Conceived in Liberty (258 page)

Several engagements between units of rebel and Tory militia were soon fought in the northern back country of South Carolina. A party of Tories was defeated by rebels at Fishing Creek, and Col. William Bratton defeated a detachment of Tories near Winnsboro on May 29. To crush the pesky rebel bands, Col. George Turnbull, in charge of the substantial British camp at Rocky Mount, sent out Capt. Christian Houk and his Tory militia to plunder and destroy in the back country and to crush the rebel partisans. Camping northwest of Williamson’s plantation, 400 of Houk’s militia were attacked in a withering surprise thrust by 260 rebel militia under Colonel Bratton. Bratton was able to attack Houk on two sides, and to fire at the defenders from behind fences. The result was the killing of Houk and the crushing of his forces, which suffered almost 90 casualties while the rebels lost only one man. This victory had been achieved by a truly democratic people’s army in which every action was decided upon by a vote of all the militia.

Sumter, too rash and too willing to engage in open confrontation to be a first-rate guerrilla fighter, felt emboldened enough by the victory at Williamson’s plantation to launch a direct attack on Rocky Mount itself. Gathering perhaps 600 militia at Mecklenburg, North Carolina, near the South Carolina border, he struck directly at the well-fortified British post on July 30; several assaults failed, however, and he wisely withdrew before losses should become too heavy.

It should be noted that the roundup of Tory support in the Cheraw district was so spotty that Lord Rawdon was forced to evacuate that post, and that a Tory battalion under Col. John Lisle carrying Rawdon’s sick men defected to Sumter
en masse,
with the sick becoming prisoners of the Americans.

The climactic battle in this series of skirmishes came on August 8 at Hanging Rock. Here Maj. John Carden held a strong position with 500 Tories. Sumter, with 800 South Carolina militia, decided to attack. A comedy of errors brought all of Sumter’s men to attack the British left flank, and to good advantage. When Carden tried to outflank the Americans on
his
left, the rebel militia swiftly opened up a withering fire from behind trees; the British were completely routed, and the American militia plundered and looted, heedless of the remainder of the enemy. This general carelessness finally forced Sumter to withdraw, but he had achieved a notable victory, inflicting over 200 casualties upon the 500 defending Tories.

All in all, during July and early August, no fewer than twelve battles
were fought between Tory and rebel bands in the Carolina back country, and a string of rebel victories made the British position highly precarious in the interior. These American victories took place in frays between modest-sized forces, but they were a portent of a rising threat of rebel militia in the northern back country as well as a slip in the effectiveness of the British occupation.

While the British-led Tories were suffering these reverses, Toryism in the North Carolina back country received a severe setback. Restlessly failing to wait for Cornwallis’ march, Col. John Moore of Ramsour’s Mill, near the South Carolina border, gathered a formidable force of 1,300 Tories to join British forces in Camden. Nearby, Col. Francis Locke assembled 400 patriot militia and launched an attack upon Moore. Although lacking central command, each officer acting on his own as representative of his men, the numerically inferior American force managed to attack the Tories front and rear on June 20. A fierce hand-to-hand combat completely routed and scattered the Tories, even though American losses were proportionately higher. Once again, Toryism was crushed in back-country North Carolina before the British could arrive; and only thirty men reached Camden. This rout of North Carolina Tories was to deprive Cornwallis of a great deal of effective Tory support in that state.

All in all, the British attempt to rely on the raising of Tory troops in South Carolina proved not very successful. It is true that effective Tory militia units were organized in the strong Tory areas of Orangeburg and the Little Pee Dee River in the interior regions closer to the coast. And at Charleston, Cornwallis was able to form eleven Tory companies totalling 400 men for garrison duty. But in the Camden and Cheraw areas, the results were disappointing, and attempts to form two provincial battalions of South Carolina Tories were abject failures. Some of the obstacles to Tory recruitment were simple supply problems; there was a scarcity of both small arms for militiamen and horses for mobile cavalry to check rebel guerrilla raids on back-country Tories. More important in the failure was a shortage of qualified Tory officers; the great bulk of back-country officer material either had become rebels or had fled the state.

