USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783 > Part 29
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to the last the reputation they had acquired in many a rude conflict. Most who fell in the action were of Marion's command. Among these Captain Perry and Lieutenant Jones were killed, and Lieutenant-Colonel John Baxter, who was very conspicuous from his gigantic size and full uniform, received five wounds. Major Swinton was also severely wounded.1 When their ammunition was expended these brave men were drawn off in perfect order. Very early in the action the enemy retired into the house and within a picketed garden, from the windows and fence of which the action was maintained.
The sun was down when the assailants were withdrawn, and this at this season of the year would make the combat at Shubrick's farm to have lasted three hours. Is is, says Johnson, confidently asserted that not a man left the ground while there remained to him a charge of ammuni- tion ; all were ready to return to it if supplied ; but there was none; unfortunately that captured at Dorchester by Lee had been forwarded directly to Greene's headquarters. Still Sumter had hope. The artillery had been ordered up, and it was possible that Captain Singleton had with him some spare powder. Pewter balls, Sumter reported, could have been made in plenty. The army was drawn across Quinby bridge, which had been repaired during the action, and encamped at the distance of three miles, leaving the cavalry to watch and control the movements of the enemy, and intending to renew the combat in the morning.
But, says the author from whom we have so much quoted and who has given the only full account of this unfortunate affair, the demon of discord was now working the ruin of the expedition.2 When the parties who had been engaged met and compared their losses and the cir-
1 James's Life of Marion, 126.
2 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II. 173.
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cumstances under which they fought, it was suggested to Marion's men that they had been exposed, whilst Sumter's own, with the exception of Colonel Taylor's command, had been spared, and the idea furnished, it was said, a sufficient pretext for disgust and retiring. Many of them moved off in the night; the infection was communicated to Sumter's men; and to complete the catastrophe, in the morning early Colonel Lee with his Legion took up the line of march for headquarters without consulting the wishes of the commanding general.1
It is difficult to understand Colonel Lee's account of this affair. He states that Marion, under his direction or sug- gestion, pressed his march, and having united with him, Lee, late in the evening, in front of the house, and seeing that no point of Coates's position was assailable with probable hope of success, reluctantly gave up the attempt.2 Besides ignoring Sumter's presence altogether, ignoring an action that had lasted for hours before he took part in it, he repre- sents Marion as only coming on the field late in the even- ing with him, and retiring without firing a gun, while in fact Marion had been fighting all the afternoon and had lost heavily. The most charitable view which can be taken of such misstatement is that suggested by Johnson, that his recollection had failed him.3 The expedition termi-
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 173.
2 Memoirs of the War of 1776 (Lee), 391-392.
3 Mr. Henry Lee, in his work in defence of his father's conduct in answers to Judge Johnson's strictures, admits that Lee's account of these affairs is not accurate. " However," he says, " it must be allowed that this branch of his narrative is defective." - Campaigns in the Carolinas (Lee), 433. In General Robert E. Lee's edition of his father's Memoirs, he puts a note, "The author forgot to relate that after his retreat from this position of Coates's it was attacked by Sumter and Marion with con- siderable spirit and some loss, but without success, in consequence chiefly of Sumter's failure to bring up his artillery." - Memoirs of the War of 1776 (Lee), 393.
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nated in still widening the breach which already existed between the distinguished officers engaged in it. Sumter directly charges Lee with having failed in everything he undertook during its course, a charge which the facts go far to sustain.
