A Devil of a Whipping Read online

  National Archives personnel in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta provided important assistance. In particular, Michael P. Musick in Washington answered questions about the “other American war.” In Atlanta, Gayle Peters and Charles Hughes answered detailed questions about the pension files. The Nathanael Greene Papers at the Rhode Island Historical Society provided many documents during my doctoral and Cowpens research projects. Richard K. Showman, Robert McCarthy, and Dennis Conrad answered questions and pointed out key materials. Dick was very helpful in granting access to the Greene papers, which created a thorough background on the southern campaign.

  Three people guided me during my military service. George A. Ferguson, Robert M. Hansten, and David A. Hill taught me to soldier between November 1963 and March 1966. They provided key background for my First Maryland experience and Cowpens research. Today’s army is not so different from the Continental Army, but I was probably more militiaman than regular during my tour with B Company, 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry “Gimlets.”

  Jim Rollins and Lynn Meyer provided housing in Atlanta. They fed me and saw that I was entertained by “their Atlanta” during stays with them. They gave me insights into the questions a knowledgeable lay person would ask of my research. Dr. Ben K. Hubby of Savannah reviewed sections relating to battle injuries and smallpox.

  Ernest W. Peterkin read the first draft of this manuscript and made key suggestions about organization and details. At East Carolina University, Carl Swanson read, edited, and proofed my manuscript, then offered important suggestions about the time period, the military, and historical writing. Harry Pecorelli III spent many hours refining computerized maps showing unit position and movement. His precision scaling provided confirmation of field width and specific unit positions during the battle. Other maps were scanned and enhanced by John Babits.

  At the University of North Carolina Press, David Perry was my initial contact and provided guidance. Pamela Upton then took on the task of final organization. Suzanne Comer Bell completed the editing. I wish to acknowledge their assistance in the final work. They made my job as author much easier than I had anticipated.

  My wife, Nancy, read and corrected the manuscript and kept after me to finish it. Our son, John, showed me the differences between drum beatings for right about face, right wheel, left wheel, forward march, and halt. We walked the front end of the Cowpens battlefield one wet, post-rain dawn. His answers about what he could see were clear and concise, leading to a better understanding of battle timing, light conditions, distances, and positioning in the early stages of the Cowpens fighting. Nancy, John, and I wore wet wool, slept in soldiers’ tents, and stood in ranks. Our insights into the eighteenth century were bettered by the experience.

  One and all, you have my thanks and can take credit for portions of this work. Any errors are, of course, my own.

  A Devil of a whipping

  Introduction

  I was desirous to have a stroke at Tarlton . . . & I have Given him a devil of a whiping [sic].

  —Daniel Morgan to William Snickers, 26 January 1781

  American drummers beating a staccato long roll called infantry into formation in the raw predawn hours of 17 January 1781.1 The drummers signaled a climax to events that began nine months earlier when the British captured Charleston, South Carolina. Less than an hour away from the wet fields in front of the American camp, Banastre Tarleton’s feared British Legion and other battalions were closing in on Daniel Morgan’s Americans. An uncertain situation would be resolved within two hours on the gentle slopes at a South Carolina crossroads called the Cowpens. The battle marked a turning point in American fortunes. The road through the American position led symbolically, if not quite literally, to Yorktown and British surrender on 19 October 1781.

  Three years earlier, in 1778, the Revolutionary War in the North was at a stalemate. The British were unable to destroy General George Washington’s army, isolate New England, or convince the rebels to quit fighting. They lost one army at Saratoga and evacuated Philadelphia. Content to hold their base at New York, the British shifted their emphasis southward.

  The British effort was directed at the southern colonies for a number of reasons. Repeated calls for help came from southern Loyalists and British policy was to aid their subjects. The 1778 Carlisle Commission, which attempted, unsuccessfully, to reach a negotiated settlement with the Americans, reported Loyalist support in America. However militant they seemed, northern Loyalists usually turned out only when the British army could support them and then in small numbers.

