USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 18
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had been directed; and it was no doubt expected that the malcontents with whom Stuart and Cameron had been intriguing would rise and join them in the royal cause. This repulse, however, awed all the wavering, and many of the whites who had joined the Indians surrendered themselves. The news of the victory of the 28th of June arriving immediately after this affair, the designs of the disaffected were crushed, and the friends of the American cause were enabled to join Major Williamson in his march upon the Cherokees.
On hearing of the outbreak of the Indians, President Rutledge had sent Captain Felix Warley of the Third Regiment with a detachment of a hundred rangers as a convoy of wagons with arms, ammunition, and stores to Major Williamson, with orders to march against the Cherokees. Captain Warley, with his loaded convoy, marched from Charlestown to De Witt's Corner by the road along the Congaree in fourteen days. The news of the victory of the 28th of June reached Williamson on the 22d of July. Having been reenforced by Colonel Jack's regiment from Georgia and others to the number of about 1150 men, and learning that Alexander Cameron, Stuart's deputy, had arrived a few days before from the over-hill settlements with thirteen white inen, and that he was encamped at Oconore Creek about thirty miles distant, with some white men and the Essenecca Indians from the Keowee River, Williamson determined to attack the camp at once before they could learn of his advance. Accord- ingly, about six o'clock in the evening of the 31st of July, taking with him two prisoners as guides, under threats of instant death in case of misbehavior, he put himself in motion with a detachment of 330 men on horseback, hop- ing to surprise the enemy by daybreak. The river Keo- wee running between Williamson's forces and Cameron's
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party, and being only fordable at Essenecca, Williamson was obliged, though much against his inclination, to take the road to that ford. Unfortunately he proceeded without scouts or guard sufficiently advanced to be of any service in warning his main body of danger. He was ambushed about two o'clock on the morning of the 1st of August in Essenecca town. The Indians, suffering the guides and advanced guard to pass, poured a heavy fire into the Will- iamson men, and they were thrown into confusion. Major Williamson's horse was shot under him; Mr. Francis Salvador, who had brought to Williamson the first news of the Indian uprising, was shot down by his side, and unfortunately immediately discovered by the Indians. He was scalped alive before he was found by his friends in the dark. What added to this misfortune was that after the action it appeared that Captain Smith, son of the Captain Aaron Smith who had been murdered with his family, saw the Indians while in the act of taking off the scalp ; but supposing it was Mr. Salvador's servant assisting his master, did not interfere to save his friend. Mr. Salva- dor died without being sensible of the savage cruelty which had been inflicted upon him.1
Major Williamson's forces, completely surprised, broke away and fled in the greatest confusion. The enemy kept up a constant fire, which the retreating militia returned at random as dangerous to their friends who were willing to advance against the enemy as it was to the enemy them- selves. Fortunately Lieutenant Colonel Hammond rallied a party of about twenty men, and, making an unexpected charge, repulsed the savage foe and escaped. The Indians lost but one man killed and three wounded ; of Major Will- iamson's party three died from their wounds and fourteen
1 For an interesting sketch of this gentleman, see Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 247, 248.
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were badly injured. When daylight arrived he burnt that part of Essenecca town which was on the eastern side of the Keowee River, and later Colonel Hammond crossed the river, burnt that on the western side as well, and destroyed all the provisions, computed at six thousand bushels of Indian corn, besides peas and other articles. The object of overtaking Cameron and his associates having been thus defeated, Williamson retreated and joined his camp at Twenty-three Mile Creek, where he expected to form a junction with detachments of Colonel Neel's and Colonel Thomas's regiments of militia.
There was considerable jealousy of Williamson's com- mand ; he was but a major in the militia line, but President Rutledge had given him the appointment of commander-in-chief of the expedition, which entitled him to command others though colonels. To put an end to the question of rank he was about this time appointed colonel of the Ninety-Six regiment. Colonel Williamson resumed the offensive on the 2d of August, and on the 8th with 640 chosen men he marched to attack the Indian camp at Oconore ; finding it deserted, he destroyed two towns, Ostatoy and Tugaloo. He continued to advance until the 12th, when, coming up with a large body of Ind- ians, he attacked and defeated them. They fled, leaving 16 of their men dead in space of 150 yards; Williamson losing 6 killed and 17 wounded. In this expedition he destroyed the Indian towns of Tomassy, Chehohee, and Eustash. All corn on this side of the middle settlements was destroyed, and the Indians were driven to support themselves on roots, berries, and wild fruit.
