USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783 > Part 3
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MAPS AND PLANS
1. THE BATTLE-FIELDS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1775-1782 Frontispiece
BETWEEN PAGES
2. PLAN OF BATTLE OF HOBKIRKS HILL · 181-182
3. PLAN OF SIEGE OF NINETY SIX . . 277-278
4. PLAN OF BATTLE OF THE EUTAWS . 440-441
5. MAP SHOWING SEAT OF WAR AFTER EUTAW . 480-481
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA IN THE REVOLUTION, 1780-1783
CHAPTER I
1780
SINCE his defeat at Camden, Gates, crushed in spirit and subdued in tone, had been in Hillsboro, North Carolina, making feeble efforts to collect and organize the shattered remnants of his vanquished army. While Davie with his little band, and Sumter, Marion, Lacey, Hill, the Hamp- tons, Bratton, Winn, Williams, and McCall of South Carolina; Shelby, Sevier, Cleveland, Davidson, Graham, and the McDowells of North Carolina, and Campbell all the way from Virginia, and Clark from Georgia, were organizing volunteer partisan corps and assailing upon every opportunity the British outposts, fighting pitched battles, often with victory, and capturing large numbers of the enemy, the remains of the Continental army were lying idle in North Carolina - waiting, it was said, for reinforcements and supplies.
Congress had not indicated any dissatisfaction with the conduct of Gates when the news of his defeat and the destruction of his army had been first received. It was not, indeed, until near two months after-the 18th of October, 1780 - that a resolution was passed requiring the Commander-in-chief to order a court of inquiry upon his conduct, and to appoint some other officer to the command
VOL. IV. - B
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of the Southern army in the meantime. General Wash- ington upon this at once appointed Major General Nathan- ael Greene, of Rhode Island, to the field hitherto so unfortunate to Continental officers.
General Greene, who was now to assume command of the Southern Department, and to hold it until the end of the struggle, was a native of Rhode Island, born the 27th of May, 1742, the son of a Quaker who followed the joint occupations of blacksmith and farmer. From his early youth he was employed in assisting his father, but suc- ceeded, notwithstanding, in acquiring much general in- formation, and made a special study of mathematics, history, and law. At Coventry, where he removed to take charge of a forge of his own, he was the first to establish a public school; and in 1770 he was chosen a member of the General Assembly of Rhode Island. Sympathizing strongly with the Revolutionists he, in 1774, joined the Kentish Guards, and on this account was expelled from the Society of Friends. Regretting but disregarding this action of the religious body to which he had belonged, he devoted himself to the study of the science of war through such books as he could obtain, chief of which were Cæsar's campaigns and Turenne's Memoirs. So prominent had he become in military matters of the colony that, when the first blood of the Revolution was shed at Lexington, he was at once made Brigadier General to command "the army of observation " of fifteen hundred men raised by Rhode Island, the greater part of which, by the 8th of May, 1775, was organized and on its march to Boston. So efficient an officer did he prove to be that, by the time Washington reached Boston and assumed command of the American forces there, he regarded Greene's brigade, though raw and irregular and undisciplined, "under much better government than any around Boston"; and not
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long after Colonel Reed, Washington's military secretary, wrote that Greene's "command consisted of three regi- ments, then the best disciplined and appointed in the whole American army." 1 He did not take part at Bunker Hill on the 17th, for he was stationed on the opposite end of the line. On the evacuation of Boston, Greene marched with Washington to New York, where, on August 9, he was promoted to the rank of Major General, and the troops on Long Island were formed into a division under his command. Having reached this high position without ever having been engaged in battle, General Greene was so unfortunate as to be taken ill just at the time when the battle of Long Island took place.
