Dunham’s Bluff, Great Pee Dee River (Part of Snow’s Island)
There is nothing like going to the land where honorable and brave men not only withstood an empire, but were able to slow its armies down and stall them so that the empire’s people and politicians would lose motivation to continue the fight.
Late on a November day, about dusk, SF1 along with Captain1776 and Malibu, were able to walk on to Dunham’s Bluff and experience what Marion’s lair might have felt like back in 1780 when he and his men used the terrain and topography to be protected from those who sought to kill them. The river was high and slow (slow waters run deep, probably still containing waters from Hurricane Florence from weeks before), but the high ground afforded a sense of security that a castle has when surrounded by a moat.
To reach this point, we needed to ditch the rental car a good mile away and hike in through the South Carolina swamp (complete with alligators, never seen, but definitely heard) to reach one of several secure locations that Marion sought out, this one most likely including earthworks in 1780.
A few miles away to the west was the spot, called Witherspoon’s Ferry in 1780, where Marion was first introduced to Kingstree militia that had requested a Continental officer as a leader from General Gates.
Twilight at Witherspoon’s Ferry (now called Venter’s Landing)
The visit to one of Francis Marion’s areas of resistance prompted a common theme mentioned in the days that followed, all three of us from two different generations, earnestly desire to return to this land someday, and hopefully include yet another generation in the common admiration of a few men, who against all odds, defied empire and authority in the hope of a future based in liberty for all.
The context for this decision by Corwallis to “green light” Tarleton is essential toward understanding the gravity of this moment in the confederation’s (thirteen colonies joined together for this cause) war for independence from the British Empire.
My previous post showed how Francis Marion’s winning streak was turning society away from leaning toward an inevitable “Loyalist” South Carolina and swelled the ranks of the patriots. From the book “Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution“:
Marion’s victory at Tearcoat Swamp left the British high command in a state of panic. With no effective enemy force in the field, Marion now had the ability to strike at will throughout the entire area of South Carolina east of the Wateree River and north of the Santee.
As a result it had become almost impossible for the British to safely send supplies or communications from the coast to Cornwallis’s army. The Santee, the major navigable river flowing through the heart of the state, did not connect directly to either Georgetown or Charleston. Therefore, to move supplies from the coast to Camden and Winnsboro, it was necessary to use both roads and waterways. Typically the British traveled either overland or by boat to Nelson’s Ferry, where they crossed the Santee, then by wagon to Camden. But because of the threat Marion posed, the British were afraid to cross at Nelson’s and began taking a longer, more circuitous route to the northwest over more difficult roads to Friday’s Ferry on the Congaree River. From there they crossed the Congaree and traveled overland to Camden and Winnsboro.
Desperate times calls for desperate measures apparently. Lord Cornwallis, who prided himself publicly as a man who fought with honor decided to give in to Banastre Tarleton’s pleas to go after the guerrilla militia leader Marion. This was not just Cornwallis granting just any staff officer their desire, it was a calculated move based on Tarleton’s history, character and reputation. Cornwallis was brilliant in strategy, however, it seems that his assumption that American colonial society would quickly forget atrocities (underestimating “blowback”) may well have been one of his weaknesses, along with pride.
From the movie “The Patriot” (2000):
Benjamin Martin: I’ve just read into the mind of a genius. Cornwallis knows more about war then any of us could ever hope to learn in a dozen lifetimes. His victories at Camden and Charleston were perfect, perfect. The thing is, he knows that… and perhaps that’s his weakness.
Gabriel Martin: Sir?
Benjamin Martin: Pride. Pride’s a weakness.
Major Jean Villeneuve: Personally, I would prefer stupidity.
Benjamin Martin: Pride will do.
Basically, the man Cornwallis chose is the antithesis of Francis Marion. Read the following from John Oller’s words and see for yourself:
Young (twenty-six in 1780), boyishly handsome, athletically built, a drinker, gambler, and womanizer, he cut the sort of dashing figure that some have mistakenly ascribed to Marion. His stock in trade was his ruthless pursuit of his quarry followed by a headlong, frontal cavalry attack, with sabers flashing and slashing when he inevitably caught up with them. Son of a wealthy Liverpool slave-trading merchant, Tarleton attended Oxford and studied law at London’s prestigious Middle Temple before quitting to follow his friend and fellow Oxfordian, Francis Rawdon, into the military.