On Colonel Williamson's return to his camp he found that numbers of his men had gone home, forced to do so from fatigue, want of clothes, and other necessaries, and that many who had remained were in equal distress. He
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was obliged therefore to grant furloughs ordering them to rejoin him at Essenecca on the 28th, to which place he marched on the 16th with about six hundred men. Here he erected a fort, which in honor of the President he called Fort Rutledge.
Upon the breaking out of this war application had been made to North Carolina and Virginia to cooperate with the forces of South Carolina in this region. Each of these States complied and raised a body of troops. The first under General Rutherford, to act in conjunction with the South Carolinians on this side of the mountains, and the other under Colonel Christie, to act against the over- hill Cherokees. But Colonel Williamson had destroyed all the lower settlements before the North Carolinians under General Rutherford took the field.
Colonel Williamson now having increased his force to 2300 men, broke up the camp at Essenecca; leaving 300 men as a guard to the inhabitants and as a garrison to Fort Rutledge, he marched with about 2000 men to cooperate with General Rutherford. A campaign ensued in which all the lower towns, middle settlements, and settlements in the valleys eastward of the Unacaye and Appalachian mountains were destroyed. In less than three months, that is, from the 15th of July to the 11th of October, 1776, the Cherokees were so far subdued as to be incapable of renewing hostilities. The whole loss of the Carolinians in killed and wounded was 99. The Cherokees lost about 2000. The natural difficulties of the country through which the campaign was made, over pathless mountains, through dark thickets, rugged paths, and narrow defiles, called forth a patience in suffering and exertion in overcoming difficulties which would have done honor to veteran troops. None of all the expeditions before undertaken against the savages
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had been so successful as this first effort of the new-born Commonwealth.
The unfortunate and misled Indians, attacked on all sides, - from the north by the Virginians and North Carolinians, from the east by the South Carolinians, and from the south by the Georgians, -sued in the most abject terms for peace. A conference took place, at which com- missioners from Georgia also attended and concurred in and signed a treaty of pacification. By this treaty the Indians ceded a large part of their lands to the State of South Carolina. This tract includes the present counties of Anderson, Pickens, Oconee, and Greenville.
The double success in Carolina in 1776 was in marked contrast to the disasters at the North. The failure of the invasion of Canada, the loss of the battle of Long Island with Washington's perilous retreat, and the abandonment of New York had greatly disheartened the Americans. It was from South Carolina that there came the first encour- agement of a substantial victory over a combined British fleet and army, and still more of a decisive campaign against their Indian allies of the interior who had been brought into the field to cooperate with the British force on the coast. The Indian uprising was no doubt most injurious to his Majesty's cause in Carolina. The fact that those savages had been instigated by the agents of the Royal government to rise upon the people of the frontier and indiscriminately to massacre the King's friends as well as his enemies, roused great indignation and resentment, and turned many a supporter of the Royal cause to the new government. But a great mistake was made on the part of the friends of the latter which to some extent neutralized the result. Robert Cuningham, who had been arrested by Major Williamson and confined in Charlestown by the order of the Congress since the 30th
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of September, 1775, because he had not considered himsel. bound by the treaty of Ninety-Six, had been detained there in a manner, however, suitable to his standing among his own people at the public expense. He had been treated kindly, but had not been allowed to receive visits except occasionally from gentlemen well disposed to the Ameri- can cause. These took every opportunity of softening his antipathies and of persuading him to abandon the opposi- tion in which he had been engaged. In this they had so far prevailed that in February Robert Cuningham peti- tioned the Provincial Congress for leave to occupy here a position of neutrality; but this the Congress declined, and he had remained in confinement. It was now supposed that as the British invasion had been completely frustrated and the stability of the government fairly demonstrated, a generous policy toward Cuningham and other prisoners from the upper country who were in confinement with him might produce happy results. For this reason they were all released from custody and returned to their homes and friends. But so far from helping the American cause this wise act on the part of the President and his Council was resented by the friends of the new government in Ninety- Six and that neighborhood. Some looked upon it as turn- ing their enemies loose upon them at the very time they were being assailed by the Indians. Others regarded it a dangerous exercise of power by the President and Council, and contrary to the determination of the Provincial Con- gress. To such an extent did this dissatisfaction extend that when Cuningham in good faith presented himself at Williamson's headquarters, declaring himself a friend and that he had come to join the expedition against the Cherokees, a mutiny was threatened in Williamson's camp, which was only suppressed by Williamson's advice to Cuningham to return home and attend to his own busi-
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ness. Thus repulsed by the supporters of the American cause Cuningham remained peaceably at home until the fall of Charlestown in 1780, when he was made a brigadier in the British provincial forces and placed in command of a garrison. Had President Rutledge's policy prevailed, Cuningham and many of his friends and their great influ- ence might have been secured to a hearty support of the Whig cause.