Greene first came under fire in the action at Harlem Plains on the 16th of September. It was by his advice that the attempt was made to hold Fort Washington, and upon its surrender with the garrison, Washington and himself were equally blamed, he for his advice, and Washington for his indecision, whereby the untenable position had not been evacuated. This was one of the events upon which the opposition to Washington relied for his disparagement. As a division commander General Greene had taken part in the battle of Trenton, at Brunswick, at Brandywine, at Germantown, and at Monmouth ; also at the siege of New- port, Rhode Island, under Sullivan. At Washington's re- quest, in 1778, he had taken charge of the quartermaster's department, then in a state of chaos, upon the condition, however, that he should not lose his right of command in action - a condition which he enforced at the battle of Monmouth. Though Washington, who had practically forced the office upon him, declared that he had performed the duties of the position to his satisfaction, it cannot be
1 Great Commanders Series, General Greene, by Francis Vinton Greene, 1893, 23-24.
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said that he had made any marked success in that depart- ment - his administration of it, indeed, was assailed as in- competent and extravagant, and even grave charges were intimated, but as these were attributed to the same source as the calumny against Washington himself, they were treated alike.1 His abrupt, if justifiable, resignation in
1 We do not wish to encumber these pages with anything unnecessary to the history of South Carolina, to which this work is devoted. We shall not therefore go at any length into the controversy of the times in regard to the administration of the quartermaster's department by General Greene in 1778-80, but will content ourselves generally with Washing- ton's assurance that he had conducted the various important duties of it with capacity and diligence, and altogether to his satisfaction, Washing- ton adding, " and as far as I had any opportunity of knowing, with the strictest integrity." (Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. I, 147.) In view, however, of events which occurred at the close of his command in South Carolina, clouding his reputation, but from which it is fair to say that Con- gress, as far as it could, ultimately vindicated his memory, we must add that very recently it has come to light, that, upon assuming the duties of that office, General Greene, the quartermaster, and Colonel Wadsworth, the commissary general, had formed a secret business partnership with Barnabas Deane, of Connecticut, the brother of Silas Deane, under the name of Barnabas Deane & Co., the business of which was that of general traders in staples and manufactures that were most needed for the use of the army, or that could be most advantageously exchanged for provisions or forage, the very articles of which these officers, as quartermaster and commissary general were purchasers for the government; the impro- priety of which will be more appreciated when it is remembered that the emoluments of these officers consisted in commissions upon their accounts. Moreover that it appears from letters of General Greene which have been found that at his instance the most profound secrecy was observed as to the connection of Colonel Wadsworth and himself with the matter, Greene writing to Wadsworth: -
" You may remember I wrote you sometime since that I was desirous that this copartnership between Mr. Deane, you, and myself should be kept a secret. I must beg leave to impress this matter upon you again, and to request you to enjoin it upon Mr. Deane. The nearest friend I have in the world shall not know of it from me, and it is my wish that no mortal person should be acquainted with the persons forming the company except us three. I would not wish Mr. Deane even to let his brother
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consequence, in 1780, had nearly lost him his commission in the line as well. Upon the treason of Arnold he had been appointed president of the court which tried and con- demned Major André to death; and upon his application for the command of West Point it had been immediately granted him, General Washington taking occasion to ob- serve, however, that it would not be an independent com- mand, as he himself would probably make his headquarters in that vicinity. Such was the career of the officer now sent to command the Southern Department. He had cer- tainly seen some service, and had had experience, not only in the field, but, what was of importance, in the administra- tive department of an army as well. He had not as yet, however, exercised an independent command, nor conducted a battle except under the eye and direction of another. He was now for the first time to be thrown entirely upon his own resources in the field, and that in a department which covered the whole country south of Pennsylvania,
know it. Not that I apprehend any injury from him ; but he may inad- vertently let it out into the broad world, and then, I am persuaded, it would work us a public injury," etc.
It also appears that, to preserve this secrecy, as an additional precaution against discovery it was agreed that the correspondence between the par- ties should be conducted partly in cipher for which an " alphabet of figures" was adopted, Greene urging also the use of a fictitious name, as that would "draw another shade of obscurity over the business, and render it impossible to find out their connection." Nevertheless, the author from whose article this account is taken closes his paper with this statement, " The business reputation of the firm [i.e. Barnabas Deane & Co.] was high at home and abroad ; the integrity and honor of its partners witlı- out stain ; nor is there a vestige of evidence that its founders took undue advantage of their official positions to extend the business or increase the profits of the firm."
