Madison Square

This square remembers one of the bloodiest mornings this city ever survived.

On October 9th, 1779, American and French forces launched a desperate assault to retake Savannah from British occupation.

It failed, and it failed badly... in less than an hour of fighting, hundreds of soldiers were killed or wounded, making it one of the costliest defeats American forces suffered in the entire Revolutionary War.

Among the fallen was Sergeant William Jasper, a South Carolina soldier already famous for one act of extraordinary courage... climbing under direct enemy fire to raise his regiment's flag after its pole was shot away.

At the Battle of Savannah, Jasper was mortally wounded doing almost exactly the same thing again, carrying his flag to safety before he finally went down.

He died of his wounds within the day.

In 1888, the city raised a monument to him right here in this square, at the site named for a later American president, Madison.

Jasper stands in bronze, sword raised, flag in hand, wounded but still moving forward... frozen in the exact moment that cost him his life.

Given what this ground witnessed that October morning, it's little wonder Madison Square carries a heavier reputation after dark than most.

There are long-standing rumors, never confirmed by any official record, that fallen soldiers from that failed assault were buried somewhere beneath this very square rather than moved to a proper cemetery.

Visitors here often describe a solid, dark shape... the silhouette of a full-grown man... standing motionless near the monument, close enough in outline to the statue itself that some wonder if Jasper's own likeness has simply stepped down off its pedestal for a moment before returning to its post.

Two of Savannah's most famous historic homes also face this square.

On one corner stands the Sorrel-Weed House, whose own tragic history and hauntings could fill an entire tour on their own.

On another corner sits the Green-Meldrim House, an elegant Gothic Revival mansion that became General William Tecumseh Sherman's headquarters when Union forces occupied Savannah in December of 1864... the very house from which Sherman famously offered the city as a Christmas gift to President Lincoln.

Visitors and staff there describe music that seems to trigger activity throughout the house... doors opening and closing on their own, objects shifting position, voices carrying faintly through empty rooms, as though the house still remembers the tension of an occupying army settling into a captured city's finest home.

So much of what makes this city what it is happened within a few hundred feet of where you're standing.

A battle.

A surrender.

A war's end, negotiated from a mansion just across the square.

Whatever walks Madison Square after dark has, at the very least, a great deal of history to keep it company.