We have ships moving in and out and it is literally the reason they are able to exist in these places.

The other reason these locations are important is just geographically where they sit.

The water is deep, the land is high.

You're able to look out and see attackers coming your way.

These locations are incredibly important.

Ships will come in from all over the world to the seaport and you know, trade goods, buy and sell and import and export.

If things had played out differently here, Maiya, this could have developed into what Savannah is today.

And Savannah is the third or fourth busiest seaport in the nation the last I checked.

This is the perfect point for a defensible position here on this natural deep water harbor.

The fort is pretty simple.

Behind me are what's known as earthen works.

They're all natural mounds of soil designed specifically to be a method of protection.

And this is all built to protect the town of Sunbury, which today no longer exists, but was once a thriving coastal community.

Sunbury was established in 1758 and was laid out very similar to Savannah.

Sunbury had 496 lots, three public squares.

Sunbury was a commerce center.

Its initial drive was economic and commerce with it being here on the harbor.

Now I love talking about Sunbury because it's so little known, but it was very important.

It actually was the second busiest port in the colony and it's virtually a ghost town now.

I mean, you go there, you can sort of sense that there was life here.

You had future governors, you had educators, you had inventors coming out of Sunbury.

Of all Georgia towns, you've never had more famous people come out of one place in the entire state than Sunbury.

All three Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence had ties here, Button Gwinnett had a plantation on St.

Catherine's just down stream.

He had a home here as well.

Lyman Hall, he had a home here, but his plantation was located up in Midway at Hall's Knoll.

These are major figures in Georgia's revolutionary scene.

They were in this very important place.

That's another reason why Sunbury should be talked about more During the Revolutionary War, it's clear that Georgia and the community of Sunbury needs more coastal protection.

And so the delegates to the second continental Congress in an attempt to sort of tighten things up in the south, sent 200 Patriot troops here.

And one of those patriots is Captain Thomas Morris.

There's not a whole lot out there on Captain Thomas Morris.

The reason why the fort is called that is simply because of one of the letters between the British and the American officers during this time, the British Commander Fuser addressed the letter to Captain Thomas Morris, thinking that the fort was actually named for him.

The fort was known as Sunbury Fort prior to that, and it was during that correspondence in 1778 that the name Fort Morris started being used.

The American Revolution is really when Fort Morris shines in our imagination.

Down in Florida, we have a bunch of British loyalists who are there.

We have Savannah very close by, and Fort Morris is halfway in between.

The British are quite literally in Savannah's backyard at this point.

So these British loyalists down in Florida, they start heading up the Georgia Coast to Fort Morris on the water led by a commander named Lewis Fuser.

Meanwhile, back in Sunbury, the men who are defending Fort Morris are led by Colonel John McIntosh.

When the British troops start to approach Fort Morris, it becomes pretty clear this isn't gonna be an even fight.

Colonel McIntosh and his patriot troops, while brave and defiant are pretty clearly outnumbered, nearly two to one, We got Lewis Fuser with the British out on the water looking at Fort Morris and the folks at Fort Morris looking back, Fuser basically writes them a letter and says, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.

"Sir, you cannot be ignorant that four armies are in motion to reduce this province.

The resistance you can or intend to make will only bring destruction upon this country.

On the contrary, if you deliver me the fort that you command, lay down your arms and remain neutral until the fate of America is determined, you shall as well as all the inhabitants of this parish remain in peaceable possession of your property.

Your answer, which I expected in hour's time, will determine the fate of this country, whether it's laid in ashes or remain as above proposed.

P.S.

Since this letter was closed, some of your people have been firing scattering shots about the line.

I'm to inform you that if a stop is not put to such proceedings, I shall burn a house for every shot fired."

With that ultimatum made very clear and their guns, trained on Fort Morris, Colonel Fuser and the British get a legendary reply from Colonel McIntosh.

"Sir, we acknowledge that we are not ignorant, that your army is in motion to reduce this state.

We are in no degree apprehensive of danger from a junction of his army with yours.

We have no property compared with the object we contend for.

We value a rush and would rather perish in a vigorous defense than accept your proposals.

We, sir, are fighting the battle of America and therefore disdain to remain neutered until its fate is determined as surrendering the fort receive this iconic reply, COME AND TAKE IT".

It's a defiant response.

And for the British, a pretty clear message that Macintosh and his men aren't afraid.

So the message comes across and Lewis Fuser basically packs his stuff and goes back to Florida.

Colonel McIntosh knew they were outnumbered, and if they actually do come here, it's probably not gonna end well, Probably not.

And that was the risk he took.

Hindsight's 2020 so it could not have worked.

The British may have captured the place in November, 1778 during their initial approach here.

That bold stand, keeping that poker face, his defiance worked that one time.

He really took a serious gamble sticking his neck out and saying to the British to bring it on if you think you're ready for the fight that we're going to bring to you.

Just paints a great picture of what the war was.

In general American Patriots knowing that they're probably outnumbered by the British, you have this large superpower, but you wanna stand up for yourself, you have to have courage, and you have to have guts.

You are absolutely right.

And the British had an established navy with hundreds of ships.

The British had an established formal military with thousands of troops that were formally trained with effective equipment.

And so the Americans hold on to Fort Morris until the following January, and by that time, the British have completely surrounded the fort.

The Patriots are led by Commander Joseph Lane, but it is too much firepower for him to handle.

And so the British take over Fort Morris and now it gets a new name.

It's now Fort George, of course, for King George.

So this sort of becomes the beginning of the end for Fort Morris.

While it would go on to have some minor involvement in the war of 1812, it fades, kind of like Sunbury does.

It doesn't really play much of a role after the revolution, The national conversation over the Revolutionary War in Georgia is often neglected, which I think is sad because Georgia actually saw a good bit of fighting, especially between patriots and loyalists.

If you think about the American Revolution was a lot of ways our first civil war because you saw, especially as the war dragged on later, you saw a lot of fighting between Americans who supported the British and Americans who supported the Patriots.

The Indians were brought on with this on both sides also, and a lot of that was in Georgia.

The Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence, they led fascinating lives in of themselves.

It was unique because at the time of the Revolutionary War, Georgia was only a little over 40 years old.

The Americans were just starting off with that.

The continental Congress did put together the continental army the best they could, but of course, the Americans were relying a lot on their militia, which was like today's National Guard.

The militia was not full-time professional soldiers that do this every day.

They were kind of the backup.

And you know, Sunbury had about 50 militia members that supported the troops over here.

During this time.

It was farmers going up against an established nation.

The Americans were fighting on their soil, and in some occasions used less formal tactics than the British did with gorilla warfare.

You think about other revolutionary sites, maybe in Boston or other places up north that just completely obliterated and you can't even imagine what was there at the time.

But the places largely undeveloped.

You can imagine what these people saw when you look out upon the water.

Fort Morris is one of the, if not the best, preserved earthen fort from that time period in the country.

That is one of its legacies.

It'll be 250 years old and it still stands almost as grand as it did.

And you don't have a whole lot of Revolutionary War earthworks left in the country that are original, let alone built by the Patriots.

They're pretty sure this is the only remaining intact, best preserved patriot earthwork in the country.

It is just so beautiful and it really brings you back there in a way that you can't get back in a lot of places.

The look at the craftsmanship and the engineering they put into this, especially 250 years ago, it's incredible.

During the colonial period, defending America fell on a lot of places like Fort Morris.

They were small, but they were also mighty.

The key was their courageous resolve in the face of the British forces that navigated the waters behind me.

We've seen it a couple times in our travels.

It's one of the things that makes America, America.

I'm Maiya May, and we'll see you at our next stop.