USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783 > Part 41
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8 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 266.
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after he was ready to march he had been detained there for no other cause. A small supply had arrived before the march of the main army, and he had despatched officers in the hope of obtaining some addition to his stock from the stores cap- tured at Yorktown. But no ammunition had arrived, whilst all were clamoring, from Georgia to Santee, for cartridges.1
The quartermaster's department was also in such a con- dition that, had the army depended upon it for subsistence, General Greene could not have ventured to advance. Indeed, to relieve this department of this heavy part of its duties was one of the principal motives for taking the position at Round O.2 Colonel Lee thus grandiloquently describes the section, into which he now for the first time entered.3 The first day's march, he says, brought the detachments to the country settled by the original emigrants into Carolina. The scene was both new and delightful. Vestiges, though clouded by war, every- where appeared of the wealth and taste of the inhabit- ants. Spacious edifices, rich and elegant gardens, with luxuriant and extensive rice plantations, were to be seen on every side. This change in the aspect of inanimate nature could not fail to excite emotions of pleasure the more vivid because so rare. During our continued marches and countermarches never before had we been solaced with the prospect of so much comfort. Here we were not confined to one solitary mansion where a few, and a few only, might enjoy the charms of taste and the luxury of opulence. The rich repast was widespread, and when to the exterior was added the fashion, politeness, and hospital ity of the interior, we became enraptured with our changed condition, and the resolve of never yielding up this charm ing region but with life became universal. To crown ou
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 268. 2 Ibid.
3 Memoirs of the War of 1776, 525.
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bliss, the fair sex shone in its brightest lustre. With the ripest and most symmetrical beauty, our fair compatriots blended sentimental dignity and delicate refinement, the sympathetic shade of melancholy, and the dawning smile of hope, the arrival of their new guests opening to them the prospect of happier times. In more prosaic language, Greene had now been able to move the army into a rich and plentiful country, which had been comparatively little devastated by the war. Prévost had made a rapid incur- sion through it in 1779, nearly three years before, and had done some mischief, and during the siege of Charlestown, two years before, the British foraging parties had made free with stock and provisions ; but for more than eighteen months this part of the country had suffered little, Marion and Harden in their raids doing as little damage as possi- ble to the property of the people, who they knew at heart were in sympathy with their cause. True it was that many of the estates of the Whigs had been sequestered by the British authorities and maintained for the supply of their army. But this measure had the good effect, in the case of those owners who had fled to the American camp, or been imprisoned, of preserving these plantations in at least some degree of order, though Governor Mathews had occasion to observe to General Leslie that in many cases they had been stripped of negroes and of horses and cattle. In assuming the position at Round O, therefore, Greene had greatly improved the opportunity of subsisting his army, while he added to its strength by releasing so many more of those who had yet regarded themselves bound by their paroles.
There was another consideration of great importance in the move to this position. It had at first been determined by Governor Rutledge and his Council to convene the General Assembly at Camden, but General Greene, after
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his excursion to Dorchester, had, with an escort of cavalry, reconnoitred the country between the Edisto and Ashepoo and found it possessed in his opinion of sufficient military advantages to admit his securing Jacksonborough from danger.
He had therefore warmly pressed the Governor and Council to convene the Legislature at this place, for the double purpose of presenting on the one hand the evidence of a complete recovery of the State, while at the same time it held them secure from any sudden attempt from the Loyalists of the Saluda or Deep River, such as had been successfully made on Governor Burke in North Carolina, and was afterward repeated in the Georgia Legis- lature. Boldness and caution alike therefore sanctioned the holding of the Legislature at Jacksonborough, which the position of the army now fully covered.1
Colonel John Laurens, who had been included in the capitulation of Charlestown, had been soon released, his exchange having been expedited by Congress for the pur- pose of sending him on a special embassy to Paris, that he might urge the necessity of a vigorous cooperation on the part of France. He had sailed in February, 1781, and there, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin and Count De Vergennes, arranged the plan of the campaign of the year which eventuated in the surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and finally in a termination of the war. Within six months from the day Colonel Laurens left America he returned and brought with him the concerted plan of combined operations. Ardent to rejoin the army, he remained only long enough at Philadelphia to make a report of his nego- tiations to Congress, before setting out to resume his place as one of the aids of General Washington. He was then at his post in the field again when the operations he had arranged for in the cabinet at Paris began. In the course
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 278.