The year 1776, glorious as it was to the American cause in the South, did not however close with unalloyed success and satisfaction. General Lee, who was now assuming all the glory of the battle of the 28th of June, and ready for anything that might add to his fame, allowed himself to be persuaded to undertake an expedition to Florida, which was to be no more successful than Oglethorpe's in 1740, and was to end even more disastrously, and this though without even a battle fought or a soldier wounded.
The Loyalists who fled from the Carolinas and Georgia found a secure retreat in East Florida, from which the set- tlers of southern Georgia were frequently disturbed by the predatory incursions of banditti organized into a regiment which bore the name of Florida Rangers and of which Thomas Browne was now the Colonel and Daniel McGirth Lieutenant Colonel. Of Thomas Browne and of his igno- minious and cruel treatment by the Whigs of Georgia we have already spoken. Daniel McGirth, who was hence- forth to be known for his violence and cruelty, had alas ! also, if tradition is to be believed, great wrongs of his own to avenge.1
1 Dr. Johnson in his Traditions, 172, gives a most interesting story of Daniel McGirth, and of his cruel and outrageous treatment by American officers in Georgia, - his public whipping upon a trumped-up charge, made for the purpose of having him dismissed from the army in order that an officer might secure a valuable horse which McGirth owned.
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Mr. Jonathan Bryan, a gentleman of the highest char- acter and position in Savannah, and one of the most active patriots of Georgia, coming to Charlestown soon after the victory over the British fleet on the 28th of June, persuaded General Lee that there was glory and plunder in an ex- pedition to break up this Tory band and to penetrate to St. Augustine. Without consulting any one, General Lee the next morning paraded the Virginia and North Caro- lina continentals, and commending them for their services, called upon them to volunteer for a secret expedition he had planned as a means of rewarding them ; he told them that the service was without danger and certain of suc- cess, and that a large booty would be obtained of which he offered to resign his share to them. General Lee's affected secrecy deceived no one. It was well known that the proposed expedition was to Florida, which, like Ogle- thorpe's, was considered ill advised at that season of the year. His appeal, too, to the troops was disapproved and condemned by the people of South Carolina as holding up to the soldiery booty, rather than liberty, as the purpose for which they had taken up arms. But General Lee was determined upon the expedition, and having persuaded the Virginia and North Carolina troops to volunteer, he applied to President Rutledge for the aid of his troops and ammunition, the troops of South Carolina not yet having been placed on the continental line, and conse- quently not under his orders. A detachment of two hundred and sixty was thereupon drawn from the South Carolina regiments to accompany him.
McGirth, it is said, was of the highly respected family of that name in Camden, and related to the best families there. We have not been able to ascertain whether he was the son of Colonel McGirth of that place, mentioned in a former volume [Hist. of So. Ca. under Roy. Gov. (McCrady) 638], and also as a militia officer in 1775.