See the whole story in an article over the signature of J. Hammond Trumbull, LL.D., entitled " A business Firm of the Revolution, Barnabas Deane & Co.," in vol. XII (1884) of the Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, edited by Mrs. Martha J. Lamb, pp. 17-28.
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and in which as yet no Continental officer had achieved success or glory.
The appointment of General Greene had been solicited by John Mathews, a delegate in Congress from South Carolina, who, as chairman of the committee of that body conferring with Washington upon the condition of the army, was in a position to entitle his opinion, as to the choice of a commander, to great weight, to which he added the assurance that he was authorized to make the request by the delegates of the three Southern States. "Besides my own inclination to this choice," wrote Washington to Greene on the 14th of October, 1780, informing him of his ap- pointment, "I have the satisfaction to inform you that from a letter I have received it concurs with the wishes of the delegates of the three Southern States most immediately interested in the present operations of the enemy, and I have no doubt it will be perfectly agreeable to the senti- ments of the whole." 1 Writing to Mr. Mathews he said, " You have your wish in the officer appointed to the South- ern command -I think I am giving you a general, but what can a general do without men, without arms, without clothing, without shoes, without provisions ? " 2
General Greene was at West Point, to the command of which he had been assigned, as we have seen, when he received Washington's letter informing him of his new appointment. Washington's headquarters were at the time at Prakeness, near Passaic Falls, in New Jersey, and his letter informed Greene that his instructions would be prepared when he arrived there on his journey to his new field. Greene set out upon his journey on the 18th of October, and found his instructions at headquarters, as he had been told to expect. These directed him to pro- ceed at once to the Southern army in North Carolina and 1 Washington's Writings, vol. VII, 257. 2 Ibid., 277.
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to take command. Uninformed as he was, wrote Wash- ington, of the enemy's force in that quarter, or even of their own, or of their resources for carrying on the war, he could give no positive instructions, but must leave Greene to govern himself entirely according to his own prudence and judgment. Aware that the nature of the command would offer embarrassment of a singular and complicated nature, he relied, he said, upon Greene's abilities and exer- tions for everything his means would enable him to effect. He gave him a letter to Congress informing that body of his appointment, and requesting them to afford him such support as the situation and good of the service demanded. Greene was directed to take the orders of Congress on his way to his command, and was informed that Washington proposed to send Baron Steuben to the South with him, whom he was to employ as Inspector General with suit- able rank if Congress approved, and that he had put Major Lee's corps under marching orders to join him.1
Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, General Greene pro- ceeded at once to inform himself as fully as he could of the force and condition of the Southern army, and to make provision for supplying its present and future wants. From Congress he could obtain nothing. And when the depressed credit and empty coffers of Congress dissipated every hope of present relief, he tried to obtain a voluntary contribution or loan among the merchants with which to procure clothing for the few troops in the field. This also failed. Colonel Joseph Reed, then Governor of Pennsyl- vania,2 let him have some arms from the depot of that State, - and even the wagons to transport them were principally
1 Washington's Writings, vol. VII, 271 ; Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. I, 326.
2 Colonel Reed is spoken of by Johnson and others as Governor, and we have followed the usual title given ; but he was not in fact a Gov-
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
obtained from his kindness - the Governor relying on the armories of the United States and the pledge of Washing- ton for his indemnity. All the support or encouragement General Greene received from Congress was the annexa- tion of Delaware and Maryland to his department, the money to bear the expense of his journey to his command, and the promise to promote Major Henry Lee to a lieu- tenant colonelcy.1
On the 23d of November General Greene took his way to the South, accompanied by Baron Steuben and his two aids, Major Burnet and Colonel Lewis Morris, Jr.2 By the re- duction of the Virginia contingent in number of men to each regiment, and still more by the actually reduced state of the numbers in service, many officers of the Virginia Con- tinental line were now out of employment, and from these General Greene selected the additional members of his staff. Colonel Edward Carrington was appointed Quarter- master General, and Captains Nathaniel Pendleton and William Pierce, Jr., aides-de-camp. To Major Robert Forsyth, who was in the last days of the war to involve him, whether consciously or not, in a most corrupt and disgrace- ful affair, he offered the post of commissary of prisoners, and upon his declining it, recommended him to the Com- missary General for the post of his deputy in the Southern Department.3
In the grand ministerial plan of operations by which, it will be recollected, the war was to be carried by the Brit- ish "from South to North," Sir Henry Clinton, the Com-
ernor. He was President of the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania, an office in which he exercised the duties of Governor, and hence so called.
