USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1775-1780 > Part 55
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The British and Tories were now in full retreat, closely followed by the mountaineers. It was in the excitement of this pursuit that Captain Inman was killed while press- ing the enemy and fighting them hand to hand. He received seven shots from the Tories, one a musket ball piercing his forehead. Draper justly observes that great credit is due to Captain Inman for the successful manner in which he brought on the action, and the aid he rendered in conducting it to a triumphant issue.
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The yells and screeches of the retreating British and Tories, it is said, as they ran through the woods and over the hills to the river, loudly intermingled with the shouts of their pursuers, together with the groans of the dying and wounded, were terrific and heartrending in the ex- treme. The Tories ceased to make any show of defence when halfway from the breastwork to the ford. The retreat then became a rout; with reckless speed they has- tened to the river, through which they rushed with the wildest fright, hotly pursued by the victorious Americans with sword and rifle, killing, wounding, or capturing all who came in their way. Many of the Tories were shot down as they were hastening pell-mell across the rocky ford.
While the firing was yet kept up on the north side of the Enoree, an intrepid frontiersman, Captain Sam Moore, led a small party of ten or twelve men up the river, and crossing the stream at Head's Ford rushed down upon a portion of the enemy with such impetuosity and audacity as to impress them with the belief that they were but the vanguard of a much larger force, when they incontinently fled and Moore rejoined his victorious friends over the river.
The patrolling party of the British which had been down the river near Jones's Ford heard the firing and came dashing back at full speed. Reining up their panting steeds before Musgrove's house, the commanding officer inquired what was the matter. Learning of the battle which had terminated so disastrously some thirty minutes before, he pressed on and crossed the ford; but he was too late. The victorious Americans had retreated with their prisoners, leaving the British troopers the melancholy duty of conveying their wounded friends to the hospital at Musgrove's.
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It was a complete rout on the part of the British and Tories. They seem to have apprehended what was in fact the purpose of the Whig leaders; namely, to push on at once to Ninety-Six, then believed to be in a weak and defenceless condition. Captain Kerr, upon whom the com- mand now devolved, finding that resistance would be in vain and without hope of success, ordered a retreat, which was effected, and they crossed the river.1 A part of the force under the command of Captain de Peyster retreated a mile and a quarter, where they encamped for the re- mainder of the day, and in the night marched off toward Ninety-Six.
As Kerr had anticipated that they would do, Shelby, Clarke, and Williams resolved at once to improve the ad- vantages they had gained, pursue the demoralized Tories, and make a dash for Ninety-Six, which they believed they could easily reach before night, as it was only twenty-five miles distant. The men were ordered to return to their horses and mount them. While the men were doing this, and Shelby was consulting Clarke as to the move, Francis Jones, an express from Colonel McDowell, rode up in great haste with a letter in his hand from General Caswell, telling of Gates's total defeat near Camden, apprising McDowell of the great disaster, and advising him and all officers commanding detachments to get out of the way or they would be cut off ; McDowell sent word that he would at once move toward Gilbert Town, as the present town of Lincolnton was then called. General Caswell's hand- writing was familiar to Shelby, so he knew that the infor- mation was true, and not a Tory device to frighten him away. Clarke, Williams, and himself recognized the danger of their own situation. Ferguson and Turnbull,
1 Mckenzie's Strictures on Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton's History, 25 ; McCall's Hist. of Ga., 316.
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who had formed a junction, now relieved of any concern for the main army under Cornwallis, were free to retrace Ferguson's march, recross the Broad and get in their rear, cutting them off from McDowell, who had himself aban- doned his camp at Smith's Ford and retired into North Carolina. Lieutenant Colonel Cruger at Ninety-Six would, no doubt, now that he too must have learned of their vic- tory at Camden, be coming to the assistance of Innes. The brilliant prospects of the moment before were at once dis- pelled. Far from pursuing the advantages of the signal victory they had here gained, the question now was how they could secure their own retreat. It was determined in a hasty council, while on horseback, that they would take a route through the backwoods to avoid and escape Ferguson, and join Colonel McDowell on his retreat toward Gilbert Town.