Above all these problems, however, stood the alienation of public opinion, generated by the widespread plundering and atrocities committed against the civilian population by the vengeful Tory troops, particularly those under Tarleton. This revolutionary war was, to an extent undreamed of by the British, a people’s war in which public opinion provided the indispensable groundwork for a committed revolutionary effort. This and their careless assumption that the South Carolina back country was staunchly Tory ignored the dynamics of the situation. These people had been largely indifferent to the Revolution, or their support had been
lukewarm, and they therefore needed to be wooed by the British. Instead they suffered plundering and the exigencies of martial law. British and Tory actions thereby pushed these men of the back country into ardent support of the Revolution during the critical summer of 1780. As Smith concludes:

British officials no more comprehended the situation that confronted them in the South than they understood the extent of revolutionary sentiment in America. They failed to see that a permanent restoration of law and order in South Carolina rested not on the strength of the Loyalists, as they had originally calculated, but on pacification of the revolutionists.... Peace in the South depended upon reconciling rebels to British authority and upon rapidly organizing Loyalists to quell any minor rebel resurgence. Any major revulsion against British control was not anticipated.
*

The successful rise of rebel militia bands in the back country of the Carolinas, and even in Georgia, led Cornwallis to complain on August 6 that all of upper South Carolina was in “an absolute state of rebellion, every friend of Government has been carried off, and his plantation destroyed.” All this only confirmed him in his belief that he must soon invade North Carolina, and with his main force reduce the back country of the Carolinas to British control. This belief was reinforced by the news that a new Continental American Army was moving southward, news that inspired and emboldened the rebels and disheartened the Tories of the back country. Only a successful Cornwallis presence in North Carolina, the checking of the new American army, and the reduction of the Carolinas could save the interior of all the southern states for the British. Cornwallis determined to take his main force to Camden preparatory to moving north, leaving detachments particularly at Charleston, Augusta, and Ninety-Six. On August 10, he left Charleston for Camden.

*
Smith,
Loyalists and Redcoats,
p. 141.

Into this more hopeful situation for the Americans now stepped a new Continental troop from Maryland and Delaware that Washington had sent southward under the German General de Kalb. Marching south on April 16 to the aid of Charleston from Morristown, New Jersey, de Kalb had reached North Carolina with 1,400 men when he learned that Charleston had been taken. Furthermore, difficulties mounted as North Carolina failed to cooperate in supplying de Kalb’s force, which became increasingly short of food; even foraging and plundering of the inhabitants gained few supplies. With the capture of General Lincoln, Congress decided to call back, as commander of the Southern Department, Gen. Horatio Gates, the hero of Saratoga, to save the South. This was done, of course, over the strenuous objections of George Washington, who still did not trust Gates because of his part in the Conway Cabal.

Gates took command of the unhappy Continental force at Deep River in North Carolina on July 25, to the sardonic warning of his friend, Charles Lee: “Take care, lest your northern laurels turn to southern willows.” The brief but most unhappy conduct of Gates’ campaign has been subjected to a literally savage denigration by historians, even those who are always eager to put the best face on campaigns by all other American generals. The reason for this singular treatment seems clear: the great rift between Gates and Washington. Washington’s actions are almost always painted in roseate colors, and devotion to his legend requires equal devotion to tearing down Gates’ reputation.
*

Gates soon found that the southern theater was very different from the north. For one thing, food was difficult to obtain, and distances were large between towns and farms. Secondly, Gates, familiar with the heroic deeds of the northern militia, did not realize that the longer distances, the wider area, and the lower population density of the southern theater meant that the southern militia were no longer fighting for their
own
homes and neighborhoods, thus giving up one of the major advantages of a people’s militia war. But his most important error was to forget the main principle of the guerrillalike war that he had waged so successfully in the north: never to fight in open confrontation with a more heavily armed enemy well trained in conventional field tactics.

