USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina, from its first European discovery to its erection into a republic: with a supplementary chronicle of events to the present time > Part 15
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from bank to bank, as circumstances required it, he be- came a terror to the loyalists of both provinces, extending his ravages from the seaboard to Augusta, and utterly de- feating every attempt to accumulate a force against him. This duty achieved, he joined the detachment under general Pickens, who was then operating against Augusta and Ninety Six.
The fall of Camden led to the rapid overthrow of the enemy's chain of posts below, and completed the recov- ery of the state to within thirty miles of the sea. Greene, concluding, after the evacuation of this place by Rawdon, that it would be the enemy's object to withdraw his posts on the Congaree, and concentrate them below the Santee, dispatched expresses to Marion and Sumter, to prepare themselves for such an event. He himself, ordering the army to proceed by the Camden road for the Congaree, took an escort of cavalry and moved down in person to Fort Motte. At McCord's ferry he received the tidings of the capitulation of this place. Fort Motte lies above the fork on the south side of the Congaree. The works of the British were built around the mansion house of the lady whose name it bore, and from which, in their savage recklessness of shame, the British officers had expelled her. It was a noble mansion of consid- erable value; but not of so much value as to abridge the patriotism of the high spirited owner. Defended by a strong garrison, under a resolute commander, the fortress . promised to baffle for a long time the progress of the besiegers. Under these circumstances, Mrs. Motte, who had been driven for shelter to a neighboring hovel, produ- ced an Indian bow, which, with a quiver of arrows, she
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presented to the American commander. "Take these," she said, while presenting them, "and expel the enemy. These will enable you to fire the house." Her earnest entreaty that this course might be adopted, prevailed with the reluctant Marion. Combustibles were fastened to the arrows, which were shot into the roof of the dwelling; and the patriotic woman rejoiced in the destruction of her property, when it secured the conquest of her coun- trymen. Such, throughout the dreary war of the revolu- tion, was universally the character of the Carolina women. The sons fought, but who shall measure the aid and influ- ence which the daughters brought to the conflict? This will need a volume to itself.
Driven out from their place of shelter, the garrison at Fort Motte was forced to surrender, and the force under Marion was ready for operation in other quarters. A portion of it, under colonel Lee, was immediately dis- patched by Greene, as the van of the army, for the reduc- tion of Fort Granby. The fall of Fort Motte increased the panic of the British, and two days after that event, they evacuated their post at Nelson's ferry, blew up the fortifications and destroyed their stores. Fort Granby, after a brief conflict, was surrendered with all its garrison, consisting of nearly four hundred men. The terms afford- ed by colonel Lee, were greatly complained of by the Carolinians. These terms gave to the enemy the privi- lege of carrying off their baggage, in which was included an immense quantity of plunder. The approach of lord Rawdon, with all his army, is said to have hastened the operations of Lee, and to have led to the liberal conces- sions which he made to the garrison ; but he has incurred
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the reproach of hastening the capitulation in order to an- ticipate the arrival of Sumter and the grand army. The siege had been begun some time before, by Sumter, who had left colonel Taylor, with a strong party, to maintain his position, while he made a sudden descent upon the enemy's post at Orangeburg, in which he was thoroughly successful. Sumter, himself, conceived that he had suf- fered injury by the capitulation, in which nothing was gained but the earlier possession of a post which could not have been held many days longer, and must have fallen, without conditions, and with all its spoils, into the hands of the Americans. It was with bitter feelings that the whig militia beheld the covered wagons of the ene- my, drawn by their own horses, which they knew to be filled with the plunder of their farms and houses, driven away before their eyes.
On the 11th of May, the garrison at Orangeburg, to the number of one hundred, with all their stores and a large supply of provisions, surrendered to Sumter.