Hurriedly gathering the prisoners together and distribut ing one to every three of the Americans, who conveyed them alternately on horseback, requiring each captive to carry his gun divested of its flint, the whole cavalcade was ready in a few moments to move on their retreat, as they knew Ferguson would be speedily apprised of their success and make a strenuous effort as he did at Wofford's Iron Works to regain their prisoners. The Whig troopers thus encumbered hurried rapidly away in a northwestwardly direction, instead of a northeastwardly one toward their old encampment. They passed over a rough broken country, crossing the forks of the Tyger, leaving Ferguson on the right, heading their course toward their own friendly mountains. As they expected, they were rapidly pursued by a detachment of Ferguson's men. Wearied as they and their horses were, with scarcely any refreshment for either, yet Shelby's indomitable energy permitted them no rest while danger lurked in their way. Late in the evening
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of the 18th, Ferguson's party reached the spot where the Whigs had less than thirty minutes before fed their tired horses ; but not knowing how long they had been gone, and their own detachment being exhausted, they relin- quished further pursuit. Not aware of this the Americans kept on their tedious retreat all night and the following day, passing the North Tyger and into the confines of North Carolina, sixty miles from the battle-field. In less than three days this gallant party of two hundred had marched one hundred miles and fought a battle, bringing off with them seventy prisoners. It is to be remarked, says Colonel Hill in his narrative, that during the advance of forty and the retreat of fifty or sixty miles, the Ameri- cans never stopped to eat, but made use of peaches and green corn for their support. The excessive fatigue to which they were subjected for two nights and two days broke down every officer so that their faces and eyes were so swollen and became so bloated that they were scarcely able to see.1
This action, says the same author, was one of the hard- est fought with small arms during the Revolution. The smoke was so thick as to hide a man at the distance of two hundred yards. Shelby is quoted as describing this battle as "the hardest and best-fought action he was ever in," attributing this valor and persistency to "the great number of officers who were with him as volunteers." 2 The Provincials and the Tories on the British side fought bravely. Their dragoons, but lately raised, behaved with much gallantry, fighting on the left with Innes. They all exhibited the training they had received under that superior master Ferguson.3
The British loss in this affair was 63 killed, about
1 Hill's narrative, Sumter MSS.
2 King's Mountain and its Heroes, 115. 3 Ibid.
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90 wounded, and 70 prisoners - a total of 223 out of 400 or 500, probably one-half of all engaged; an unusually large proportion. The American loss was only four killed and eight or nine wounded.1 The disparity in killed and wounded was attributed to over-shooting on the part of the British and the protection the trees and breastwork afforded to the Americans, and still more to the skill of the frontiersmen in the use of the rifle. After the battle was over the women and children from many miles around came in to visit the ground, - some, it is said, from mere curiosity, and some even for plunder ; but for most it was a sad errand. This was a Tory region - the few Whigs in it had left from motives of personal safety or had joined Sumter or some other popular leader. The most of the visitors, therefore, were Tory women, seeking among the dead and wounded for their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers. It was a painful and touch- ing scene to witness them turning over the bodies in love and dread, to find their dear ones among the slain or suffering.2
Marion on the extreme right of the American line, be- lieving, like Sumter, that the true way to encourage and
1 King's Mountain and its Heroes, 115.
2 It is remarkable that few American or British historians have at all noticed this important and hard-fought battle. Hill in his narrative complains that none of the historians who have written of the Revolution in the State have mentioned it ; and Mckenzie in his Strictures on Tarle- ton's History charges that author with great remissness in omitting any notice of it. It is not mentioned by Ramsay in either of his histo- ries of the State, nor by Johnson in his Life of Greene, nor by Lee in his Memoirs of the War of 1776, nor by Bancroft, nor by Roosevelt in The Winning of the West. Captain Hammond's account of it is published in Johnson's Traditions, and it is briefly described by McCall in his Hist. of Ga. Draper gives a full and particular account of it in his King's Mountain and its Heroes, and there is an account of it in Hill's narrative, Sumter MSS.