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of the siege he, with Colonel Hamilton, led the storming parties at Yorktown which hastened the surrender of the British. He had thus had the honor of negotiating the articles of Cornwallis's capitulation on behalf of Washing- ton. This concluded, he hastened at once to rejoin his comrades in his native State in their struggle for its re- covery, now so far advanced to a successful completion.1 General Greene at once formed and placed under his com- mand a detachment charged with cooperating in the meas- ures previously adopted for confining the enemy to the limits to which he was now restricted.
Laurens was so great a favorite, and so well known in the Low-Country of South Carolina, that he soon found the means of opening a communication with Charlestown, and through one of the channels of infor- mation he had opened he learned, on the 25th of December, the rumor that a fleet from Ireland with three thousand troops on board was within two days' sail of the bar; that some of the officers had actually arrived, and that a reën- forcement of two thousand more was hourly expected from New York. Lee, who was at the same time with his detachment low down Ashley River, received the same intelligence ; and reeking couriers from both these officers arrived at the same moment in the American camp. General Greene received these reports as confirmation of an event he had repeatedly foretold, that the British army to the South would be reenforced as well to main- tain the uti posidetis principle for which England was negotiating, 2 as because the war must languish altogether
1 Ramsay's So. Ca., vol. II, 499, 500 ; Marshall's Life of Washington, vol. IV, 465.
2 The opposition in Parliament in England claimed that no treaty of peace should have been entered into with the American Colonies, which required the evacuation of New York and Charlestown and the abandon- VOL. IV. - 2 K
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unless pressed in this quarter. Recent movements among the Indians which have been mentioned, the never failing presage of movements in the British army, had also taken place; her own diminished and ill-provided condition invited attack, and the source of this information appeared of un- questionable authority. General Greene was much alarmed, and the night was consumed in preparing despatches to Count Rochambeau, the governors of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, earnestly soliciting immediate support. To insure despatch and effect to these applications and hasten the advance of St. Clair1 and Wayne 2 with the Continental troops on their way to join him, officers of known zeal and fidelity were made the bearers of these messages.
Had the intelligence which had produced such excite- ment in the American camp been really true, there can be little doubt, says Johnson, that Greene must once more have yielded up all his hard-earned conquests. Count Rochambeau pleaded the want of instruction from his court, and could promise no support until Greene should be pushed back into Virginia. North Carolina, since the capture of Governor Burke, was in such a state of confusion that she could not get her Legislature together. And Virginia, convulsed by a quarrel with her own governor and with Morris, the financier of the United States, without a farthing in her treasury or a
ment of the Loyalists. The cities, being still in the actual occupation of the British forces, should have been retained. (Wraxall's Memoirs, vol. III, 805. )
1 Major-General Arthur St. Clair of Pennsylvania, in command of the detachment of Washington's army consisting of the Pennsylvania and Virginia lines, now on the march to join Greene.
2 Brigadier-General Anthony Wayne of Pennsylvania, " Mad Anthony " as he was called for his reckless courage, commanding the Pennsylvania line under St. Clair.