From Granby, Lee was sent to co-operate with Pick- ens against Augusta; and three days after the fall of the former post, his legion was arrayed before the walls of the latter. Meanwhile, general Greene took up the line of march for Ninety Six, and on the 22nd of May he sat down before that formidable station. The reduction of this place was an object of the greatest interest. The village of Cambridge, or as it was called in that day, the post of Ninety Six, was, at this time, the pivot of very extensive operations. To possess it, therefore, was to give the finishing blow to the British strength in the interior of the state. The task of holding lord Rawdon
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in check in Charlestown, was confided to Sumter and Marion. In the execution of this duty they closed in upon him, until he established a line of fortified posts, extending from Georgetown, by Monk's Corner, Dorches- ter, &c., to Coosawhatchie. The British were frequently harassed by the partisans, who made incursions within this line ; but the force of the assailants was not adequate to any serious attack upon any one of them, that of George- town alone excepted. This station having been left with a small garrison, and being separated from the rest of the line by swamps and water-courses of such magni- tude as to prevent any sudden relief from reaching it, was attacked and carried. The British fled to their gallies, while Marion deliberately moved all the military stores and public property up the Pedee, demolished the fortifications, and returned, without loss, to his position in St. Stevens. The fall of the British forts at Augusta followed this event, and the leading object of general Greene was the prosecution of the siege of Ninety-Six.
This siege was one of the most animated occurrences of the American war. It lasted nearly a month. The place was remarkable on many accounts. It was the scene of the first conflict in the southern, and, perhaps, in the revolutionary war. In this place, in the year 1775, began that sanguinary hostility between the whigs and tories, which afterwards desolated the beautiful country around it.
A peculiar circumstance invited the hostile parties to this spot. It had been surrounded with a stockade as a de- fence against the incursions of the Indians, whose settle- ments were then in its near neighborhood. The stockade
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still remained, and was improved and garrisoned by the British soon after they had obtained possession of Charles- town. It made a chief point in their chain of military posts, and was trebly important as it maintained an open communication with the Indians, kept in check the whig settlements on the west, and covered those of the loyalists on the north, south and east of it. It was the most advan- ced post of the royal army, was a depot of recruits, and contributed to the support of Camden and Augusta, in the overawing influence which they maintained upon the pop- ulation of the two states of South Carolina and Georgia.
At the time that Greene commenced his siege, the post was under the command of colonel Cruger, with a garri- son of near six hundred men, all native Americans. Cru- ger himself was an American loyalist of New York, which state, with that of New Jersey, furnished the great body of his army. These had enlisted at an early period of the war, and were considered among the best soldiers of the royal army. The remaining portion of his force were riflemen recruited in the neighborhood-men, desperate from their social position, and marksmen of the first order. This latter body were conspicuous in the successful de- fence of the place.
Cruger, on the approach of Greene, lost no time in pre- paring for his defence. He soon completed a ditch around his stockade, threw the earth upon it, parapet height, and secured it within by traverses and coverts, to facilitate a safe communication between all his points of defence. His ditch he farther secured by abbatis, and at convenient distances within the stockade erected strong block-houses of notched logs. Within this post he was
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in possession of a very respectable battery, of a star shape, with sixteen salient and returning angles, which commu- nicated with the stockade. This battery was defended by three pieces of artillery, on wheel carriages, which could be moved readily from one point to another. On the north of the village extends a valley, through which flows a rivulet that supplied the garrison with water. The county prison lying near, was fortified, and commanded the valley on the side next the village. On the opposite side of the valley, and within reach of the fire from the gaol, was a strong stockade fort with two block-houses, which covered the communication with the rivulet from that quarter. A covert way led from the town to the rivulet.
Greene, when he beheld the strength of the place, apprehended the failure of his enterprise ; but this doubt did not discourage him from his design. He broke ground on the 23rd of May, and by the 3rd of June had completed his second parallel. The engineer of the American army was the celebrated Polish exile, Kosciusko. On com- pleting the first parallel, a mine, directed against the star battery of the enemy, was commenced under cover of a battery erected on his right. The work was pursued by the besiegers, day and night, without intermission. The troops labored alternately in the ditches, some on guard while others toiled, and even sleeping on their arms to repel the sallies of the besieged, which were bold and frequent, and resulted in long and spirited conflicts. The American works steadily advanced, however, in spite of these sallies ; but a fierce strife followed every step in
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their progress, and not a night passed without the loss of lives on both sides.