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. I, 328.
2 Ibid., 329. Heitman in his Register of Continental Officers gives Major Burnet's name as Robert ; but in three letters in the Sumter MSS., signed by him, the initial J is used - " J. Burnet."
8 Ibid., 333.
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mander-in-chief, was to have sent an expedition to Virginia to meet the victorious Cornwallis as he marched in triumph from South Carolina, and together they were to move on to Baltimore and then on farther north. This plan, as we have seen, had been interrupted by the partisan bands of the South, and Lord Cornwallis had been compelled to fall back to Winnsboro in South Carolina, there to wait for reinforcements under Leslie, who had been de- spatched by Sir Henry Clinton to Virginia in accordance with the plan, but who was now diverted to South Carolina to make up for the losses inflicted upon his lordship.
On reaching Virginia, General Greene found that the expedition which had sailed from New York under General Leslie had, in obedience to first orders, put into Chesa- peake, and that Leslie had taken possession of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and had proceeded to secure possession of both places by strongly fortifying the latter. Corn- wallis's orders calling him to his assistance, by the way of Charlestown, had not yet reached Leslie, and Virginia was now intent only on her own defence against this threaten- ing invasion. Leaving Baron Steuben to command in that State, Greene pressed on to Hillsboro. Arriving there, he found the place abandoned both by the officers of the State and the Continental army. The latter had been moved forward to Charlotte, and the invasion of Leslie had frightened the former away to Halifax in apprehension of danger to that quarter of North Carolina. Informing Governor Nash 1 at Halifax by letter that he had provided
1 Abner Nash, member of the Provincial Congress of North Carolina in 1776, speaker of that body, and also of the Senate in 1779. Gov- ernor from 1779 to 1781. A brother of General Francis Nash, who had commanded the First North Carolina Continental Regiment at the battle of Fort Moultrie, and was afterwards killed at Germantown.
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for the defence against Leslie, and urging that the Gov- ernor should turn his attention to the more pressing object of preparing to meet Lord Cornwallis in the opposite quar- ter, he hurried on to Charlotte, where he arrived on the 2d of December, and assumed command on the 4th, 1780.
On reaching Charlotte, Greene found that he had under his command the celebrated Daniel Morgan, who had served with him at the siege of Boston, and afterwards had joined Arnold's expedition to Canada, in which, after suffering great hardships, he had been made prisoner, and upon being exchanged had greatly distinguished himself at Saratoga, but had since resigned. As early as the 16th of June, Congress had directed that " Daniel Morgan of the Virginia line " with the old rank of Colonel should be " em- ployed in the Southern army as Major General Gates should direct." It does not appear that Morgan had been in any haste to avail himself of the honor of serving under the hero of Saratoga ; he, himself one of the most distinguished leaders the Revolution had produced, like Schuyler, had had just cause to be aggrieved at the slight recognition by Gates of his services in the capture of Burgoyne. But, when two months after his appointment he heard of the defeat at Camden and dispersion of Gates's army, he hurried to the scene of disaster, and before the end of September arrived at Hillsboro.1 He brought with him only a few followers - young men who had come to share in the ser- vice and honor of helping to retrieve the cause in the South. Gates had gladly welcomed him, and had drafted four hun- dred Continental infantry under Lieutenant Colonel Howard of the Maryland line,2 two companies of Vir- ginia militia under Captains Triplett and Taite, and the
1 Bancroft's Hist. of the U. S., vol. V, 476 (ed. 1888).
2 John Eager Howard of Maryland. Then commanding Second Mary- land Continental Regiment.
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remnants of the cavalry of Colonel White and of Colonel William Washington, which had been cut up at Lenud's Ferry on the 8th of May, and had since been out of action, now amounting to one hundred men, as an independent corps for his command. 1 To these were added a company of sixty riflemen under the command of Major Rose. Colonel White, who was in disrepute, had been given a leave of absence. In the meanwhile Congress had promoted Morgan to the rank of Brigadier General, his commission being dated 13th of October, 1780.
