USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 36
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It was the general, if not the universal, opinion that the naval vessels, under Commodore Whipple, sent by Con- gress, lying within the bar, would effectually secure it against attack from the sea; and it was not until some time after the arrival of the ships that Lincoln had an intimation that to occupy a station near the bar would be attended with hazard. At the first suggestion of this difficulty he wrote, on the 30th of January, to Commodore Whipple upon the subject, directing him at once to have the bar sounded and buoyed by his officers and pilots, and, with the captains of the several ships, himself to reconnoitre the entrance of the harbor and to ascer- tain whether there was a possibility of the ships lying in such a manner as to command the passage. Commodore . Whipple reported that when an easterly wind was blowing and the flood making in, which would be the opportunity the enemy would take to come in, there would be so great a swell as to render it impossible for a ship to ride moored athwart, and that upon such an occasion the enemy's ships, under full sail, if they crossed the bar, would with this advantage get to Fort Moultrie before the Continental
War, 177) and Draper (King's Mountain and its Heroes, 22, note) call attention to the fact that the story is mentioned by none of the South Carolina historians, nor any of the Charlestown diarists or letter writers. Draper seems to doubt if there was any such person. In the So. Ca. and Am. Gen. Gazette, June 9, 1775, Hamilton Ballentine advertises a power of attorney to receive a legacy due and collect the assets of an estate. There was therefore doubtless such a person, but what became of him is not further known. His name is not on the list of those whose estates were confiscated ( Statutes of So. Ca., vol. VI), where it probably would be found had the story been true. It is scarcely possible that such an event would have been overlooked by all the writers and diarists of the time, and not have been preserved by local tradition ; and yet the par- ticularity of the statement, and its acceptance by the Annual Register at the time, would suggest that there must have been some foundation for the statement.
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ships could possibly do so. But Lincoln, impressed with the necessity of resisting the enemy's fleet in crossing the bar, and thus annoying them while lightening their heavy ships across, if not altogether preventing them, on the 12th of February addressed another letter to the Commodore, requesting that his ships should be stationed as near the bar as possible so as best to command the entrance of it. To this the Commodore reported that on examination he found that there was not sufficient depth of water to lie near enough to the bar to command its entrance. Lincoln did not expect and would not accept this report, but on the 26th again wrote to the Commodore that as the design of his being sent to the department was, if possible, to protect the bar of the harbor, he would not abandon the purpose but on the fullest evidence of its impracticability. He therefore requested a report to be made to him of the depth of water in the channel from the bar to what was called Five Fathom Hole, and what distance that was from the bar. Whether in that distance there was any place where his ships could anchor. If the Commodore could not anchor so as to cover the bar, Lincoln asked him to give his opinion where he would lie so as to secure the town from an attack by sea and best answer the purposes of his being sent here. He begged that the Commodore would consult the captains of the several ships and the pilots of the harbor. Lincoln regarded the matter of so much importance that he spent two days in a boat exam- ining it for himself. In reply to Lincoln's request the captains and the pilots gave their opinion that the ships could do more effectual service for the defence and security of the town by acting in conjunction with Fort Moultrie, than attempting to defend the entrance of the harbor. They thought that the channel was so narrow between the fort and middle ground, that is, the shoal upon which the
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Actcon ran aground in the battle of the 28th of June, 1776, - the same upon which Fort Sumter now stands, -that the vessels might be moored so as to rake the channel and prevent the enemy's troops being landed to annoy the fort. This was, indeed, the proper position for Whipple's ships to have taken, leaving the rough water off Morris Island and taking their position there to await with cross and raking fire the appearance of the British ships as they ran past Fort Moultrie.