As soon as the ground parallel was completed, the gar- rison was summoned to surrender. The demand was an- swered with defiance, and the siege was pressed. With time to complete the approaches of the beleaguering army, the fall of the garrison had been certain ; but the force of Greene was wretchedly inadequate. His recruits of militia from Virginia had failed to arrive; the Carolina troops were all actively engaged in keeping Rawdon in check below ; while Cruger, with timely prudence, had incorporated with his army his negro laborers, and was farther aided from without by a marauding force under Cunningham, which materially interfered with the sup- plies, the recruits and general intelligence of the Ameri- cans. Still, the advance of the besiegers was such, that farther resistance would soon have been temerity. The Americans had completed their third parallel, and from wooden towers, the marksmen of the assailing army had succeeded in driving the British artillerists from their guns. To fire the houses of the garrison by means of burning arrows, such as had been employed in the capture of Fort Motte, was next resorted to by the Americans ; but Cruger freed himself from this danger by promptly throwing off the roofs of his houses. The works of the besiegers were so near completion, that a farther defence of the place was limited to four days. Besides the towers before spoken of, one of which was within thirty yards of the enemy's ditch, the besiegers had several batteries of cannon within a hundred and forty yards, one of which so completely commanded the " star," that the garrison were
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compelled to shelter themselves behind bags of sand, which increased its elevation by three feet. Through these sand bags, apertures were left for the use of small arms by day, and the withdrawal of the sand bags, left embrazures for the employment of the cannon by night. Thus, for ten days, the besiegers and besieged lay watch- ing each other. During this time, not a man could show his head on either side, without incurring the shot of the riflemen. Still the garrison, though greatly suffering from the American fire, maintained its defence with a constancy that reflects the highest honor on its commander. That Cruger must have surrendered, that it would have been a wanton sacrifice of life for him to continue a conflict in such circumstances, was inevitable, but that he had been strengthened in his resolution by advices which had reach- ed him from without.
Rawdon, re-inforced by three regiments from Ireland, had broken through the obstructions offered by the par- tisan forces under Marion, and was advancing by rapid marches to the relief of Ninety-Six. This important in- telligence had been conveyed to Cruger, and invigorated his defence. A woman was the instrument employed by the British for encouraging Cruger to protract the siege. Residing in the neighborhood, she had visited the camp of Greene, under some pretence of little mo- ment. The daughter of one tried patriot, and the sister of another, she had been received at the general's table and permitted the freedom of the encampment. But she had formed a matrimonial connection with a British officer, and the ties of love had proved stronger than those of any other relationship. In the opportunities
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thus afforded her, she contrived to apprize the garrison that she had a communication from lord Rawdon. A young loyalist received it from her lips, at a farm house in the neighborhood, and, under the fires of the sentinels, dashing successfully and at full speed by the pickets, he was admitted with hurras into the garrison.
This circumstance rendered it necessary to abandon the siege or carry the place by assault. By mid-day, on the morning of the 18th of June, the different detachments of the army were in readiness. On the American left, against the star battery, lieutenant Duval, with a com- mand of Marylanders, and lieutenant Selden, with another of Virginians, led the forlorn hope. Close behind them followed a party furnished with hooks at the end of staves, and these were followed by the first Maryland and first Virginia, under colonel Campbell, prepared for the assault. These were marched, under cover of the approaches, to within a few yards of the enemy's ditch. The posts, rifle towers, and advanced works of the besiegers were all manned, with orders to clear the parapets of the garrison previous to the advance of the storming party. On the American right, against the stockade fort, major Randolph commanded colonel Lee's forlorn hope, sup- ported by the infantry of the legion, and captain Kirk- wood with the remains of the Delaware regiment. Duval and Selden were ordered to clear away the abbatis and occupy the curtain opposite them; then, driving off the enemy from the sides of the angle thus occupied, to open the way for the billmen to pull down the sand bags. These overthrown, were to assist the party of Campbell in mounting to the assault.