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prospect of any kind, so impoverished that her thousand recruits in depot were kept from perishing only by the private advances of the gentlemen at the head of the War Department, could only promise that those recruits should be immediately marched to headquarters. Militia, she could send none.1
Under the pressure of this alarm, General Greene ad- dressed to Governor Rutledge a letter which was the subject of much animadversion at the time. It was, how- ever, but a renewal of the scheme proposed by Colonel John Laurens in 1780 for embodying negro troops. At great length General Greene laid before Governor Rutledge the desperate condition of affairs, notwithstanding the pres- ent reoccupation of so much of the State. He pointed out the preparation the British were making in Charlestown for its defence, the measures taken to incorporate the Tories, embodying the negroes on their side, and the in- citement of the savages on the frontier. He represented that, should the enemy have in contemplation offensive operations in this quarter, they would undoubtedly reen- force their army here and oblige him to fall back, and once more give the enemy command of the most fertile part of the State. That then a change of sentiment might also take place among the inhabitants - new difficulties arise, and the issue of the war be protracted, if not rendered doubtful. Good policy, therefore, dictated that they should strengthen themselves by every means the natural resources of the country would admit. He represented the futility of depending upon the North for assistance. Then, dis- ussing the military situation, he proceeded : -
" The natural strength of the country in point of numbers appears o me to consist much more in the blacks than in the whites. Could hey be incorporated and employed for its defence it would afford you
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 271, 272.
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double security. That they would make good soldiers I have not the least doubt; and I am persuaded the State has it not in its power to give sufficient reinforcement without incorporating them either to secure the country, if the enemy mean to act vigorously upon offen- sive plan, or furnish a force sufficient to dispossess them of Charles- town should it be defensive.
" The number of whites in this State is too small, and the state of your finances too low, to raise a force in any other way. Should the measure be adopted it may prove a good means of preventing the enemy from further attempts upon this country, when they find they have not only the whites, but the blacks also to contend with; and I believe it is generally agreed that if the natural strength of the country could have been employed in its defence, the enemy would have found it little less than impracticable to have got footing here, much more to have overrun the country ; by which the inhabitants have suffered infinitely greater loss than would have been sufficient to have given you perfect security. And I am persuaded the incorporation of a part of the negroes would rather tend to secure the fidelity of others than excite discontent mutiny and desertion among them. The force I would ask for this purpose in addition to what we have and what may probably join us from the northward or from the militia of this State would be four regiments, two upon the Continental and two upon the State establishment : a corps of pioneer and a corps of artificers each to consist of about eighty men. The two last may be either on a temporary or permanent establishment as may be most agreeable to the State. The others should have their freedom, and be clothed and treated in all respects as other soldiers without which they will be unfit for the duties expected from them."
Such a suggestion could not fail to arouse great opposi tion. And this not only because of the practical confisca tion of property which it implied; though on the ground of the negro's pecuniary value as property the British government had failed in every attempt to utilize the negro population as a military power. When Governo: ture Rutledge reached Philadelphia upon his escape from the detac State in 1780, he reported, it is related, that the negroe offered up prayers in favor of England in the hope tha she would give them a chance to escape from slavery. Bu
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the British officers, regarding negroes as valuable spoil, defeated every plan for employing them as soldiers on the side of England.1 The planters, of course, were opposed to a measure which might take from them the ablest and most intelligent of their slaves. But, far beyond this, there was an instinctive repugnance and aversion to the idea of calling upon slaves to rescue the liberties of free- men. And still further and deeper was their resentment at the proposition that, having given these negroes their freedom, they were to be clothed and treated in all respects as other soldiers. This suggestion was an offence to the rank and file of the army, militia, volunteer, and regular alike. Indeed, the indignation at the proposition, we are told, increased with the descent in the grade of the army. The attempt to carry out the scheme would, doubtless, have ended in mutiny.
