On this day 250 years ago in Savannah, Georgia, while the Royal Governor and Loyalists had a dinner at the courthouse to celebrate the King’s birthday, the Liberty Boys erected a Liberty Pole in view of the courthouse and then proceeded to Peter Tondee’s Tavern to toast the King — and then toasted to “American Liberty. The General Continental Congress. Unanimity and Firmness to America. A Speedy Reconciliation between Great Britain and America upon constitutional principles.” That was followed by more than twenty toasts to various “Sons of Freedom in every part of the globe.” After drinking all these toasts, more than 40 Sons of Liberty, led by Joseph Habersham and including Oliver Bowen, John Houstoun, William Gibbons, Archibald Bulloch, Edward Telfair, Noble Wimberley Jones and Joseph Rice marched through town armed with firelocks, fixed bayonets and clubs to the homes of four prominent Loyalists to warn them “to depart this province within seven days, otherwise to abide by the consequences.”

Sources: Weeks, Carl Solana, Savannah In the Time of Peter Tondee, Summerhouse Press, Columbia, South Carolina, 1997 at 186-89; https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/peter-tondee-ca-1723-1775/