The numbers engaged in the battle have never been ac- curately ascertained. The British returns of commissary issues found in the baggage train gave 900 rations and for- age for 250 horses. Estimating for the cavalry at 150, there could not, says Johnson, have been less than 500 or 600 infantry. This is probably a correct estimate. The regiment was no doubt a full one, as it had recently arrived from Europe ; but the two flank companies, it must be recol- lected, were with Lord Rawdon, so that but eight remained with Colonel Coates. Allowing for the ordinary deductions of details and sick, between 500 and 600 would probably be the strength of the regiment under Coates. On the other side, Sumter, having all his own brigade, with the exception of Henry Hampton's regiment, and all of Marion's, it would be supposed that he must have had more than that number. He appears to have had five regiments of his own, Myd- elton's, Polk's, Taylor's, Lacey's, and Wade Hampton's, and Marion to have had four, Horry's, Maham's, Swinton's, and Baxter's; but these regiments, as they were called, were not usually even good-sized companies. If we take Colonel Taylor's as the average, 45, he had little over 450 exclusive of Lee's Legion, 150 strong. And, indeed, no doubt overestimating the British force, Sumter asserts that their infantry alone was superior to his whole force ; and that he attacked them with half of their number. From these insufficient data it is perhaps safe to conclude that in the fight at Shubrick's house there was no great disparity in the forces engaged. We may assume that, on the morn- ing of this day, British and American forces numbered
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each about 600 or 700 men. The losses on the American side fell upon Lee's Legion, Maham's regiment at the bridge, and upon Marion's infantry and Taylor's regiment at the house. Marion's and Taylor's men together lost more than 50 killed and wounded.1 Two of Lee's Legion were killed at the bridge and several wounded.2 The American loss was therefore probably at least 60 killed and wounded. Sumter, however, reported but 38 killed and wounded.3 In the ac- count of this battle published in The Royal Gazette " by au- thority," the British loss is admitted to have been 6 men killed, with an officer and 38 wounded. No mention is made of the loss of their rear guard, which numbered 100 men.4
If these figures are at all correct, it is a mistake to say, as does Johnson, that even after the departure of a part of his troops and the retirement of the Legion, Sumter still had a sufficient number to have held the enemy in a state of investment whilst he tried the effect of his artillery. Could he have induced Coates to come out and meet him in the field, he might well have counted upon a favorable result ; but he was in no position for an investment. He was, as Johnson admits, but twenty miles from Charlestown, at a place accessible by tide-water. Lord Rawdon was known to be moving down in force from Orangeburgh, and he himself fifteen miles below Monck's Corner, which is but sixteen miles from Goose Creek, where Lord Rawdon's force might already have arrived. There being, therefore, serious grounds for apprehending disaster, General Sumter resolved to retreat across the Santee.5
1 James's Life of Marion, 125.
2 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 173. Lee gives no numbers.
8 Letter to Greene, 25th of July, 1781, in Nightingale Collection, Year Book, City of Charleston, 1899, Appendix, 48.
4 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 170.
5 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 175; Sumter's letters, Nightingale Collection, Year Book, City of Charleston, 1899, Appendix, 49.
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The failure of this part of the expedition was doubtless primarily attributable to the withdrawal of Horry and Maham from Wadboo bridge without destroying it. It is said their failure to do so was owing to the appearance of Coates in force, whom they could not withstand. But this does not explain why it was not destroyed before. Sumter had despatched Maham, a bold and enterprising officer, to effect this before he began his advance, and yet it was not attempted until Horry's arrival. The next cause was Lee's delay in securing the prisoners taken on the road, under the mistaken belief that the bridge was at least a mile distant. Nor is it explained why the artillery was not brought into action. Then there was the want of coopera- tion, not to say insubordination, of Lee; and lastly, the jealousy between Sumter and Marion, which had unfortu- nately extended to their men. It is doubtful, however, in view of the whole situation, whether, under any circum- stances, Sumter could have risked a further delay so near the British lines, when once his first attack had failed.
Yet, though the principal object was not attained, observes Johnson, considerable benefits resulted from the expedition : the British interest was materially shaken, their party alarmed and humbled ; the spirit of the Whigs raised ; and the fact was announced to the world that the country was not conquered. Nor was it without serious injury to the enemy in actual loss: 150 prisoners were taken and 9 commissioned officers killed or wounded, besides the loss at Quinby, where one officer and 38 privates had been wounded and 6 privates killed. Stores to a large amount as well in the church as in four schooners that were cap- tured were destroyed; horses, wagons, and stores to a respectable amount were captured and carried off.
Among the latter was a prize remarkable for its extreme rarity in the American army. This was the sum of 720
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guineas in the paymaster's chest taken with the baggage at Quinby's bridge. Sumter that evening divided it among the soldiers, and so much hard money had perhaps never before been in possession of the army at one time. Had the general been more politic than liberal, the detention of it a day or two, continues the same author, might have prevented the departure of some who left him who were the better able and the more desirous to leave him after the receipt of the glittering guinea which fell to the share of each soldier.