In consequence of this report the ships were withdrawn from the bar, and removed to act in conjunction with Fort Moultrie. An attempt was made to obstruct the channel in front of the fort, but from the depth of water, the width of the channel, and the rapidity of the tide, the attempt proved abortive.1
On the 20th of March, writes Peter Timothy in his journal, "The crisis of our fate approaches pretty near. This morning, soon after five, signals were made. At six the admiral's (Arbuthnot's) flag was shifted to the Raisonable, and all the men-of-war, except the new admiral's ship, loosed their topsails. They were under way in five minutes ; and at half-past seven every one safe anchored within the bar without meeting the least acci- dent."2 Lincoln, yielding to Whipple's fears, had with- drawn the American fleet, with 152 guns, from the entrance of the harbor, and allowed the British men-of- war, lightened of theirs, to cross the bar without a gun aboard. Such timid councils were to prevail still further. It was evident, it was urged, that the British fleet, having a far superior naval force, would, with a leading wind and tide, pass the fire of Fort Moultrie, break through
1 Lincoln's Letter to Washington (MS.), Emmet's collection ; Year Book of the City of Charleston, 1897 (Smyth), 364, 374.
2 So. Ca. in the Revolutionary War (Simms), 89.
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our line of ships, and then come to immediately, having our ships between them and the fort. So a council of war was called, and the result was that the ships were ordered as soon as possible to return from their station near the fort and proceed to the city, where their guns should be taken out and disposed in the different batteries, to be manned by the sailors under the command of their respec- tive officers, the ships themselves sunk to obstruct the channel.1 Such was the ignominious end of the fleet sent by Congress to assist South Carolina in her dire necessity. Had Moultrie been in command, somebody would have been hurt before the harbor was abandoned.
Timothy was right; this was the crisis of the fate of Charlestown. If the harbor was not to be defended, so soon as it was so determined the town should have been evacuated and Lincoln's army marched to meet the few Continental troops on their way to join him. This was Washington's opinion. In a letter to Colonel John Laurens, April 26, 1780, he says : -
"I sincerely lament that your prospects are not better than they are. The impracticability of defending the bar I fear amounts to the loss of the town and garrison. At this distance it is difficult to judge for you, and I have the greatest confidence in General Lincoln's pru- dence ; but it really appears to me that the propriety of attempting to defend the town depended on the probability of defending the bar. In this, however, I suspend a definitive judgment and wish you to con- sider what I say as confidential. Since your last to me I have received a letter from General Lincoln in which he informs me that the enemy had got a sixty-four-gun ship over the bar, with a number of other vessels; and that it had been determined to abandon the project of disputing the passage by Sullivan's Island and to draw up the frigates to the town and take out their cannon. This brings your affairs nearer to a dangerous crisis and increases my apprehensions."
1 So. Ca. in the Revolutionary War (Simms), 99; Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. II, 60.
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General Lincoln in his letter to Washington gives his reasons why the defence of Charlestown was undertaken :-
"Though I pretend not," he writes, "to plead an express order of Congress directing ye defence of Chas. Town, -yet must observe that the following facts of theirs conveyed an idea to me that it was their intentions that the measure should be adopted, and that it was right in itself -circumstanced as we were.
" As early as Jany. 1, 1776, when Congress were informed that an attack was intended upon Chas. Town they immediately recommended that a vigorous defence should be made.
"In ye beginning of ye year 1779 when Congress were informed that ye subjugation of So. Carolina was an object which claimed the enemy's attention - they sent Lt. Col. Cambray an Engineer to So. Carolina for the express purpose of fortifying ye town of Chas. Town (in which business he was employed until its surrender).
"On ye 10 November following when ye enemy's designs no longer remained a doubt, they (Congress) ordered three of ye Contin'l Frig- ates to Chas. Town for ye defence of its harbour, and on my frequent representations to yem, that succours were necessary for defending ye town, they ordered them accordingly, - and at no time intimated to me that my ideas of attempting the defence of it were improper -
"That ye measure was right in itself, circumstanced as we were, will I hope appear when it is considered that Chas. Town is the only mart in So. Carolina aud ye magazine of the State - That its natural strength promised a longer delay to ye enemy's operations than any other port in ye country -
"In abandoning it we must have given up the Contin'l ships of war and all our stores while there was yet a prospect of succour - for the harbour had been blocked up by a superior naval force previous to the debarkation of the Troops - The Stores could not have been removed by water, and ye waggons we had or could have procured would have been unequal to ye transportation of our baggage and our field artillery. The place, abandoned, would have been garrisoned by an inconsiderable force while the enemy's army would have operated unchecked by our handful of troops, unable to oppose them in ye field, or impede their progress through the country - and had our expected succours arrived, we could only have ultimately submitted to ye incon- veniences of an evacuation without our stores, where further opposition no longer availed," etc.
