USA > South Carolina > The history of South Carolina in the Revolution, 1780-1783 > Part 52
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General Leslie now prepared to carry into effect his threat of seizing provisions wherever he could find them, and late in July a numerous fleet of small boats, carrying eight hundred men and convoyed by galleys and armed brigs, issued from Charlestown, destined, as it was thought, against Georgetown. Marion was immediately ordered to that place.1 After a forced march of about four days he arrived at White's bridge, but found no enemy in that neighborhood. In this march of about 160 miles Marion's men had but one ration of rice ; the rest was lean beef.2
Georgetown was not the destination of the expedition. It was directed to another point. The collection of rice was its object, which could best be secured upon the Santee, and the enemy succeeded in carrying off from that river about six hundred barrels without interruption. Marion's force was now thrown over Sampit River so as to overtake their march to Georgetown, but it was impossible to pre- vent their plunder of the plantations under the guns of the galleys. In taking the rice, however, the enemy left receipts for the amount taken except in two instances, -
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 334, 336.
2 James's Life of Marion, 166.
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one, of the rice taken from the plantation of the estate of Thomas Lynch, Jr., who had signed the Declaration of Independence ; and the other of Mr. Neyle, who had fallen in the siege of Charlestown.1
The enemy having left the Santee, Marion was ordered to take post at Wadboo, as the return of the fleet into port suggested the probability of some enterprise up the rivers communicating with the town. But their next movement was against Combahee, and after depositing the spoil col- lected they set sail, and arrived a few days after in the port of Beaufort.
The light brigade, under General Gist, soon after it was formed, took a position in advance of the army near the Stono. Colonel Laurens, still charged with conducting the intercourse of intelligence with his secret agents in Charlestown, had a guard assigned him at his own request, by order of General Greene, and took a position beyond the line of pickets of the brigade, near to Wappoo Creek. Here they remained comparatively inactive until intelli- gence was received of the sailing of the foraging fleet to the southward.
As General Greene had other channels of communica- tion with Charlestown besides those kept open by Laurens, he received intelligence of that event a day before it reached Colonel Laurens. Orders were immediately despatched to General Gist, dated the 23d of August, to march to the protection of the country on the Combahee, where a quantity of provisions, both public and private, was then lying. Not thinking it advisable to withdraw Colonel Laurens from a post so highly confidential and important as that which he then occupied at Wappoo, under the immediate orders of General Greene, Gist moved on to the southward without issuing orders to Colonel
1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 336.
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Laurens to join him. But the ardor of the latter, says Johnson, was not to be restrained when the longed-for opportunity for enterprise presented itself. In a hurried scrawl to Greene of the 24th, probably the last words Colonel Laurens ever wrote, conveying the intelligence of the Com- bahee expedition, he says, "I forward you the enclosed which I have just received - vague intelligence reached me of the march of the light troops - will you be so good as to inform me whether anything is likely to be done ?"
It was enough that General Gist was ordered to strike at the enemy. Laurens, though laboring under an ague, and actually in bed with it when he heard of Gist's march, arose, hurried away, and overtook the brigade on the north bank of the Combahee River near the ferry. The enemy had landed on the opposite side of the river, and the cav- alry had been ordered round by the Salkehatchie bridge to join the militia, who had collected in that quarter, seek- ing an opportunity for striking at the enemy.
Twelve miles below the ferry, on the north side of the Combahee, the extreme end of Chehaw Neck approaches the bed of the river, which generally between these points is bordered by extensive swamps and rice fields. At this point General Gist had ordered a work to be thrown up for the purpose of annoying the enemy in their retreat, and Colonel Laurens solicited the command of the enterprise at that post. Fifty infantry with some matrosses and a howitzer were ordered out under his command; and on the evening of the 26th he moved down the river, halting at a plantation near enough to take post at Chehaw by daylight the ensuing morning.