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to command his partisans was to find employment, had not been idle, and their spirits had begun to revive. Return- ing to Port's Ferry, he threw up a redoubt on the east bank of the Pee Dee, on which he mounted two old iron field- pieces to awe the Tories. On the 17th of August -the day on which Shelby, Clarke, and Williams started upon their expedition -he detached Major Peter Horry with orders to take command of four companies, Bonneau's, Mitchell's, Benison's, and Lenuds's, and to destroy all the boats and canoes on the Santee River from the Lower Ferry to Lenuds's ; to post guards so as to prevent all com- munication with Charlestown, and to procure him twenty- five weight of gunpowder, ball or buck-shot, and flints in proportion. The latter part of this order shows how scanty were the means of his defence.1 Marion himself marched to the upper part of the Santee with the same object in view with which he had intrusted Horry. On his way he received intelligence of the defeat of Gates at Camden ; but this did not intimidate him. On the contrary, keeping the news of the disaster to himself, not communicating it to any one, he pressed on toward Nelson's Ferry, across which all communication between Camden and Charles- town must pass. Approaching near the Ferry on the night of the 20th of August, he was informed by his scouts that a guard with a party of prisoners were on their way to Charlestown, and had stopped at a house at the Great Savannah, or swamp, on the main road, east of the river, that is, in the southernmost part of the present county of Clarendon, near where the line between the counties of Berkeley and Orangeburgh begins. A little before day the next morning he gave the command of sixteen men to Colonel Hugh Horry, with orders to gain possession of the road at the pass of Horse Creek, which runs through the
1 Documentary Hist. of So. Ca. (Gibbes. Columbia, 1853), 11.
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swamp two miles from and parallel with the Santee, while the main body under his own command would gain and attack them in their rear. In taking his position Colonel Horry unfortunately advanced too near to a sentinel, who fired upon him. Horry, thus discovered, did not hesitate a moment, but rushed up to the house and found the British arms piled before the door. These he seized, when the whole party surrendered. Twenty-two British regulars of the Sixty-third Regiment, two Tories, one captain, and a subaltern were taken, and 150 of the Maryland line liberated. Marion reported one man killed and Major Benison wounded. But the man, Josiah Cockfield, who was shot through the breast, lived to fight bravely again and to receive another wound in the service of the State.
Marion after this affair marched back to Port's Ferry, he naturally supposing that the Continentals whom he had so gallantly rescued would to a man have joined his small party. But they could not be prevailed to shoulder a musket. "Where is the use," said they, "of fighting when all is lost ?" All but three deserted him. Two of these were Sergeants McDonald and Davis, who afterwards dis- tinguished themselves in his service.1 By the exertions of Marion and his officers the drooping spirits of his men were again revived, and another exploit was soon achieved.
About the 27th of August, when having only one hun- dred and fifty men, Marion, learning of the approach of Major Wemyss above Kingstree at the head of the Sixty- third Regiment and a body of Tories under Major Harrison, instantly dispatched Major James at the head of a company of volunteers, with orders to reconnoitre and count them. Calling in Major Peter Horry, Marion crossed Lynch's Creek and advanced to give battle. The night after Major
1 James's Life of Marion, 47, 55; Weems's Life of Marion, 137 ; Ramsay's So. Ca., vol. II, 399.
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James received his orders, somewhere near the present site of the town of Kingstree in Williamsburg County, he hid himself in a thicket close to the line of march of Major Wemyss and his party. The moon was shining brightly, and he was thus enabled to estimate quite accu- rately the forces, of the enemy. Having satisfied himself upon this point, James burst from his hiding-place as their rear-guard passed, and took some prisoners.1 Weems states on the authority of General Peter Horry that of forty-nine men who composed their company, they killed and took prisoners about thirty.2
On the same night about an hour before day Marion met Major James; the officers immediately dismounted and retired to consult, while the men sat on their horses in a state of anxious suspense. The conference was long and animated. At the end of it an order was given to direct the march back to Lynch's Creek. In response, says James, a groan was heard along the whole line. A bitter cup had now been mingled for the people of Williamsburg and Pee Dee, and they were doomed to drain it to the dregs. Major James reported the British force to be double that of Marion's, and Gainey's party of Tories in their rear had always been estimated at five hundred. A retreat was deemed prudent. Marion recrossed the Pee Dee at Port's Ferry, and the next evening, the 28th of August, commenced his retreat into North Carolina. About half of his party left him. They could not leave their property and their families at the discretion of an irritated, relentless enemy. Colonels Hugh Horry, John Erwin, and John Baxter, Major Peter Horry, Major John Vanderhorst, Major John James, Major Benison, and about sixty others continued with their chief. Marion's marchi