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These, in his own words, were Lincoln's reasons for entering upon the defence of the town and cooping him- self upon its narrow peninsula, from which nothing but a decisive victory could release him, rather than abandoning the town at the outset, to take the field with his army and put himself in a position to meet and receive the reënforce- ments he believed to be coming, and with them in open battle to have contested with Sir Henry Clinton for the possession of the State. But these, his reasons, will not bear examination under the circumstances.
The question at this time was not as to the importance of the town, nor as to the value of the stores it contained. There was no doubt about either. The question was as to the practicability or possibility of its defence. This question he himself decided wisely or unwisely, when he abandoned the harbor to the enemy. It should have been as plain to him as it was to Washington, that the fate of the town was involved in that of the defence of the harbor. With an overwhelming force in the rear of the town it was useless to continue its defence when the harbor was given up. When he withdrew the fleet, but one avenue of escape remained, - but there was one, - that across the Cooper River at Lemprière's Point, or as it was also called Hobcaw, but this became daily more and more precarious, and would be closed by Sir Henry Clinton's land force as soon as his reinforcements arrived, if not before by Ad- miral Arbuthnot's from the sea. The opinion which Washington so cautiously expressed to Laurens before the event he still held and expressed years afterwards when he viewed the situation on his visit to Charlestown. If the town and its stores were worth risking the loss of his whole army in a siege, it was worth the risk of the loss of the Continental frigates in resisting the entrance of the British fleet into the harbor. It would have been better
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to have had them lost in an engagement in which they might have at least done some compensating injury to the enemy's vessels than to have had them ignominiously sunk in the channel; better that their guns should have gone down in an action on the bar than to have remained to swell the trophies of the enemy upon the capture of the town.
It may well, too, be asked if Lincoln regarded the defence of the town so peremptorily required by his instructions from Congress, why had not those same instructions prevented his march into Georgia the pre- ceding year at the risk of its loss; or at least hastened his return in response to Moultrie's repeated messages ? General Woodford, we shall see, with his Virginians, making a march of five hundred miles in less than a month to reinforce him and help save the town; while he, the year before, went into camp forty miles from Charles- town, though Moultrie was in the direst need of his aid.
The truth seems to be that Lincoln was himself a brave, amiable man and no doubt a valuable officer under Wash- ington; but he possessed neither the indomitable will and heroic courage of Moultrie, nor any of the great qualities of leadership which Sumter, Marion, and Pickens were soon to display.
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CHAPTER XXI
1780
SIR HENRY CLINTON had been in possession of James Island since the 11th of February; but it was not until the 7th of March, nearly a month after his landing, that he commenced his movements for its investment. This delay is inexplicable unless it is attributed to the usual dilatory conduct of the British generals throughout the war, excepting Lord Cornwallis; or perhaps to the deliberate purpose of inducing General Lincoln the more effectually to shut himself up in the town.1 But however this may be, it was not till the latter date that the British in any force crossed Wappoo Cut, which separates James Island from the mainland. A small command under a colonel had been kept at Ashley Ferry, twelve miles from the town; 2 but on the 7th of March one thousand grenadiers and light infantry crossed the cut and advanced to within three miles of that post, taking possession of the land on the Ashley opposite the town.3 The immediate induce- ment of the move appears to have been the capture of a large number of cattle which had been collected on Ashley River.4 The movement was unexpected, and the militia and the drivers in charge of the cattle were taken, and Thomas Farr, the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
1 Memoirs of the War of 1776 (Lee), 146, note.
2 McIntosh, So. Ca. in the Revolution (Simms), 87.
3 Philip Nyle to Lincoln, Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. II, 56.
4 J. L. Gervais, So. Ca. in the Revolution (Simms), 81.
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his son, a little boy, and Mr. Lloyd1 were surprised at breakfast and carried off. Mr. Farr was made to perform the undignified task of driving the cattle for his captors, who encouraged him in doing so by calling to him, " Keep up, Mr. Speaker, keep up. 2
On the 12th, to the astonishment of the people in the town, a battery appeared with five embrasures at Fen- wick's Point on Wappoo, on a line with the prolongation of Tradd Street in the town,3 nothing of which could be seen the evening before; and by seven o'clock they had heavy cannon mounted. The British continued erecting batteries on the right bank of the Ashley, and by the 18th were at work upon one near Old Town. This work was designed to cover their stores and their crossing to Gibbes's Landing, about two miles from town, 4 when they should have secured the possession of the neck.