  The southern colonies appeared to be different. For one thing, the British had a base in Florida from which Loyalists raided Georgia. Earlier Loyalist uprisings in the South failed because they lacked British military support. Southern Loyalists in England made their feelings known to Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for the American Department. Reports written by former colonial governors of Georgia and South Carolina asked for a military expedition to retake those colonies.

  Despite lukewarm northern Loyalists, Germain opted to support the southerners. Germain’s internal political problems threatened the government, and France entered the war. He could point to the Howes’s failure. They were mild Whigs relieved of command for inadequately prosecuting the war in the North.2

  In New York, the commander in chief of the American theater, Sir Henry Clinton, was in a defensive position due to the French entry into the war and his declining military strength. Clinton’s forces were depleted by reinforcements sent to Florida, the West Indies, and Canada. Concerned about Washington’s army in front of New York, French sea power, and British strategic plans, Clinton issued vague orders to Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell about reinforcing the garrison in Saint Augustine, Florida.

  Instead of sailing directly for Florida, Campbell landed in Georgia where his “reinforcements” easily captured Savannah in December 1778. They expanded their hold on Georgia by taking Augusta and Sunbury. After an aborted attack on Charleston, South Carolina, the British bloodily repulsed a French-American attempt to recapture Savannah in October 1779.3

  The next spring, Clinton directed a major effort against Charleston, which capitulated in May 1780. The British moved quickly to solidify control over South Carolina. While two columns moved into South Carolina’s interior, Major General Charles, the Earl Cornwallis, commanded a third force moving toward North Carolina. He sent Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a ruthless cavalry leader, after the last Continentals who were already retreating. Tarleton’s rapid movements enabled him to catch the Americans at Waxhaws, just below the North Carolina border. After a brief call for surrender, Tarleton’s dragoons attacked, broke American resistance, and then engaged in what infuriated Americans termed a massacre. Waxhaws set the stage for many similar bloody encounters over the next eighteen months. Tarleton’s reputation for brutality was established, and his name became a byword for terror and no quarter throughout the South.4

  While the British successfully waged conventional war against the Continentals and embodied militia, American partisans proved impossible to suppress. After Charleston fell, the British tried to govern South Carolina as a royal colony and reinstituted a Loyalist militia to protect the frontier and maintain order.5 Even with garrisons across the backcountry, the British colonial government and military could not halt the internecine warfare. British pacification efforts were thwarted by shifting policies, ferocity against rebellious Americans, and Loyalist desires to retaliate against their Whig oppressors. The military’s inability to protect paroled Americans and their property alienated inactive Whigs and drove them back into rebellion.6

  The backcountry erupted after Tory raids, the most notorious led by a New York Loyalist ironically named Christian Huck. Outraged at the murders of neighbors, Whigs wiped out Huck’s party in July 1780. In short order, attacks came against British outposts at Hanging Rock, Musgrove’s Mill, Rocky Mount, and small foraging parties. The raids served to create further animosity.
7

  In August 1780, an American army under Major General Horatio Gates moved into South Carolina. On 16 August, the Americans were defeated outside Camden. Even though shattered American forces began regrouping in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the British had no regular opposition for the next two months. They also achieved some success against Whig partisans such as General Thomas Sumter.

  General Cornwallis was one of the best British field commanders in North America when he succeeded Henry Clinton in command of the southern British forces. He served in America from 1776 until 1778, when he returned to England because his wife was ill. After her death, he returned to America and served until his surrender at Yorktown in 1781. His long experience in America with key roles during the 1776 New York campaign, Brandywine, Monmouth, and Camden demonstrated his abilities. Short and stout, Cornwallis was not a commanding figure, but subordinates respected him. He was fearless in battle, and at a time when other British generals were inclined to be somewhat indecisive and conservative, Cornwallis was a forceful leader.8