The night, it is stated, was spent in all the enjoyments of hospitality and female society, and the company did not separate until two hours before the time when the detach- ment must be put in motion. Ere the sun rose upon
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Laurens the next morning he was a stiffened corpse, and his two companions of the evening's festivity lay wounded in the field.
The enemy were disappointed in their expectation of collecting rice on the south side of the Combahee ; all that could be spared from the subsistence of the people had been drawn from that side of the river for the use of Wayne's army in Georgia, which had been supplied alto- gether from Carolina. The light brigade arrived in time to prevent their foraging on the north side ; and upon the advance of the militia and cavalry and the commencement of the work below them, their troops were silently em- barked in the night, and, by slipping their anchors and dropping down with the tide, the departure of the vessels from their moorings was not perceived until four o'clock in the morning.
General Gist immediately anticipated the danger to which Laurens was exposed, and despatching an express to him with the intelligence, and being joined by his cav- alry, which had swum the river the preceding evening, he moved off with all possible expedition at their head to the support of Laurens, leaving orders for his infantry to hasten after him. But the mischief was already done. The enemy had either received information of the march- ing of the detachment, or bad rightly concluded that the brigade, or a detachment from it, would be hastened on to Chehaw to annoy them in their retreat. Landing, there- fore, on the north bank of the river, and pushing into the road that communicates with the Point, a British officer, with a detachment of 140 men, lay in ambuscade in a place covered with fennel and high grass, and were undiscovered until they rose to fire on the unsuspecting Laurens.
At three o'clock in the morning Laurens had commenced
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his march, and altogether unsuspicious of danger, he was on horseback with his advanced guard when the enemy was discovered. His decision was promptly taken not to retreat or surrender ; the only alternative the case admitted of was a daring charge. Laurens dashed forward, calling on his men to follow. But he fell at the first fire, as did also Captain Smith of the artillery, and the men were thrown into confusion.
The howitzer fell into the enemy's hands, and the infan- try had retreated in confusion a quarter of a mile when they were met by General Gist. The enemy soon discon- tinued the pursuit, and drew up under cover of a wood near the border of the river. An attempt was made to dislodge them from this after the infantry came up, but it failed and was attended with some loss. The British force was covered by logs and brush, so as to be inaccessible to cavalry, and their force in infantry was much beyond that of Gist's command. Nothing was recovered on their debarkation except the horses of the artillery.
The enemy sustained no loss on this occasion that was known. That of the Americans was, for their small force, very serious. Besides Colonel Laurens, a corporal of the Legion cavalry was killed, three commissioned officers, sixteen rank and file were wounded, and three missing, probably made prisoners.
It was with extreme affliction, says Johnson, whose account of this action has been followed, that General Greene heard of the fall of Colonel Laurens. He had been chagrined (and had expressed it) at his leaving a post and an employment so critically important, at this juncture, to the safety of the army; for it was when Marion had his hands full with Fraser and the enemy was threatening an attack on their weakened army; when intelligence from town was all important and honor
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required that the personal security of his secret agents should not be confided to any other man than him whom they had trusted; and when the direct route to surprise Greene or to throw troops in the rear of Gist was by Wappoo - that Colonel Laurens had left his post, simply contenting himself with announcing "that he would return with all possible expedition." But every other feeling with the general, it is said, was absorbed in profound grief for his loss, for it was not only a gallant soldier and a tried patriot that had fallen, but an amiable companion, a fast friend, and one of whose influence and popularity in the State his army had great need, had been cut off at a most critical period.1
General Greene's criticism upon Laurens's conduct, which ended so tragically, unhappily was most just. Lau- rens's ambition to be foremost in any fray had led him into a gross violation of soldierly duty, the abandonment of an important post which imperilled the safety and honor of others. But the world forgives much where personal bravery induces the fault and death follows its commis- sion. In announcing his fall in general orders to the army, General Greene says: "His fall was glorious, but his fate is much to be lamented. The army has lost a brave officer and the public a worthy citizen." In a private let- ter he justly said: "Poor Laurens has fallen in a paltry little skirmish. You knew his temper and I predicted his fate. The love of military glory made him seek it upon occasions unworthy of his rank. The State will feel his loss." This rashness in the pursuit of military glory, it will be remembered, had three years before, during Pre- vost's invasion, within but a few miles of the scene of this disastrous affair, led him to a similar violation of orders in crossing the Tullifiny and attacking the enemy, instead 1 Johnson's Life of Greene, vol. II, 339, 341.