About this time, the middle of March, General Patter- son crossed the Savannah with the reinforcements from Georgia for which Sir Henry Clinton had sent, and which consisted of the garrison from Savannah, including the famous Seventy-first Regiment, now under the command of Major McArthur, since the death of Lieutenant Colonel Maitland; the light infantry, commanded by Major Gra- ham; the infantry of the British Legion, by Major Coch- rane; the American Volunteers, by Lieutenant Colonel Ferguson ; the New York Volunteers, by Colonel Turn- bull; the South Carolina Royalists, by Colonel Innes; and the North Carolina Royalists, by Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton; and a number of dragoons, in all about fifteen
1 John Lloyd ; see Hist. of So. Ca. under Roy. Gov. (McCrady), 605, 607, 610.
2 Thomas Farr was elected Speaker in place of John Mathews elected to Congress. Gazette of State of So. Ca., August 11, 1779.
8 The present site of Phosphate Works.
4 The present site of Wagener's Driving Park.
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hundred men.1 This body had marched up the Savannah on the Augusta road for forty miles, and crossed at a ferry called the Two Sisters, encamping in a field occu- pied by General Moultrie the May before. On the 13th Colonel Ferguson, with his volunteers, and Major Coch- rane, of the legion, were ordered forward to secure the passes across the rivers, in doing which and approaching the Combahee the parties mistaking each other for Ameri- cans came in collision, and before the mistake was dis- covered several were killed and wounded.2
The order for this reenforcement from Prévost's army in Georgia had been received just before the celebrated Lieu- tenant Colonel Tarleton, who was to bear so prominent a part in the war in South Carolina, had arrived at Tybee with his dragoons. Upon his arrival he was disappointed at finding that the horses which had been embarked at New York in excellent condition had all been lost on the voy- age, and that he could find none to replace them in Georgia. In this emergency he proceeded to Port Royal and collected there, from friend and foe, all the horses on the islands in the neighborhood. But these marsh tackeys of the coast, which were all he could obtain, proved scarcely strong enough for the work of his dragoons. This, however, did not discourage the enterprising officer, but only determined him to secure a better mount as soon as possible; a determination which the want of proper caution on the part of his opponents soon enabled him to carry out.
While the militia of the country could not be induced, with but few exceptions, to come into the town, William- son and Pickens were enabled to bring some of them into the field to hang upon the flanks of Patterson's command
1 Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 157.
2 Tarleton's Memoirs, 7 ; Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 157, 160.
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and to impede, to some extent, his progress. But not- withstanding their efforts Tarleton joined Patterson on the 21st, and the whole command arrived at Stono Creek on the 25th, where the Commander-in-chief visited the welcome addition to his army. On their way they had surprised a party of fifty militia, under Major Ladson, and killed or captured the whole party.1 Contemporary with this great addition to Sir Henry Clinton's force the time of the North Carolina Brigade, under General Lil- lington, in Charlestown, one thousand strong, expired, and though the most liberal proposition of large bounty was made to them they could not be induced to remain.2 These troops, whose conduct in coming into the town had been held up by General Lincoln as an example to the South Carolina country militia, now in the face of the ap- proaching enemy laid down their arms - General Lilling- ton himself refusing to stay. Except about one hundred and seventy, who agreed to remain under Colonel Lytle, they all left the town on the 24th of March.3 Fortunately,
1 Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 161 ; Timothy, So. Ca. in the Revo- lution (Simms), 95. Banastre Tarleton, who from this time is to play a most distinguished part in the conduct of the war in South Carolina, was born in Liverpool, England, on the 21st of August, 1754. He had begun the study of the law, but when the war in America commenced he entered the army, and came hither with Cornwallis. He served that officer in all his campaigns in this country, and ended his military career in Yorktown in 1781. Tarleton's corps was recruited and organized in New York, and was therefore a body of Americans. It consisted of light cavalry and infantry, and was called " The British Legion." After the Revolution Tarleton became a member of Parliament, and one of the Prince of Wales's (afterward George IV) set, competing with his Highness for the favors of the famous Mrs. Robinson. Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol.
