By Paul Garber
Staff Writer
Web-posted June 21, 1996 at 4 p.m.

The corner of Augusta's Eighth and Reynolds streets is probably best known for its ornate 1880s Cotton Exchange building.

But more than two centuries ago a different structure was built at the Reynolds Street site, an example of wartime ingenuity that helped determine the course of the American Revolution in the South.

In late May 1781, British forces under Lt. Col. Thomas Brown held Fort Cornwallis, about where St. Paul's Episcopal Church now stands.

At this stage of the war, the British strategy was to dominate the region's countryside by placing troops in various forts, C. Tom Sutherland wrote in a 1992 edition of Richmond County History.

Such strongholds not only provided a base from which Redcoats could strike, but also a rallying spot for numerous area Loyalists.

Colonial troops led by Gen. Andrew Pickens and Lt. Col. Henry ``Light Horse Harry'' Lee (the father of Robert E. Lee) pinned down the British force in the fort next to the Savannah River, but it was too strong to overtake.

The Americans wanted to bombard the British stronghold with their 6-pounder cannons, but the flat, swampy land along the Savannah did not have a hill high enough to loft cannonballs into the garrison.

Lee then suggested a strategy used a month before at Fort Watson in South Carolina. There, a Maj. Hezekiah Mayham (also spelled ``Maham'') conceived of building a two-story tower, hoisting a cannon to its top and firing over the walls into a nearby Bri tish fort.

In his memoirs, Lee described the tower as a ``large, strong oblong pen, to be covered on the top with a floor of logs, and protected on the side opposite to the fort with a breastwork of light timbers.''

The Americans decided to try it again. They began building the tower on the evening of May 30, protected from the British's sight by an old wooden house. The tower was completed June 1, high enough to overlook the wall of Fort Cornwallis.

Brown perceived the danger of the American project. Knowing the tower would be used to bombard his fort, he ordered a night attack to destroy it, but Americans repelled the sortie with bayonets.

Brown then mounted two cannons inside Fort Cornwallis to fire upon the tower, but they were never able to disable the tower's 6-pounder. The two cannons were quickly disabled by the tower's gun.

It is said one of the British cannons is located near the Celtic Cross marker at St. Paul's.

The American 6-pounder continued to fire into the fort, forcing soldiers to dig holes for protection. After a few days it became too much. On June 5, the British garrison of 300 surrendered.

After the war, Lee wrote in his memoirs that the tower was the key to overtaking the British in Augusta. Mr. Sutherland writes: ``The use of the tower to attack a fortified position is an old practice known to the Romans. But to Hezekiah Maham must go the credit for re-inventing its use in the New World.''

It provided the margin of victory, he wrote, in two battles that eventually helped force the British to Yorktown and defeat.