The proposition was not, however, rejected absolutely by Governor Rutledge and the Council now assembled with him. It had been broached in the Legislature before, and as that body was now soon to assemble, it was resolved to submit it to their decision.2
It having been arranged between Governor Rutledge ich and General Greene that the Legislature should be assem- bled at Jacksonborough, a small village on the southwest- ostern bank of the Edisto, the army moved from the Round sca O, and crossed the Edisto on the 16th of December, taking position at the plantation of Colonel Skirving, six miles tist in advance of Jacksonborough, on the road leading to th Charlestown. In order to secure the safety of the Legisla- monture at this place, it became necessary to guard against the th detachment on John's Island under Colonel Craig. From roe the end of John's Island, that is, from Wadmalaw Sound, tha Jacksonborough was not beyond striking distance, as upon
1 Bancroft, vol. V, 413. 2 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 275.
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1
a full tide by the aid of their galleys, that place might be approached by the enemy, while the communication with Charlestown by James Island rendered it easy to throw reinforcements upon John's Island unperceived. It was important, therefore, to drive the enemy from this post. As Lieutenant-Colonel Laurens was personally intimately acquainted with this part of the country, not only from his general familiarity with this section, but from his hav- ing been here engaged under Moultrie in resisting Prévost's invasion, General Greene committed to Lieutenant-Colonel Lee and himself the subject for their consideration. It was soon ascertained, not only that the island was accessi- ble, but that the British commander, relying on his galleys, was quite unapprehensive of an attack.
There was a point between the Stono and Edisto at which the island, or peninsula, more properly speaking, was formerly connected to the high land by a piece of marsh. To complete the inland communication between Charlestown and the Edisto by way of the Stono, this marsh had been cut through, and the canal was known B le as the New Cut. At low water this place was fordable, and to guard the pass two galleys had been moored at con- venient distances, but necessarily somewhat remotely sepa- rated in order to prevent their grounding. Laurens and ng as
Lee had made all the necessary inquiries before the army moved from the Round O. And these two enterprising young commanders now solicited permission of the general to attempt the passage by night between the galleys and the surprise of the British detachment under Colonel Craig. The attempt was readily sanctioned, and the night of the 13th of December fixed for its execution."
The main army moved by concert on the 12th on the route to Wallace's bridge, over the Caw Caw Swamp, 01 river on the road to Rantowles, to draw the attention of the
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enemy from the real point of attack, while the two light detachments under the command of Colonel Laurens, cross- ing the country from the Ashley River, headed the north branch of the Stono on the night of the 13th, and advanced to New Cut, which is at the head of the south branch. The main army, intended to cover and support the light detachments, had halted as if to go into camp for the night, but was put again in motion soon after dark; and the general in person reached the Cut before the hour of low water, at which alone the ford was passable. Here he found the attacking party in a strange state of embar- rassment. The detachments of Lee and Laurens formed each a separate column on the march, the former led by Colonel Lee in person, the latter by Major Hamilton.1 Colonel Laurens, in command of the whole as the senior officer,2 rode with Lee, whose column was in the advance. Hamilton's had not moved from the ground precisely at the time that the first column was put in motion ; but no nistake was apprehended, as he was furnished with a guide. Before reaching the point, however, where the path which eled to the ford turned off from the road they were upon, n- 08. nd Iamilton's guide deserted him; the silence necessary to e observed prevented the detachments from communicat- ng by signals, and Hamilton saw now no resource but my astening on in the hope to overtake the first column. In
1 Major James Hamilton of Pennsylvania, captain First Continental fantry, March 10 to December 31, 1776 ; captain First Pennsylvania, nuary 1, 1777, taken prisoner at Fort Montgomery October 6, 1777; major cond Pennsylvania, December 10, 1778 (Historian), had just arrived th Pennsylvania Line. After Revolution, settled in South Carolina, and ok conspicuous part in her affairs ; was the father of the famous nullifi- tion governor, James Hamilton, Jr.
2 Colonel Laurens, it will be recollected, had been made lieutenant- onel by special act of Congress March 29, 1779. Colonel Lee's com- f the ssion was not issued until October, 1780.
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his haste he passed the road to the ford, and pushing on with redoubled speed as the hour of low water approached, he so increased the distance from the first column that messengers despatched to find him returned in despair. In his anxiety to reach the ford Hamilton, without a guide, had attempted a short route across the fields, which failed him, and the second column was thus entirely lost.