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merely of covering the retreat of the rear guard as directed! by Moultrie. Then he had escaped with only a severe wound and the expression of Moultrie's displeasure. Now he falls, and his country forgets all but that he died bravely in her defence.1
1 The two Laurenses, father and son, - Henry and John, - were the most conspicuous figures from South Carolina in and near the congres- sional government during the Revolution. They were the great national figures from South Carolina, as the term would now be applied. The old delegates who had taken so prominent a part in Congress prior to the Declaration of Independence were no longer present in its hall. Gadsden had been first detained at Charlestown in the military service, and then in exile and in prison. John Rutledge, as president and then governor of the State, had had his hands full at home. Henry Middleton, an old man, had retired, and his son Arthur was with Gadsden in exile. The two Lynches, father and son, were both dead. Edward Rutledge and Thomas Heyward, Jr., were also in exile. William Henry Drayton, with his great abilities and restless energies, had been transferred with Henry Laurens from the Council of Safety of the State to Congress, but he, too, had died, leaving Laurens the only one of the old Revolutionary set in its halls. There he had taken a high and leading position, becoming President of the Congress, as the position of what was then the presidency of the United States was styled. He was President during a most eventful period. It was during his presidency, 1777-1778, that the Articles of Con- federation were adopted, that the offers of the British Peace Commission were received and rejected, that the treaty with France was made. Then he was appointed minister plenipotentiary from the United States to Holland, and on his voyage was captured by the British and thrown into the Tower of London, where he was held for the rest of the war as the most important State prisoner in the power of the Royal government, and ultimately exchanged for Lord Cornwallis, the most important British personage in the hands of the Americans. He repaired to Paris where, with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, he signed the pre- liminaries of peace, on the 30th of November, 1782, by which the inde- pendence of the United States was acknowledged. And so it happened that the name of Henry Laurens is found inscribed upon some of the most striking and important State papers in the history of the country, to wit : to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation in 1778, to the treaty with France in the same year, and to the treaty with Great Britain in 1782, by which the independence of the United States was secured.
The career of his son, John Laurens, was scarcely less distinguished
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It is remarkable that in all the fighting that had been done in South Carolina during the last three years, that
in the history of the country at large. Born in 1755 and educated in Europe -in Geneva and London -he was a student of law at the Temple when the Revolution began, when, making his way home with difficulty, in 1777, then but twenty-two years of age, - no doubt through the influence of his father, at the time President of the Congress, - he was at once taken into the military family of General Washington. His position near Washington was doubtless owing, as we say, to his father's influence, then so great ; but John Laurens was not one to owe his reten- tion in any position to the favor of another, though that other was his own father. He soon found opportunities of distinguishing himself in the battles of Germantown and Monmouth ; then allowed to attach himself, in 1778, to the army in Rhode Island, where the most active service was expected in the final operations of the French under D'Estaing, and the Americans under Sullivan, he so distinguished himself in command of some light troops with which he was intrusted that, as we have had occa- sion to state in a preceding volume, he was by resolution of Congress given the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Continental line at the early age of twenty-three years. Hastening to his native State when the tide of war turned upon her, we have seen his conspicuous conduct in resisting the invasion of the British under Prevost, have seen him the first to mount the British redoubt at Savannah, and taking part in defence of Charlestown in 1780. Taken a prisoner upon the capitulation of the city, he was soon released, his