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A discharge of cannon at noon was the signal for the parties to move. A blaze of artillery and small arms, directed to the point of attack, covered the forlorn hope in its smoke. Under its shade, this gallant band leapt into the ditch and commenced the work assigned them ; but the enemy was prepared for them, and met the assault with valor and determination. Bayonets and pikes bristled above the parapet, and from the loop holes in the sand bags, poured an incessant stream of fire, which swept the slender ranks of the assailants. The form of the redoubt gave the defenders a complete command of the ditch ; and their coolness, and the comparative safety of their cover, enabled them to use it with complete success.
Under the cross fire from opposite sections of the redoubt, the little band of Americans were mowed down with fearful havoc. Their leaders had both fallen, severely wounded, and two-thirds of their number lay bleeding and in death around them ; yet was the strife maintained for near three quarters of an hour, and the assailants, as if resolved on no other issues than death or victory, only retreated at length, at the express orders of their commander. In this conflict they obtained possession of the curtain, and in their retreat, though still under a galling fire from the garrison, they brought off the greater number of their wounded comrades. Lord Rawdon, with twenty-five hundred fresh troops, appeared soon after in the neighborhood, and nothing was left to the American general but retreat. Had a few days of time been allow- ed to his approaches on Ninety-Six, or had the supplies of militia promised from Virginia reached him, the
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prize for which he struggled must have been in his pos- session. Now, baffled, if not beaten, he fell back slowly and sullenly before the pursuit of Rawdon, until the latter, weary of a chase which promised to be hope- less and, warned by circumstances which called him elsewere, abandoned equally the pursuit and the country.
His march had served only to extricate Cruger from his immediate difficulty. The proofs were convincing all around him, that the day had gone by when a foreign foe could maintain itself among the recovering inhabitants. " Ninety-Six," in defence of which so much blood had been already shed, was therefore abandoned to the assail- ants from whom it had been so lately rescued ; and pite- ous, indeed, was the misery of the wretched loyalists whom this abandonment virtually surrendered to the rage of the long persecuted patriots. A fearful day of retribution was at hand, which they did not venture to await. At a season when their farms were most lovely in the promise of a plenteous harvest, they were compel- led to surrender them and fly. Vainly did their chiefs expostulate with Rawdon against his desertion of those who, to serve the cause of their sovereign, had incurred the enduring hostility of their countrymen. But the ne- cessity was not less pressing upon the British general than upon his wretched allies ; and with a last look upon their homes, a mournful cavalcade of men, women and children, prepared to abandon the fields of equal beauty and plenty, which their treachery to their country had richly forfeited, but for which they were still willing to perish rather than depart. Sullenly the strong men led the way, while, with eyes that streamed and still looked backward, the women
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and children followed reluctantly, and with souls full of wretchedness and grief. How bitterly in their ears, at such a moment, must have sounded the notes of that drum and trumpet which had beguiled them from the banners of their country to those of its invader ? What a pang to the bosoms of the fathers ; what a lesson to the sons, guiltless of the offence, yet condemned to share in its penalties. Surely, when the barbarian drum again sounds to war in Carolina, her children will find themselves all, with one heart, united under the same banner.
CHAPTER XXII.