Sumter recrossed the Santee and took post as directed by Greene, near Friday's Ferry, opposite Granby, leaving Marion to take charge of the country on the Santee. Marion took post at Cordes and afterwards at Peyre's plan- tation, near where the Santee canal afterwards opened into that river.
Thus ended the campaign which General Greene rather followed than led, from his return to South Carolina in April. He established a camp in the salubrious and delight- ful region of the High Hills of Santee on a plain at that time known as James Oldfield's, afterwards the plantation of Colonel John Singleton. There he went into repose during the extreme heat of the season, while Sumter and Marion watched below.
CHAPTER XV
1781
THERE had been no exchange of prisoners, except in a very few special cases, in the Southern Department, since the commencement of the war. The large number taken by the British at Charlestown and Camden in 1780 had rendered them indifferent in the matter -if indeed it was not against their policy to enter into any agreement looking to the release of the Continental officers and soldiers they held in Christ Church Parish and on the prison ships, as well as the distinguished exiles in Florida.
The prisoners taken upon the capitulation of Charles- town, civil and military, were treated at first with no great severity ; but as the war went on and others fell into the hands of the British, the treatment of all became harsh, and often cruel and infamous. It has been seen that many of the prominent citizens were exiled to St. Augustine. By the terms of the capitulation of Charlestown the Continental troops and sailors were to be conducted to a place to be agreed upon, where they were to remain prisoners until exchanged, and to be supplied with good wholesome provisions in such quantity as served out to the troops of his Britannic Majesty. In pursuance of this, contiguous buildings in the town were appropriated for the private soldiers, and the officers of the army and navy were sent to the barracks at Haddrell's Point in Christ
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Church Parish, just opposite the town. And as the bar- racks there were not sufficient for the number, 274, some of the officers obtained lodgings in the houses, and some built huts within the limits of their paroles, six miles from the point. General Moultrie and Colonel C. C. Pinckney were in excellent quarters at Colonel Charles Pinckney's place, called Snee Farm. In a very little time all were comfortably settled with little gardens about them. At first General Patterson, the commandant, seemed inclined to treat the prisoners with courtesy and leniency - espe- cially General Moultrie, whom he put in personal charge of all his co-prisoners. Nor can it be denied that these were a troublesome set to deal with. Moultrie states that they were ungovernable, which was not to be won- dered at, when more than two hundred men from differ- ent States, of different dispositions, some of them very uncouth gentlemen, as it was said, were huddled up together in idleness in barracks. He adds that it was not surprising that there should be continued disputes and frequent duels. General McIntosh, who was the senior officer, complained to Moultrie of the disorderly conduct of some of those quartered with him in the barracks ; whereupon Moultrie wrote to him to inform them that he considered himself authorized, notwithstanding they were all prisoners of war, to order court-martial upon any who should misbehave, and to forward the sentences with his approval or disapproval to Congress; that in this the British commandant agreed with him, and would send a flag to Congress for this purpose. At first four officers from each State line were allowed to remain in town to superintend and look after the sick and wounded of their respective commands ; but the privilege was withdrawn, as it was alleged, because of the escape of Justice Pendleton, but probably from some other motive.
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Judge Pendleton's case was this.1 He was informed of a plot of a party of Tories to take him from his quarter, at night, and hang him at the town gate, for what cause is not told. Upon this information he counterfeited Major Benson's, the brigade major's, handwriting, and made out a pass by which he escaped. Upon this Lord Cornwallis sent for Moultrie and required him to order Pendleton back, or that the prisoners at Haddrell's Point would suffer for it. The general promptly replied that he was not responsible for any man's parole but his own ; espe- cially for that of a civilian over whom he had no control. Cornwallis, however, insisted that he had the right to discriminate, and to place some one in confinement in Judge Pendleton's place. Whereupon General Moultrie undertook to write to Congress and lay the matter before that body, which he did, Lord Cornwallis forwarding the letter to its destination.