exchange having been expedited by Congress for the ulterior purpose of sending him as a special minister to Paris, " that he might urge the necessity of a more vigorous cooperation on the part of France." This, it will be recollected, was the crucial period when the French fleet and army, previously sent under de Ternay and Rochambeau, lay cooped up at Newport by the ascendency of the British in American waters, and the only obstacle to the prosecution and perhaps fulfilment of the British ministerial plan of carrying the war "from the South to the North," lay in the uprising of the people of the Carolinas and Georgia, and the splendid service of the partisan bands. We have seen John Laurens, in 1778, refusing the promotion tendered him by Congress, lest it might give rise to jealousies in others, and thus disturb the harmony of officers of the line and his colleagues in the family of the commander-in-chief. So now, again, acting from the same generous and noble purpose, he rec- ommended and urged that Alexander Hamilton should be sent in pref- rence to himself. Congress, however, adhered to their first choice, and John Laurens was, on the 23d of December, 1780, commissioned special
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Colonel Laurens was but the second Continental officer of as high a rank as that of lieutenant-colonel who had fallen,
minister at the court of Versailles, and sailed for France. Within six : months from the day Colonel Laurens left Ainerica he returned, and brought with him the conceded plan of combined operations, which ended at Yorktown. Garden tells the following anecdote, upon the authority of William Jackson, the secretary of the legation, of Laurens's conduct in this mission, which, however apocryphal, illustrates, at least, the energy with which Laurens acted, if at the expense of his real diplomatic skill, to which his success was more probably really owing : -
" When sent by Congress to negotiate a loan from the French govern- ment (for that was a part of his mission), although his reception was favorable and encouragement given that his request would be granted, yet the delays perpetually contrived by the minister, the Count de Ver- gennes, afforded little prospect of immediate success. Convinced that procrastination would be a death-blow to Independence, he resolved, in defiance of all the etiquette of the court, to make a personal appeal to the King. Dr. Franklin, our minister at Versailles, vehemently opposed his intention, and, finding Laurens firm in his purpose, he said, 'I most cor- dially wish you success, but anticipate so different a result, that I warn you - I wash my hands of the consequences.' Accordingly, at the first levee, Colonel Laurens, walking directly up to the King, delivered a me- morial to which he solicited his most serious attention, and said, 'Should the favor asked be denied, or even delayed, there is cause to fear that the sword which I wear may no longer be drawn in the defence of the liberties of my country, but be wielded as a British subject against the Monarchy of France.' His decision met with the reward it merited. Apologies were inade for delays. The minister gave his serious attention to the subject, and the negotiations were crowned with success."
And so it was that while Sumter and Marion and their volunteer- partisan followers in South Carolina were desperately throwing themselves across the path of the invader who was hurrying on in his triumphal march to reach the Chesapeake before the further assistance could be obtained from France, another son of the State in Paris, disregarding form and ceremony, was demanding and extorting from the king of France, the promised but long-delayed assistance. Sumter and Marion in the hills and swamps of South Carolina, and John Laurens in Paris, were all uncon- sciously, yet in support of each other, simultaneously playing great parts in the same great drama in which the future of the whole United States of America was at stake.
Upon his return from Paris, immediately joining the army and resum- ing his place as one of the aides of General Washington, Colonel Laurens
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the first having been Colonel Owen Roberts of the artillery, who fell at Stono.
From the Combahee the enemy passed into Broad River, in what is now Beaufort County, and successively ascended the smaller streams communicating with it, carrying off with them all the provisions and live-stock they could col- lect. From thence they put into Beaufort harbor and laid the islands of Beaufort and St. Helena under contribution.