  Cornwallis seized an opportunity presented by the lack of opposition, invaded North Carolina, and occupied Charlotte. He intended to advance against Salisbury, but American resistance stiffened, and militia units attacked British foraging parties. Then a force, composed largely of Tories sent into western North Carolina under Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Ferguson, encountered trouble. Responding to a threat to “lay waste their country,” “overmountain” frontiersmen gathered to oppose Ferguson’s advance and then moved rapidly against him. Faced with opposition, Ferguson withdrew to Kings Mountain, where he was killed, and his men captured. The Kings Mountain debacle ruined Cornwallis’s plans for a further advance because his left-flank screening force was wiped out and Tory support was badly eroded. Cornwallis withdrew from Charlotte and went to Winnsboro, South Carolina, to refit his men.9

  MAP 1. Map of the Carolinas Showing Points of Strategic Interest

  Source: Henry Mouzon, “An Accurate Map of North and South Carolina, “ 1770.

  The Kings Mountain victory had several secondary impacts on the war in the South; in particular, the overmountain men’s performance both reinforced southern attitudes that militia could win the war and diverted British attention from a “serious deterioration” of control around their bases at Augusta, Ninety Six, and Camden. The British commander at Ninety Six, Colonel John Harris Cruger, failed to win Andrew Pickens to the British side after Loyalist depredations against his family and property, even though Pickens acted as a commissioner to look into treatment of his Tory neighbors captured at Kings Mountain.10

  For Cornwallis and his troops in South Carolina, the strategic situation in late December 1780 was complex. His men were scattered in a wide arc running across South Carolina from Georgetown, through Camden and Winnsboro to Ninety Six. South of Ninety Six, the line continued to Augusta, Georgia, and a series of small outposts downriver to Savannah. Inside this arc, British or Tory detachments were stationed at Fort Granby (modern Columbia), Fort Watson, Orangeburg, Monck’s Corner, and other small posts. The British created these posts to reestablish a Loyalist government, but the small garrisons were vulnerable if a sizable American force moved against them. British troops were stationed between some posts, including Banastre Tarletons detachment on the Broad River west of Winnsboro.11

  Cornwallis positioned the main British force in upcountry South Carolina at Winnsboro. Equidistant between Cheraws and Ninety Six, he was about 30 miles from both Friday’s Ferry (at Columbia) and Camden. The road net connecting these towns to Winnsboro also fanned north, providing Cornwallis with several options for moving his army. It was an ideal situation to control the upcountry and threaten North Carolina.

  The American situation was exceedingly bleak in December 1780. The southern army was located in Charlotte with a detachment at New Providence. At Charlotte, approximately 950 American Continentals and some 1,500 militia were erecting huts for a winter camp. Adding to shortages of food, forage, and other supplies, smallpox broke out in town.12

  Demoralized American forces received their most important reinforcement when Major General Nathanael Greene rode into Charlotte on 2 December 1780. Greene was a remarkable man. Raised a Quaker, he ran the family ironworks in Coventry, Rhode Island. Excluded from the Quakers when he volunteered for the militia in 1774, he led Rhode Island troops sent to Boston in 1775, and in 1776 was placed in charge of the Long Island, New York, defenses. Appointed quartermaster general of Washington’s army in 1778, he performed admirably and organized the department’s affairs to ensure a regular supply system. His combat role included participation in every major battle under Washington between 1776 and 1779.

  The business skills acquired as an ironworks manager and administrative experience as quartermaster general under Washington prepared Greene for the complex task of keeping the southern army supplied. During his southern campaign of 1780 and 1781, he won no victories but drove the British into a small enclave between Charleston and Savannah. His major accomplishment was keeping his army in the field. As long as it existed, the army posed a threat to the British and became a rallying point for Whigs. In the meantime, small detachments wiped out isolated British garrisons.