The next cause of complaint was the hilarious celebra- tion of the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July by the officers in the barracks, for which Moultrie was again called upon to answer. This he did with great firmness and dignity. After giving an account of the affair, and regretting to find that some pistols had been fired, he replied that it was by no means inconsistent with their paroles to have celebrated the day. "I go no farther back than the present war," he wrote; " the British troops have given us several precedents of it; the Seventh Regi- ment, now in Charlestown, celebrated the anniversary of St. George's Day, when prisoners at Carlisle; and the
1 Henry Pendleton, a Virginian, who came to South Carolina and was a member of the bar in 1771. - See Hist. of So. Ca. under Roy. Gov. (McCrady), 481. He was elected a judge under the constitution of 1776, with Chief Justice William Henry Drayton, John Mathews, and Thomas Bee. He had been captured at the taking of Charlestown.
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convention troops [i.e. Burgoyne's army ] kept the birthday of his Britannic Majesty both in the year '78 and '79, with- out the harsh animadversion of 'indecent abuse of lenity ' and 'gross outrage.' " The result was, however, an order requiring the officers to deliver up all their firearms, and a general curtailment of their privileges, which, it must be admitted, had up to this time been very considerable.
Upon seeing, in the paper of the 29th of August, 1780, an account of the arrest of the citizens, who were soon after sent to St. Augustine, General Moultrie promptly protested against it, and asked leave to send an officer to Congress to represent this grievance. But to this Balfour's reply was : "The commandant will not return any answer to a letter wrote in such exceptionable and unwarrantable terms as that to him from General Moultrie dated the 1st instant. Nor will he receive any further application from him upon the subject of it." 1 But General Moultrie was not to be silenced in the face of wrong, even though he was in the power of those to whom he wrote. When Camden and Fishing Creek multiplied the number of prisoners, and there was no more room for them in the barracks and contiguous buildings in the town, the Conti- mental soldiers who had been taken in Charlestown, and whose treatment had been expressly stipulated for in the terms of capitulation, were removed from the quarters pro- vided under the terms of surrender, and were crowded on board the prison ships in such numbers that some could not find room even to lie down. The newly taken prison- ers shared the same fate. Against this violation of the terms of the capitulation Moultrie fearlessly and indig- nantly protested. To Colonel Balfour, the commandant since the removal of General Patterson, he wrote, on the 16th of October, 1780 : -
1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. II, 138-139.
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" SIR: However my letter may be thought by you 'to be wrote in exceptionable and unwarrantable terms,' yet I cannot be deterred from representing matters of such consequence as I am now con- strained to do in the strongest manner. Though it is indifferent to me whether I write to you or to the commissary of prisoners on trifling applications, yet when my duty calls upon me loudly to remonstrate against a proceeding of so high a nature as a violation of a solemn capitulation, I then think it necessary to make my appli- cation as near the fountain head as possible. I therefore, sir, address myself to you to complain of a great breach of the capitulation in sending the Continental soldiers on board prison ships (the truth of which I have not the least doubt of), as part of the agreement for which the town was delivered up to Sir Henry Clinton was that the Continental soldiers should be kept in some contiguous building in the town, as appears by the following extract from their Excellencies, Sir Henry Clinton and Admiral Arbuthnot's letter of the 12th of May, 1780, antecedent to the surrender :-
"'SIR : We have to request that you will propose some proper contiguous building in the town for the residence of the private soldiers, prisoners of war not to be on parole. These will be, of course, such as may in discretion be asked.'
" The barracks and some adjacent houses were then proposed and agreed upon ; as a proof of which the soldiers have been confined in those buildings from the very instant of the surrender till this pres- ent removal, which I do most solemnly protest against, and complain to you, sir, of a direct violation of the third article of capitulation, and demand that the Continental soldiers be ordered back to the bar- racks and other houses in which they were first confined."