1 James's Life of Marion, 55 ; Hist. of Williamsburg Church, 54.
2 Life of Marion (Weems), 141.
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was for some time much impeded by the two field-pieces which he attempted to take along, so after crossing the Little Pee Dee he wheeled them off to the side of the road and left them in a swamp. He never afterwards en- cumbered himself with artillery. By marching day and night he arrived at Avery's Mill on Downing Creek, the castern branch of the Little Pee Dee River. From this point he detached Major James with a small party of volunteers to return to South Carolina to gain intelli- gence and procure recruits. He continued his march and pitched his camp for some time on the east side of the White Marsh near the head of the Waccamaw River in North Carolina.
There was now no organized body of troops in South Carolina. But Marion had abandoned neither the cause nor his State. He was soon to return to renew the contest in the swamps of the Pee Dee and Santee. Davie's faithful little band was still with him at Charlotte, and around Sumter were gathering the remnants of his dispersed corps, and gaining new recruits among the refugees from South Carolina, for the Whigs had not lost confidence in their leader, despite the disaster at Fishing Creek. Farther to the west Shelby and Clarke and Williams just beyond the border were devising new schemes of enterprise to invade again the State of which the British now appeared to have entire possession.
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CHAPTER XXXII
1780
LORD CORNWALLIS had achieved a great victory - a victory of which he had been by no means confident on his arrival at Camden on the night between the 13th and 14th of August. Indeed, it is clear from his dispatch to Lord George Germain that upon his arrival there he had found the situation quite as serious and alarming as Lord Raw- don's dispatches to him had represented them. So critical did he consider the position that he at once determined he had but the option of one of two decisive courses: either to retire or attempt the enemy.1 This alternative he weighed, and seeing but little to lose by defeat and much to gain by a victory, with the decision of his character he at once resolved to risk a battle. By the superior organi- zation and discipline of his own troops, upon which he had much relied, and by the utter want of organization on the part of the Americans and reckless folly of Gates, he had succeeded beyond his most sanguine hopes. But now that he had won his victory, and had had time to count his gains, his lordship began to realize that they were not as great as he had anticipated. He had defeated and de- stroyed the army which Congress had so reluctantly sent to the assistance of South Carolina. But was the State conquered? To this question he could give no satisfactory answer.
On June 4th, upon turning over the command to him, Sir Henry Clinton had written to Lord George Germain 1 Tarleton's Campaigns, 129.
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that he might venture to assert that there were few men in South Carolina who were not either our prisoners or in arms with us. But now how stood it at the end of three months? True, the original leaders of the Revolution were all prisoners in Charlestown; and the whole of the State's Continental soldiers, with a large part of those of Virginia and North Carolina, were in prison ships or cantonments in Christ Church Parish. But in their place had sprung up others all over the State. The British army had captured the Continentals and dispersed the militia which the State authorities had brought into the field. But now had arisen an entirely new class - men who were fighting for liberty and love of country; for a liberty the desire for which had been in a great measure inspired, not from the original civil cause of dispute, but from the insolence, tyranny, and cruelty with which his Majesty's military officers had endeavored to enslave the people. These men, without commissions even from the State, without organization under any form of law, with- out arms or ammunition other than the guns and rifles with which they hunted the fields for game, forming them- selves into voluntary bands, choosing their leaders for each special occasion, and with them consulting and deciding upon each particular move, had suddenly appeared in front of every division of his army, broken in upon his com- munications, and dauntlessly assailed his posts. In six weeks, from the 12th of July to the 27th of August, six- teen battles, great and small, had been fought in South Carolina, and in every one of these, except that of Camden, the Americans had been the assailants. And these fifteen attacks upon his outposts had been made in each instance by voluntary bands, who generally dispersed as soon as the object of the particular expedition had been accom- plished. But the number and audacity of these attacks