The time for executing the enterprise passed by. Colonel Lee, who had crossed over to the island, was necessarily recalled before the height of the tide should cut off his retreat.
But the object could not be relinquished without some effort to accomplish it, and General Greene resolved upon forcing his passage into the island. A boat was procured, and while the artillery drove their galleys from a station where they could annoy the Americans, Colonel Laurens passed over the Cut and penetrated to Craig's encampment. But the alarm occasioned by the narrow escape of the morning had demonstrated to the enemy the insecurity of his situation, and Colonel Laurens found the island abandoned by all but a few stragglers, who were made prisoners. The cattle also had been driven across the river or dispersed in the woods. The main object had however, been effected without loss, and the enemy had retreated so precipitately that the schooner which con tained their baggage and one hundred invalids was very near falling into Laurens's hands. General Greene in hi official communication indulged in his usual consolation if matters had all gone right he would have achieved great victory. "Had our party crossed the first night, he wrote, "the enterprise would have been completel successful. The enemy had between four to five hundre men on the island," etc. But the attacking force unde Laurens and Lee could scarcely have exceeded th
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number; and reinforcements could easily have been sent to Craig from James Island. The most that can be said is that had there been no miscarriage in the execution of the bold enterprise, itself replete with difficulties, there was great hope of a successful issue. But in war victory is never assured until achieved. Had the whole party crossed the Cut without misadventure, some later accident might have alike resulted in defeat.
Johnson has been followed in this account 1 in preference to Lee. The latter wrote evidently from recollection, with- out official documents, for he is mistaken in his chronology as well as in other matters in regard to the expedition. He writes as if he was in equal, if not in actual, command with Laurens. Whatever questions there may have been as between officers in the Continental establishment and those of the State, there could be none between those in the same line. Precedence and command were absolutely settled by seniority ; and Laurens was Lee's senior as a lieutenant-colonel in the Continental line by more than a year. He was, as Johnson points out, present with Lee in the advance because he was in the command of the whole. Lee states that the execution of the enterprise was appointed for the 28th of December, and represents it as taking place probably on that night, while Johnson asserts that it took place on the 13th. There is certainly con- siderable difficulty in fixing the exact date of this adven- ture, but that Lee is mistaken is evident from the fact that by his own account Captain Armstrong commanded in the expedition a squadron of the cavalry of the Legion.2 Whereas the semi-weekly Royal Gazette of Saturday, December 29, 1781, to Wednesday, January 2, 1782, announces the capture by Major Coffin of Captain Arm-
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 273-281.
2 Memoirs of the War of 1776 (Lee), 532.
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strong at Garden's plantation near Dorchester on Sunday last, to wit, the 30th, which affair, again by Lee's account, occurred certainly several days after the expedition to John's Island. It is true that Mr. Henry Lee, in maintain- ing the correctness of his father's statement, publishes letters of General Greene to Lee upon the subject, appar- ently dated December 21st and 28th ; 1 but the latter date is probably a misprint or mistake for the 23d. Upon Lee's theory there would scarcely be time for the movements described by him to have taken place before the established date of the capture of Captain Armstrong by the contem- poraneous publication of The Royal Gazette.
Johnson observes that the expedition to John's Island concluded the campaign of 1781; but it did not do so entirely, for the affair in which Armstrong was captured took place, as we have just seen, before the end of the year. After the expedition to John's Island was over, Lee returned to his position of observation on the Ashley. The country between Dorchester and the Quarter House was occasionally visited by his light parties, which in- fringed upon the domain claimed by the sometime British army of South Carolina, now garrison of Charlestown. A well-concerted enterprise was projected by the comman- dant to repress the liberties taken by Lee's parties. Major Coffin, with a detachment of cavalry composed of different corps, was detached in the night to occupy specified points for their surprise. It so happened that Captain Armstrong of the Legion cavalry had been sent to Dorchester by General Greene the night before, for the purpose of con- ferring with a spy from Charlestown. On the approach of morning Armstrong advanced to Dorchester, and meet-
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