  Salisbury, forty-two miles north of Charlotte, was a major transhipment point for supplies collected from the North Carolina piedmont and sent from states farther north. The garrison included craftsmen who manufactured a variety of needed items. Greene instituted clothing production by paying for work with salt. Finally, the town included a jail which held some remaining Kings Mountain prisoners.13 Hillsborough functioned as the state capital. The North Carolina Board of War resided there, and numerous Continental officers were in town, expediting supply convoys and forwarding troops southward. Supplies gathered from the surrounding area were stockpiled here until wagons were available to transport them to the army.14

  Greene’s conclusions regarding the situation were grim. There were few supplies in Charlotte. Supplies the British did not capture in 1780, the militia plundered or consumed before they could be distributed to the army. Disruptions caused by the war and failed harvests compounded the situation. The Continentals were in a state of poor discipline because they lacked adequate clothing, food, and shelter. Smallpox posed a real problem to the militia but not the Continentals, who had been inoculated. Finally, the British garrison at Winnsboro was a distinct threat, both because of its proximity to Charlotte and the numbers of its reasonably mobile garrison.15

  When Greene took over the American army, he did not operate in a vacuum. He sent officers to explore river systems north of Charlotte as far as Virginia. Officers were sent south to find a suitable winter campsite. By the time Greene left Charlotte, he had a solid grasp of the strategic potential of the countryside and had reorganized the supply system.16

  When Greene arrived, a scouting detachment composed of Continental light infantry and militia was at New Providence, fifteen miles below Charlotte. From here they raided south, gathered supplies, encouraged Whigs, and intimidated Loyalists. Just before Greene’s arrival, a raiding party from New Providence under William Washington captured the garrison at Rugeley’s Mill using a log on wheels to intimidate the Tories.17

  Faced with a deteriorating situation, Greene had little choice. In mid-December 1780, he issued the orders that set in motion maneuvers culminating in the American victory at Yorktown nine months later. To alleviate supply problems, he reduced the number of men he had to feed in one place. The main army moved back into South Carolina, and Morgan’s light infantry were increased and sent into the South Carolina backcountry.18

  There were several aspects to Greene’s plan. First, moving to Hick’s Creek, South Carolina, enabled him to supply his main force while threatening British garrisons in eastern South Carolina. By sending Morgan west, British posts in the Carolina backcountry were threatened, and Morgan’s detachment could obtain food. American militia operated as a screen in front of both American camps and between Brit
ish posts, cutting off supplies, foragers, messengers, and small patrols.

  Most important, American actions prompted a British reaction. Cornwallis responded by dispatching Tarleton to protect Ninety Six, where he also would be in a position to move against Morgan. Greene divided his army by moving his main force to Hick’s Creek (Cheraws), South Carolina. His move back into South Carolina demonstrated that the entire state was not under British control as 1780 ended. Greene wrote both Samuel Huntington, president of the Continental Congress, and George Washington on 28 December 1780 and explained what he had done.19

  Greene had first-hand knowledge of problems inherent in dividing a force since he had studied tactics and participated in the 1776 New York campaign.20 Greene weighed economy of force against mass with his own strategic situation in mind.21 The Americans were not strong enough to fight the British, nor did available food and forage permit an American concentration in sufficient strength. The political situation demanded that Greene exploit momentum acquired by the Kings Mountain victory and keep South Carolina within the revolutionary fold.22

  Green marched his army from Charlotte on 20 December 1780. They reached the South Carolina campsite on 25 December. Greene partially solved supply problems by shipping food down the Peedee River, but, as he said, Hicks Creek was “no Eden.” The men had wornout uniforms and suffered from the weather.23 The Americans were now positioned far enough to each side of Winnsboro so they could not be surprised by a sudden British movement. Reduced numbers at two locations meant they could better obtain adequate subsistence.

  Morgan left Charlotte on 21 December and camped at Grindal Shoals on the Pacolet River.24 Two separated American units were not the only British problem. Swarms of militia operating over most of the territory Cornwallis nominally controlled terrorized supporters of both sides. One American veteran recalled the time as “almost Fire & Faggot Between Whig &Tory, who were contending for the ascendancy.”25