In the meantime, however, a party of infantry posted at Wadboo attracted the attention of the enemy. Marion was supposed to be in Georgetown with the cavalry. The rapidity of his movements had prevented the knowledge of his return, and the party there was supposed to be only that under Ashby. Early on the morning of the 29th of August Marion received intelligence of the advance of Major Fraser with about a hundred dragoons, with the intent, as it was reported, to surprise his pickets, above him at Biggin bridge and below him at Strawberry Ferry. It happened unfortunately that his cavalry were at the time absent patrolling down the river; but messengers were
took part in the siege of Yorktown, which he had done so much to render possible by hastening, if not procuring, the coming of the second French fleet under De Grasse ; and in the final struggle of the siege, with Colonel Hamilton, he led the storming parties of the American forces, and he at the head of eighty men, turned the redoubt, taking the garrison in reverse, and intercepting their retreat. Then with the Viscount de Noailles, representing the French, he, representing the Americans, had negotiated the terms of Cornwallis's surrender. Hence, probably, the inspiration of their requiring of his lordship the same terms as had been required of Lincoln at his surrender of Charlestown. So John Laurens negotiated the terms of Cornwallis's surrender, which released his father, Henry Laurens, from the Tower in exchange, and enabled his father to take part in negotiating the treaty with Great Britain acknowledging the independence of the Thirteen States.
Then hurrying back to his own State where the war still lingered, John Laurens again took the field to perish in an insignificant affair with which he had no call or duty to take part.
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immediately despatched to call in both the cavalry and the pickets, and some of the latter had joined him before the enemy appeared. It was not without some uneasiness that Marion prepared to receive the enemy, for the greatest part of his force consisted of what was then called new-made Whigs. These were the men who had left the enemy in consequence of Governor Rutledge's proclamation offering pardon to all, with certain exceptions, who would leave the enemy within a specified time, and join the American forces. But perhaps, as it has been observed, he could not have had a set of men to command more deeply interested in securing themselves by victory against the British ven- geance. It is not probable that any one, if taken and recog- nized by the enemy, would have escaped military execution.
The enemy, having taken some of Marion's outposts, and approached by an unfrequented route, advanced upon him in full confidence of all the advantages of a surprise ; but they found him ready, drawn up to meet them, his main body in an avenue of trees before the house of Dr. Fayssoux, and his left, by which the enemy must approach, advanced a few paces under cover of some small buildings. The latter were ordered to reserve their fire until the enemy approached within thirty yards, and the main body to reserve theirs until further orders.
The enemy came on at a full charge, but Marion's troops behaved with coolness ; and when the left delivered their fire as ordered, the enemy recoiled in confusion, leaving a captain and several men and horses dead upon the field. They soon rallied, and attempted to turn his right and then his left flank ; but by changing his front, and avail- ing himself of the cover of the buildings and fences, he rendered it too hazardous for the enemy to attempt a second charge, and they retired on the route that leads by Quinby to Daniel's Island.
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A single fire terminated this action, but it had seldom happened that a single fire had done equal execution on the same number of men. One officer and eight men were killed, three officers and eight men were wounded. Five horses fell dead on the field, a few were taken, and many wounded. The Americans sustained no loss in men, but a very severe loss of another kind. The driver of their ammunition wagon took fright, and made off with his charge in a direction which enabled the enemy to capture it. Marion soon discovered his loss, but was with- out cavalry to retrieve it. A party of five men on captured horses attempted it, but failed. Soon after the enemy moved off Major Conyers arrived with his cavalry; but before he could overtake them, Major Fraser had formed a junction with a detachment of infantry that had advanced up the Wando to support him, and Marion's loss of ammu- nition obliged him to retreat once more towards Santee. Here ended Marion's warfare.1 During the remainder of the summer he frequently changed his encampments from place to place between the Cooper and the Santee rivers, with three objects in view, - to cut off supplies from the enemy, to prevent all surprises from their sudden irrup- tions, and to provide for his own men. His scouting parties still penetrated into St. Thomas's Parish as far as Daniel's Island and Clement's Ferry on the Cooper. At the head of one of these, Captain G. S. Capers performed a gallant action. Having the command of only twelve men, he encountered a party of twenty-six British black dragoons, and cut them to pieces. They had at the time two or three of his neighbors in handcuffs as prisoners.2
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