This was no doubt true ; the third article of capitulation had expressly provided that the Continental troops and sailors with their baggage should be conducted to a place to be agreed on, where they shall remain prisoners of war until exchanged. But Balfour did not deign to discuss the matter. He curtly replied, "That he would do as he pleased with the prisoners for the good of his Majesty's service, and not as General Moultrie pleases." 1
1 Moultrie's Memoirs, vol. II, 142 ; Ramsay's Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 257, 258.
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" After the defeat of General Gates," says Doctor Peter Fayssoux, the Continental surgeon left in charge of the American prisoners,1 "our sufferings commenced. The British appeared to have adopted a different mode of con- duct towards their prisoners, and proceeded from one step to another until they fully displayed themselves void of faith, honor, or humanity, and capable of the most savage acts of barbarity.
"The unhappy men who belonged to the militia and were taken prisoners on Gates's defeat, experienced the first effects of the cruelty of the new system. These men were confined on board prison ships in numbers by no means proportioned to the size of the vessels, immediately after a march of 120 miles in the most sickly season of this unhealthy climate.
" These vessels were in general infected with small-pox ; very few of the prisoners had gone through that disorder. A representation was made to the British commandant of their situation, and permission was obtained for one of our surgeons to inoculate them - this was the utmost extrem- ity of their humanity. The wretched objects were still confined on board of the prison ships and fed on salt pro- visions without the least medical aid, or any kind of proper nourishment. The effect that naturally followed was a small-pox with a fever of the putrid type, and to such as survived the small-pox a putrid dysentery, and from these causes the deaths of at least 150 of the unhappy victims. Such were the appearances and such was the generality of the cases brought to the general hospital after the eruption of the small-pox; before the eruption not a single individual was suffered to be brought on shore."
Upwards of 800 of these prisoners, nearly one-third 1 Gibbes's Documentary Hist. (1781-82), 117, 121.
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of the whole, exhausted by a variety of suffering, expired in the short space of thirteen months' captivity. When the general exchange took place in June, 1781, out of 1900,1 there were only 740 restored to the service of their country. But it was not by death alone, says Ramsay, that the Americans were deprived of their soldiers. Lord Charles Greville Montagu, the former Governor of South Carolina, who, after leaving the province in 1773, had fre- quently declared himself warmly attached to the liberties of America, and had actually, it was said, offered his services to Dr. Franklin in Paris to take a command in the army of Congress, failing to find employment on this side of the contest, had entered the service on the other and obtained leave to raise a regiment from among the rebels taken prisoners.2 He arrived in Charlestown after the capitulation, and applied himself to the task of inducing the Continental soldiers to desert the cause in which they were enlisted, and to join his regiment. Indeed, it is be- lieved that this was one of the objects in view which in- duced the vigorous treatment of the prisoners, in violation of the terms of capitulation. His lordship succeeded in enlisting 530 of them in the British service.3 His return
1 Ramsay's Hist. of the Revolution in So. Ca., vol. II, 288. This is Ramsay's statement; but which troops constituted the 1900 of which he speaks we do not know. The Continental troops surrendered at Charles- town on the 12th of May, 1780, numbered 2650. - Hist. of So. Ca. in the Revolution (McCrady), 507.
2 Lord Charles Greville Montagu, son of Robert, third Duke of Man- chester, Governor of South Carolina from 1766 to 1773. - Hist. of So. Ca. under Roy. Gov. (McCrady), 587 et seq. Appointed captain of the Eighty-eighth Foot 12th of December, 1780; major in the army 12th of June, 1782. - Clinton-Cornwallis Controversy, vol. II, Index.
3 These recruits for the British army from the American prisoners were from the Continental line ; and, considering the character of the men of the rank and file of that body, in which were forced, by way of punish- ment, all men convicted of being idle, lewd, disorderly, or sturdy beggars,
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to South Carolina seems really to have been more with the purpose of seducing the upholders of the American cause from their allegiance to it than any military service of his own in the field, for not only did he use the dis- tressed condition of the Continental soldiers to induce them to accept his offer in preference to the horrors of a prison ship by the specious promise that they should be em- ployed in the West Indies and not against their country- men in the United States, but he aimed higher, - to seduce even the noble Moultrie himself from the cause of his coun- try. The first attempt in this direction was made by Colonel Balfour upon General Moultrie's son. On the 14th of January, 1781, this officer wrote as follows: -
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