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were not the most alarming feature of the situation as he surveyed it. His field returns discovered losses which he could not afford. True, at Camden he at one blow of his vigorous arm destroyed the Continental army from which the South Carolinians had hoped for great assistance, and had killed, wounded, and taken prisoners of them 2070; but of these Marion had promptly recaptured 150, besides taking 33 of one of his best regiments, reducing the results of the victory to a loss to the Americans of 1920 men, at a cost to himself, with those lost at Camden (324) and those taken by Marion (33) of 357 of his best troops ; so that his net gain from this battle was the infliction of a comparative loss to his enemy of 1563 men. On the other hand, the Americans had inflicted a loss upon him in the other fifteen engagements of 1105, at a cost to them of 638, leaving to him the comparative loss of 467 men. In casting up these figures of men won and lost there was, it is true, the handsome balance in his favor of 1096. But there was an aspect of this account which was far from encouraging. Eliminating the battle of Camden, in which not a South Carolinian had been engaged except two offi- cers on the general staff,1 the people of the State, with their immediate neighbors of North Carolina and Georgia, had inflicted a loss upon his force of more than 1000 men, at a loss to themselves of little more than 600. Examining these returns still more closely, his lordship must have observed that in the twelve assaults upon his posts made by these volunteer bands, they had killed, wounded, and taken nearly 5002 of his troops, at a loss to themselves not a third as great.3 That except in the battle of Camden itself the greatest loss to the Americans had been at Fish- ing Creek, where Sumter had been surprised and lost 460
1 General Isaac Huger and Major Thomas Pinckney.
2 492. 3 162.
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men ; but that on the very next day Shelby, Clarke, and Williams, with a loss to themselves of but 13 men, had killed, wounded, and taken 223, and the day after Marion had further added a capture of 183, with a loss of but two wounded, thus bringing matters again nearly to equality. The results of the uprisings during these six weeks com- pletely dissipated the fond illusion that South Carolina was a conquered province.1
There was another cause which, in this connection, added greatly to Cornwallis's anxiety; and that was, be- sides the losses which the volunteers were inflicting upon his men, the climate was proving as unfriendly to them. It has been seen how the Seventy-first Regiment had suffered at the Cheraws, 100 sick of them having been sent away by Major McArthur when he was ordered to leave that post, who fell into the hands of the Whigs. The return of this regiment on the 15th of August, the eve of the
1 Governor Roosevelt in his Winning of the West thus contemptu- ously disposes of what was done in South Carolina during this time : "Except for an occasional guerilla party there was not a single organized body of American troops left south of Gates's broken and dispirited army. All the Southern lands lay at the feet of the conqueror. The British leaders, overbearing and arrogant, held almost unchecked sway throughout the Carolinas and Georgia, and looking northward they made ready for the conquest of Virginia. Their right flank was covered by the waters of the ocean, their left by the high mountain barrier chains, beyond which stretched the interminable forest, and they had as little thought of danger from the one side as the other" (251, 252).
The Governor can himself be as rash in his statements at times in regard to things of which he does not know as other authors whom he so severely criticises as he writes. The truth is, there was no moment from Huck's defeat at Williamson's plantation on the 12th of July when a British outpost was not in danger of attack, and in constant appre- hension of it. There was, it is true, but one regularly organized corps, but there was that one - Davie's gallant little band - and around that Sumter was gathering his partisan corps; and Marion was organizing his without even such a nucleus, and so were Clarke and Williams in the west.
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battle of Camden, told how their ranks had been thinned by death. The First Battalion mustered but 144, and the Second but 110 men present for duty. Major Wemyss's regi- ment, the Sixty-third, was greatly diminished by sickness.1 In his dispatch to the government at home, Cornwallis gave as the compelling reason which induced him to risk the battle, that if he had retreated, he must have aban- doned 800 sick at Camden. The effect of the climate was telling severely upon his officers. Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton had been sick of fever, and kept out of the field during the month before the battle, in which time much had been gained by the Whigs. He was now in the field again, but was soon to have a relapse, which would again deprive his lordship of his services. He himself was soon to suffer in an important emergency from the same cause. The unerring rifle of the backwoodsman, and the malaria of the swamps and rivers of Carolina, were thus telling heavily against him.
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