II, 401 ; Memoirs of George IV (Robert Huish, London), note to p. 74. See also Garden's Anecdotes, 284; British Military Library, vol. II, 1.
2 Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 53.
3 J. L. Gervais, in So. Ca. in the Revolution (Simms), 91 ; McIntosh, ibid., 92 ; P. Timothy, ibid., 95.
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their places were supplied, to some extent, by some of the country militia, who, overcoming their fears of the small- pox, had come into the town. Colonel Garden had brought in a hundred of these a day or two before,1 and they now amounted to a sufficient force to be put into a separate body under the command of the gallant General Lachlan McIntosh of Georgia, who had voluntarily come into the garrison a few days before.2 The fleet having been with- drawn from the harbor, the garrison of the town was in- creased by twelve hundred sailors, who now manned their guns, taken from the sunken vessels and placed in the fortifications. But with this addition the number of men in garrison was still by far too few to defend the works, near three miles in circumference.3
St. Michael's steeple, which had served as a beacon, was blackened when the British fleet appeared off the bar; a device, however, which the British declared made it more conspicuous than ever. In this steeple Peter Timothy took his post, as in a watch tower, and made his observations and notes of the movements of the Brit- ish fleet and of the army on James Island.4 From this post he could see the gathering of the British forces and the arrival of the reinforcements under Patterson. With his spyglass he could see Lord Cornwallis and a Hessian general viewing the works they were erecting at Wappoo, and distinguish the Tories with them by their costumes. But when he turned from watching this army growing on the Ashley, for the attack upon the town, he looked in
1 Gervais, So. Ca. in the Revolution (Simms), 38.
2 Lachlan McIntosh of Georgia, Colonel First Georgia Continentals, January 7, 1776 ; Brigadier General, Continental army, September 16, 1776.
3 Colonel Laurens's Letters ; Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 48.
4 The steeple was again used as a signal station in the war between the States.
VOL. III. - 2 G
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vain for any movement at Haddrell's or at Lemprière's Point on the Cooper telling of the coming of the Vir- ginians whom Washington had sent, or those which the State of Virginia had promised. Colonel Laurens had written on the 25th of February: "The Virginia troops are somewhere! Assistance from that sister State has been expected these eighteen months!"1 But assistance had not yet come. Indeed, no more was to come from that State. A gallant band, few in numbers, but admirable in spirit, Woodford's Continentals, were to arrive during the siege and to do excellent service; but no troops were to come from that State itself, or from any other.
On the 23d, after crossing the Ponpon or Edisto River, Tarleton with his dragoons had fallen in with a party of militia at Lieutenant Governor Bee's plantation, had killed ten of them and taken four prisoners, and in their first encounter secured a number of good horses. Three days after, however, this was counterbalanced in the first meeting between Tarleton and his equally distinguished opponent, Lieutenant Colonel William Washington, 2 who, having already served with distinction in one Northern
1 Laurens's Letters ; Siege of Charlestown (Munsell), 48; Tarleton's Memoirs, 34.
2 William Augustine Washington, styled "the modern Marcellus," " the sword of his country," was the eldest son of Baily Washington of Stafford County, Virginia, where he was born on the 28th of February, 1752. He was educated for the Church, but the peculiar position of political affairs led him into the political field. He early espoused the patriot cause, and entered the army under Colonel (afterward General) Hugh Mercer, as captain in the Third Virginia. He was in the battle of Long Island, distinguished himself at Trenton, where he was wounded, and was with General Mercer when he fell at Princeton. He was then made Major in Colonel Baylor's corps of cavalry, and was with that officer at the slaughter of his corps at Tappan in 1778. He was now about to enter upon a distinguished career in this State. Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, vol. II, 435; Garden's Anecdotes, 284.
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