He purchased a “cornet,” or commission, in the British cavalry in 1775 and voluntarily sailed to America to fight with the king’s men. He was part of Clinton’s first, unsuccessful attack on Charleston, saw action at Brandywine, and helped capture Charles Lee, the Continental commander, in a raid on a tavern in late 1776. During the British occupation of Philadelphia he gambled away his salary, nearly dueled an officer whose mistress he dallied with, ..
Next, let us add in the 1780MAY actions of Tarleton as a follow-up to the British capturing Charlestown:
.. In late May, Cornwallis had dispatched Tarleton and his Legion of 230, along with a company of 40 British army dragoons, to pursue Colonel Abraham Buford. Having arrived too late to reinforce Charleston, Buford and his 350 Virginia Continentals were then on the run toward North Carolina. With them were Governor John Rutledge and some members of his council, who had fled Charleston before it fell.
Although the Americans had a ten-day head start on him, Tarleton drove his men relentlessly forward, covering 150 miles in fifty-four hours to catch up with them. Rutledge barely avoided capture by veering off from the main force hours ahead of the pursuers, but Tarleton overtook Buford just shy of the North Carolina border at a place called the Waxhaws. There, in Tarleton’s own words, “slaughter was commenced.”
Some historians think this is shear propaganda, however, there have been many direct sources that relay some rather harsh orders that this 28 year old gave to his men. Here is some more detail from the claims that emerged after this event:
The patriot side claimed that after the fighting stopped, Tarleton’s men were guilty of outright massacre, hacking Buford’s men to death even as they lay down their arms and begged for quarter. “Tarleton’s Quarter” (meaning take no prisoners) and “Buford’s Massacre” became rallying cries for the patriots in later battles, notably King’s Mountain. What is sometimes overlooked is that although the commander of the king’s troops at both King’s Mountain and the Waxhaws was a Briton, virtually all the slaughtering was done by Americans against Americans.
This man had no long-term appreciation for what America would be like after his assumption of British subjection of the rebel spirit. This man is very much unlike Francis Marion in almost every way.
In the six months Tarleton had been in the colony of South Carolina, he bested the likes of William Washington, Issac Huger, A. Buford and even Thomas Sumter, all of senior rank to Tarleton. With a reputation like this, Corwallis was hoping for a quick win from someone who could get things done, even if it was done ruthlessly. Cornwallis had already spent more time than he would have liked in this southern colony and was anxious to maneuver north to bring a quick end to this conflict and bring the colonies back under the British wing.
With the “green light”, Tarleton moves out of Winnsboro which is 30 miles west of Camden and will take several days ride to arrive in the area Marion and his militia might be. Tarleton will be leading what is called a British Legion, which is actually a loyalist cavalry (American Tories) unit that was recruited from both New York and Pennsylvania. Legions consisted of traditional saber carrying cavalry and dragoons which are infantry who traveled on horses who had pistols and muskets. Tarleton’s men wore green coats to set them from the redcoat British regulars.
The hunt is on, for this “fox” that has interrupted British operations in the region.
I do believe it is easy for those insulated from war to have no clue as to the short and long term impact of war on people and society. Many of the politicians, generals and admirals remain out of harms way while giving orders to troops on the ground, in the air and on the oceans treating all of this like a video game. At the end of the day they return to their suburban Northern Virginia homes have been able to compartmentalize their day’s decisions that negatively impacted hundreds if not thousands of men and women not counting tens of thousands innocent men, women and children and the lands and societies they have to deal with on a daily basis. American foreign policy is the root negative issue in most parts of this globe while free market forces are solving poverty and other societal issues worldwide in a positive light.