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At this most unhealthy season of the year, midsummer, Lee marched off this body without supplies or necessa- ries, without a field-piece or a medicine chest. General Howe, who had recently come into the province, followed with Colonel Moultrie soon after. On Colonel Moultrie's arrival at Savannah Lee proposed to him to take command of an expedition against St. Augustine, inquiring whether the fact that his brother, Dr. John Moultrie, being at St. Augustine as the Royal Lieutenant Governor of Florida, would be an objection to his doing so. Colonel Moultrie declared that that circumstance would not deter him, but that, if he undertook it, he must have eight hundred men and the necessaries for such a movement. Lee sent for the articles required by Moultrie, and they were prepar- ing for the march when an express arrived from the Con- tinental Congress calling Lee to Philadelphia. Lee left Savannah two days after, ordering the Virginia and North Carolina troops to follow him, leaving the South Carolina detachment to sicken and die in the swamps of the Oge- chee. The expedition was at an end. The troops had neither met nor had they even seen an enemy, but they had suffered more than if they had endured a bloody cam- paign. The sickness and mortality from the climate at this season were worse than battle. At Sunbury, the advanced position reached, fourteen or fifteen men were buried every day. There was scarce an officer of the South Carolina detachment who was not dangerously ill. General Lee arrived in Charlestown on the 8th of Septem- ber, where he was prevailed upon to leave the North Caro- lina continentals in South Carolina, as the South Carolina troops had been left in Georgia.1 He hurried on to join Washington in the Jerseys, where he was hailed as the deliverer of the South. He encouraged the contrast
1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 184-187.
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between his successes there and Washington's defeat on Long Island. He was, in fact, the military idol of the day, members of Washington's immediate family joining in their homage to him, to the disparagement of their own chief. Fortunately for the colonies, he was captured at an outpost by the enemy, through his own negligence and disobedience of Washington's orders, before the year was at an end, if, indeed, his capture was not a part of his treachery.
On the 17th of September, 1776, the Continental Con- gress appointed Colonel Christopher Gadsden and Colonel William Moultrie Brigadier Generals, whereupon Lieu- tenant Colonel Charles Cotesworth Pinckney became Colonel, Major William Cattell, Lieutenant Colonel, and Captain Adam McDonald Major of the First Regiment of Infantry ; and Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Motte Colonel, Major Francis Marion Lieutenant Colonel, and Captain Peter Horry Major of the Second Regiment. On the 20th of the same month the General Assembly turned over the six regular regiments, to wit, the First and Sec- ond Regiments of Infantry, the regiment of Rangers, the regiment of artillery, and the two regiments of rifle- men, to the continental establishment.1
1 Memoirs of the Revolution (Drayton), vol. II, 337, 383 ; Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. I, 187.
4
CHAPTER X 1777-78
THE history of South Carolina from this time forth is that of the State. The Royal province was now entirely at an end. The last Royal Governor, Lord William Campbell, had sailed away, mortally wounded in his final attempt to reestablish his government ; and as the sails of the vessel which bore him disappeared over the hori- zon, there had come the news of the Declaration of Inde- pendence. There were to follow years of as bloody a civil war as ever stained the history of a people. But through it and from it all was to come the State of South Carolina, the undivided sovereignty of which was to be the corner- stone of the faith of all its people. From English and Huguenot, from Scotch and Irish and Welsh, from Ger- man and Swiss, and from Whig and Tory, whose hands were now to be dyed in each other's blood, was to come a people of marked characteristics, and to the rest of the world of a peculiarly homogeneous character, but whose distinguishing trait was to be their fealty and devotion to their State.