The retreat of the British from Ninety-Six, while it en- couraged the whigs in that quarter, induced a very gen- eral apprehension that it would enable lord Rawdon, by the additional force which it afforded him, to re-establish all the posts which he had lately lost, to the southward of the Santee. After the flight of Cornwallis to Vir- ginia, the British commanders in South Carolina had con- tracted their operations almost entirely within that extent of country which is enclosed by the Santee, the Conga- ree, and Edisto. Within these limits, after the late re- treat of Greene, Rawdon had resolved to canton his for- ces, and the most eligible positions were examined with this object. But he soon found that the American gene- ral was not disposed to suffer the progress of this inten- tion, without endeavoring to arrest or disturb it ; and great was his surprise, accordingly, to hear that Greene, whom he had so lately driven before him, had faced about to give him battle upon the Congaree. Having divided his force, and given one part of it to colonel Stewart, who was stationed at Orangeburg, he felt himself unequal to the encounter; and following the dictates of veteran pru- dence, he fell back before the approaching Americans, retreating hastily to this latter post, where he was shel- tered on one side by the Edisto, and on the other with strong buildings, little inferior to redoubts. In the ad- vance which Greene continued to make upon the retreat-
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ing foe, an opportunity offered of striking a blow at his cavalry. Rawdon had with him but a small number of horse; his chief strength in this description of troops being engaged in distant operations. Major Eggleston, with a strong body of the American cavalry, throwing himself in advance of the enemy, placed an ambush in reserve, and presented himself with a small number in view of the British. This drew upon him, as was antici- pated, an attack from the whole hostile cavalry. His flight seduced them to the thicket, where the rest of his troop was concealed, and their joint charges completely overwhelmed the foe. Many were slain, and forty-five men and horse, with several commissioned officers, with- in a mile of the whole British army, fell into the hands of the Americans. The flight of Rawdon to Orangeburg, stimulated by this event and the accumulating numbers and audacity of the Americans, was so precipitate, that more than fifty of the British army fell dead on the march, from fatigue, heat and privation.
Greene encamped within five miles of Orangeburg, and offered battle to his antagonist. Secure in his strong hold, Rawdon did not venture to sally out ; and the force of the American general was too feeble to justify an at- tack upon him in his works. Several efforts which he made with his cavalry, to arrest the approach of supplies to the British, having proved abortive, and tidings having reached him of the advance of Cruger with fifteen hun- dred men to the relief of Rawdon, compelled general Greene to retire from a position which he could not have maintained against his foe after the junction with Cru- ger. A day before the junction was effected, he with-
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drew to the High Hills of Santee, while he meditated other modes for the expulsion of the enemy from the strong position which he had taken on the Edisto.
Having succeeded in driving Rawdon from Camden, by striking at the posts below, it was resolved to pursue a like plan of warfare, to compel the evacuation of Orangeburg. In obedience to this resolution, Sumter and Marion, with their several commands, consisting chiefly of the state troops, and officered by most of those able partisans, the two Hamptons, Taylor, Horry, May- hem, Lacy and others, who had maintained the liberties of their country in the swamps, when they were too feeble to hold their ground in the field, were accordingly let loose, in an incursion into the lower country, which drove the enemy at all quarters for safety into Charles- town, and for a time, prostrated the royal power even to the gates of that place.
While the partisans were sweeping down every path that led to the city, Greene, with the main army, pursued the road leading down the south side of the Congaree, and the east side of Cooper river. Various little successes distinguished the progress of the partisans. Colonel Wade Hampton charged a party of dragoons within five miles of Charlestown, and appearing before the walls of the city, occasioned a degree of alarm in the garrison, which could scarcely have been justified by the appearance of the whole American force. The bells were rung, alarm guns fired, and the whole force of the city confusedly gathered, and under arms. In this foray, Hampton cap- tured fifty prisoners, and after exhibiting them to the sen- tinels on the more advanced redoubts, coolly retired,
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without suffering interruption or injury. He also burn- ed four vessels, laden with valuable stores for the Brit- ish army. Lieutenant colonel Lee took all the wagons and wagon horses belonging to a convoy of provisions ; traversed Dorchester and the neighborhood, from which the garrison was expelled ; and, meeting with Hampton, proceeded to rejoin the main body, under Sumter.
Meanwhile, a detachment of Marion's men, under colonel Mayhem, passing the head of Cooper river and Wadboo creek, penetrated below to the eastward of Big- gin church, to obstruct the retreat of the garrison at the church, by destroying the Wadboo bridge. The church near Biggin bridge was a strong brick building, about a mile from Monk's Corner, where the British had a re- doubt. The church covered the bridge, and secured the retreat at that point by way of the Corner. It was strongly garrisoned by lieutenant colonel Coates, with a British force of nearly seven hundred men; and the de- tachment under Mayhem did not dare to advance with any confidence while unsupported by the main American force, under Sumter.
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