Gates’ first decision, made almost upon his arrival, was to strike directly south into South Carolina to attack the British base at Camden. He has been very severely criticized for not taking de Kalb’s advice to pursue a circuitous route westward to Camden through a country of prosperous farms, abundant food, and a populace loyal to the American cause. Instead, the shorter route Gates adopted led through desolate swamps peopled heavily by Tories. While Gates overestimated the health and morale of his troops, his decision was by no means absurd; his goal was to strike at Camden quickly before Cornwallis could reinforce it. Furthermore, his route allowed him to join with a force of North Carolina militia led by Gen. Richard Caswell, who had stubbornly refused to move to join de Kalb. By striking quickly at Camden, Gates believed he could set back any Cornwallis invasion of North Carolina. It was Gates’ ill luck that Cornwallis would reach Camden just in time.

On his march, Gates was reinforced by 800 Virginia militia and Caswell’s 1,200 North Carolina militia, thus raising his force to a formidable 3,000 men. But it was a force increasingly hungry, ill, exhausted, and discouraged. By August 13, Gates had encamped a few miles north of Camden; but unknown to him, Cornwallis had already arrived with his reinforcements. On August 15, Gates, with 3,000 men fit for duty out of a total of about 4,100, decided on a quick night strike at Camden. He was driven to this step by his growing lack of food; but the idea was not unsound in light of the fact that he did not know of Cornwallis’ arrival. Furthermore, ill luck dogged Gates, for, in one of history’s amazing coincidences, Cornwallis had also decided on that very night for a surprise attack on Gates.

The two armies blundered into each other at night at Saunders’ Creek, north of Camden. Facing Gates’ 3,000 men were Cornwallis and
Rawdon with 2,200 men. But two-thirds of their force were highly trained regulars, while only one-third of the Americans were regulars and two-thirds militia—and regulars were far superior in massed confrontation on an open field. Cornwallis decided to wait until daylight to give battle; an error because it could have permitted Gates to slip away in the night. But here Gates decided to stay and fight on the open field, an error of his own which later allowed his traducers full sway. It should be emphasized that Gates called a council of war before making the decision and not one of his top officers called for a retreat or objected to giving battle.

A swift bayonet charge by the British regulars panicked the North Carolina and Virginia militiamen holding down the American left wing. Militia were never able to cope with the open-field bayonet fighting at which the British excelled, a fact Gates had overlooked when he formed the left wing out of militia alone. The militiamen simply broke and ran, most of them without firing a shot, and Gates, unable to rally them, was forced to flee to the rear to avoid capture. The American right wing, the Maryland and Delaware Continentals, more than held their own against the Tory troops, but once surrounded, they were smashed by Tarleton’s ferocious cavalry charge. Tarleton then pursued the fleeing Americans for twenty miles northward, capturing great quantities of ammunition on the way. It was a devastating and crushing defeat: de Kalb was killed and the Americans lost 650 precious Continentals, while almost the entire force of the North Carolina and Virginia militia scattered and fled to their homes. In exchange, Cornwallis lost only 320 men.

Gates has been severely criticized and attacked for cowardice for speeding north from Camden 200 miles to Hillsboro in three days, stopping only for sleep. But no amount of cowardice would have required that great a distance of flight. Clearly, he sped to Hillsboro to begin forming a new army as quickly as possible, hoping to tap the resources of Virginia as well as North Carolina. He began with 700 men, the shattered remnants of the force routed at Camden. To this were soon added other military remnants, bringing the total force up to 2,000. He was joined in mid-September by Dan Morgan, who had also been neglected and in semi-retirement, and Gates managed to persuade Congress at long last to make Morgan a general.

At first, it seemed that Cornwallis’s way north would be blocked by the South Carolina guerrilla troops. On August 15, two days after the victory at Saunders’ Creek, Colonel Sumter and 700 men captured a British wagon train and took 100 British and Tory prisoners. But on August 18 at Fishing Creek, Tarleton, with only 160 men, was able to cut off Sumter’s force from its arms and smash it completely, killing
150 and capturing over 300 with a loss of only a few men. Two days later, Col. Francis Marion, with only 16 men, fell upon some British and Tory troops and freed 160 American prisoners; but Sumter’s blundering rout at Fishing Creek had left North Carolina open to the enemy.