The ball of revolution which had been started was now kept going, and given a direction not at all to the wishes of many who had helped to put it in motion. We have pointed out the anomalous fact in the history of the Revolution in South Carolina that all of its leaders were churchmen, and that the dissenters took no conspicuous part in the movement. The leaders of the Revolution in South Carolina, with the exception of Gadsden, perhaps,
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were cavaliers in heart -they were devoted to the throne and to the church. The ministry of George the Third had repulsed them, and they had at last broken with the King, and had, many of them, in sorrow and in tears acquiesced in the Declaration of Independence ; but the church remained ; and when they would fast and pray for God's guidance and protection in this new gov- ernment they had set up and were trying to establish, it was still to the old St. Philip's they would wend their way and with the old ritual -to them a necessary part of any State ceremonial -that they would offer their supplications. The Constitution of 1776, while it had discarded the King, had not meddled with the church. But now the " White Meetners " - the Congregationalists under the lead of the Rev. William Tennent, a Presby- terian clergyman, a native of New Jersey who had recently come from a Congregational church in Connecticut, whom the Council of Safety had sent on the mission to the upper part of the State with William Henry Dray- ton in 1775-had begun to clamor for its disestablish- ment. This was, no doubt, the necessary logical result of the Revolution the churchmen had inaugurated. Nay, they themselves had rendered it inevitable ; for had they not, for the purpose of winning over to their cause against the King, the Presbyterians of the upper country, sent Mr. Tennent on that mission ? And could they have expected the Presbyterians to go into the Revolution and consent to allow them to retain their church establish- ment ? Did they not understand that an established church and a republic were inconsistent ? Perhaps now they realized this, but it was none the less a bitter truth to admit.
Mr. Tennent began the agitation of the question whether there was to be any religious establishment of one denomi-
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nation of Christians over another under the new order of things. He wrote a memorial upon the subject, which was printed and scattered broadcast throughout the province, especially in the upper country. A copy of this memorial was sent to Colonel William Hill in the New Acquisition, - now York County, - the same Colonel Hill whom we shall see distinguishing himself as an officer under Sumter ; and in a manuscript memoir of the times Colonel Hill tells that he procured the signature to it of as many names as possible ; indeed, he says he induced the women to sign their names as well as the men, as he did not believe that women have no souls. The memorial, he writes, was at first regarded as a novelty and matter of surprise; but that when the principles were properly examined they were found to be true. Many thousand signatures were thus obtained, and the matter was pre- pared and ready for the General Assembly when it should meet.1
The new General Assembly met in December, 1776, and following the custom of the Royal Governors, Presi- dent John Rutledge made the body a speech in opening the session. It was with great satisfaction, he declared, he met so full a representation of the free and indepen- dent State elected under a constitution, many benefits of which had already been generally diffused. He recom- mended measures for supporting the authority of the government, - sustaining its credit, preserving the peace of the State, and rendering the militia a more effectual defence against the enemy ; and then after minor matters he concluded : -
"The most remote districts being now immediately represented by persons chosen therein, the exercise of which right could not be obtained from royal justice or
1 Hist. Presbyterian Church in So. Ca. (Howe), vol. I, 370.
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favor (though often solicited, the want of it having been severely felt), their local and particular grievances may be disclosed by their respective members." Hugh Rut- ledge, brother of the President, was chosen Speaker of the Legislative Council, and in their behalf he returns thanks to his Excellency for his speech and congratulates him on his being elected to the honorable station of presiding over the State. John Mathews, Speaker of the General Assembly, also congratulates the President on the first meeting of a legislature chosen by a free people under a happy and virtuous constitution. Mr. Speaker Mathews also alludes to the fact that the remote districts were now immediately represented in the legislative body of the State- a privilege, he said, hitherto cruelly withheld by the unrelenting tyranny of the King's government.
These remote districts, however, and indeed the par- ishes as well, were but in a few instances represented by persons who could claim the authority of a general popu lar election. We shall see Rawlins Lowndes, when Presi dent in a few months after, declaring that members were often returned to the House by two or three of the inhabit- ants, sometimes indeed with no vote at all but that of the returning officer; and Colonel Hill gives us a like account of the election of members in the New Acquisition. He says the citizens there met and sent five men; but that . these were not chosen by ballot, but were named by such as pleased to do so. There was dissatisfaction with the action of this caucus, for it was probably nothing more, and he tells us that a short time after the Representatives so chosen had gone to Charlestown and taken their seats, some citizens came to him at his Iron Works and com- plained of the manner in which those who had gone had been chosen. Whereupon a Dutchman who had lately come from Pennsylvania advised him to convene the citi-
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