General Gates had made some reorganization of the shattered fragments of his army before the arrival of General Greene. The remnants of the Maryland and Delaware regiments had been consolidated into one, and the super- numerary officers sent to their respective States to obtain recruits and prepare them for service. This consolidated regiment was placed under the command of Colonel Otho H. Williams of Maryland,2 and to it was added a company of light infantry. About the 16th of September, Colonel Buford had arrived from Virginia with what was left of his unfortunate regiment,3 reënforced by about two hundred raw recruits, all of them in ragged condition ; and on the 18th the remains of Colonel Porterfield's corps,4 about fifty
1 Memoirs of the War of 1776 (Lee), 222. Johnson puts the number of White's and Washington's cavalry at but seventy. Life of Greene, vol. I, 313.
2 Otho Holland Williams entered the service as First Lieutenant, Cresap's Company Maryland Riflemen, June 21, 1775; Major of Stephenson's Maryland and Virginia Regiment of Riflemen, June 27, 1776 ; wounded at Fort Washington, November 16, 1776; Colonel Sixth Maryland, December 10, 1776 ; transferred to First Maryland, January 1, 1781 .- Heitman.
' For an account of the defeat and slaughter of Buford's regiment on the 29th of May, 1780, see Hist. of So. Ca. in the Revolution, 1775-80 (McCrady), 519, 523.
* See Ibid., 674, 675.
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HISTORY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
effective men, had come in under Captain Drew. General Gist had gone home to Maryland to superintend recruiting there. General Smallwood had remained, as he was com- missioned by the State of North Carolina to a command in the militia. Upon Cornwallis's retreat, after the destruc- tion of Ferguson's party at King's Mountain, Gates had advanced to Charlotte, and Smallwood had taken post at Providence, six miles below.
Greene's first hours of command were brightened by the news of a bloodless success by Colonel Washington. Colonel Rowland Rugeley, at whose house, it will be recol- lected, Governor Rutledge had nearly been overtaken by Tarleton, when escaping from Charlestown in May, 1 had since been commissioned in the British militia, and was just about to be appointed a Brigadier General in that ser- vice. A stockade had been made around his house, and in it he had collected 112 men under his command. Against this post Morgan sent Colonel Washington with a small force. Washington, repeating Gillespie's device in the capture of Mills's militia at Hunt's Bluff, in August, 2 threw up a few feet of earth into the form of an earthwork, and, mounting behind it some logs with the appearance of field guns, demanded an immediate surrender. Rugeley, de-
ceived and frightened by the appearance of artillery, obeyed the summons and surrendered with his whole party.3 " Rugeley will not be made a brigadier," wrote Cornwallis to Tarleton. "He surrendered, without firing a shot, him- self and 103 rank and file, to the cavalry only. A deserter of Morgan assures us that the infantry men never came within three miles of the house." 4
1 Hist. of So. Ca. in the Revolution, 1775-80 (McCrady), 517.
2 Ibid., 646.
3 Ramsay's Revolution of So. Ca., vol. II, 187-188.
4 Tarleton's Campaigns, 205.
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But besides this pleasing incident Greene found the con- dition of things deplorable indeed. The whole number of regulars by the returns made to him did not exceed eleven hundred, and of these eight hundred could not be mustered with arms and clothing fit for duty. Such was the condi- tion of some of Washington's few cavalry that they were ordered back to Virginia, upon his representation that they were too naked to be put upon service. The country around Charlotte was exhausted. It had been the scene of opera- tion on both sides for the last six months, and first one army and then the other had lived upon it. His army was then subsisting by small daily collections made upon the credit and by the influence of individuals who had patriot- ically engaged in the business. Indeed, the country about him was so much exhausted that Colonel William Polk, the commissary then acting as such from mere patriotism, declared the army could not subsist for a week longer. To draw provisions from any distance was impracticable for want of the means of transportation. Colonel Polk declined any longer to continue the struggle to supply the army. General Greene determined at once to remove the army to another position and to find a commissary.1
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