Returning to the 1780 South Carolina colony that is seeking independence in federation with 12 other American colonies from British rule, if one only reads and understands the dates, stats and facts of the various expeditions the British regulars, American Continentals, and militias on both sides accomplished, one misses understanding what it was like for the average family that endured this 7 or 8 year war that was not regulated to far away fields of battle but took place ‘amongst’ us [movie “The Patriot” clip]:
To learn a “Tier 1” only history about a regional conflict only exposes the tip of the iceberg. Tier 1, if done right should tease readers and listeners to ask questions about Tier 2, a deeper insight into the daily life of the people involved and how it changed the communities involved.
Americans learn Tier 1 in this history classes in schools, Tier 2 requires one to invest the time to seek out deeper understanding, the ability to enter that period of time IN CONTEXT to fully adsorb what was won and what was lost. In the movie “The Patriot”, only the positives were communicated:
The feel good ending to this movie can only allow reality to counterbalance this by investigating, CSI if you will, how free American colonists were before and after the war. While Benjamin Martin (fictitious character that was the combination of three South Carolina militia leaders Pickens, Sumter and Marion) seems to be doing much better, Francis Marion would tell you differently, and that would be even BEFORE the end of this war!
One of the richest insights can be gained by a read of John Oller’s 2016 book “The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution“. I have included a few clips below that related directly to the posts I have had about October 1780 recently (here, here and here):
With the quieting of the Tory threat east of Camden, Marion sat at Ami’s Mill pondering his next move. On October 4 he confessed to Gates that he had suffered many fatigues over the previous few weeks but had managed to surmount them. He had never had more than sixty or seventy men with him of all ranks, and sometimes as few as a dozen. In some cases he had been forced to fight against men who had left him to join the enemy; he regretted that he had no authority to punish them. If he had a hundred men from Gates’s army, he thought, he could “certainly pay a visit to Georgetown” and attack the British garrison there. But Gates had answered none of his letters—
So early in October, Marion felt very alone after the three wins his militia had in late September that kept the British distracted from rolling up the colonies towards Virginia and eventually toward Washington’s Continentals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey while British General Clinton totally controlled the port of New York with his troops. It had been a stalemate in the north for months now.
Marion also felt the shift in what his leadership skills had to adjust to in commanding Continental regulars who obey verses volunteer militia that could quit at anytime ESPECIALLY if a command was given that the men did not agree with. I contend that this keeps leadership personnel honest and weeds out “management” personnel who are only worried about the status quo and their own position in the politics of things.
Brilliantly, Marion makes yet another bold move ..
Marion decided to make a little probing incursion against Georgetown anyway. He heard that Micajah Ganey, the Tory whose force he had bested at the Blue Savannah, was in Georgetown to reinforce the British garrison there. On October 9 Marion entered the city unmolested with forty men on horse and, once inside, issued a rather audacious demand to the garrison commander to surrender.
So if you have been reading my Tier 1 posts, you thought that Francis Marion and the men that remained with him took three week off from the conflict when in fact, they did venture into “British occupied territory” to harass the Redcoats!
While the British did not surrender …
Before leaving, however, and to show the enemy he was a force to be reckoned with—or just to show off—he took his men on a little parade through the town. They made off with a few horses and some of the enemy’s equipment and captured several notable Tory military men whom Marion immediately paroled to their homes. If nothing else, Marion served notice that if the British wanted to hold the second-largest population center in South Carolina, they would need to keep men and resources tied down there. “This damned Georgetown business,” as the British called it, would prove an unwelcome distraction for months to come.
Marion again attempts communication in his chain of command:
Marion reported to Gates on his little foray, saying he wished to hear from him as soon as possible, for he had received no word from him in a month. As Marion explained, this lack of information forced him to act with extreme caution lest he fall into the enemy’s hands. He closed by asking Gates to excuse his “scrawl,” as he had no table to write on in “this wild woods.” (Sometimes he lacked even paper to write on, which placed a premium on brevity.)
So here you get a little insight into JUST Marion’s world (Tier 2), not even his neighbors miles away near the St. Mark’s district closer to Kingstree, the shopkeepers in Georgetown or anywhere else in South Carolina.
If you wonder why Marion might have targeted Georgetown, you do know that as a teenager he attempted being a sailor and sailed out of Georgetown decades before right? Oh that Tier 2 knowledge sure does help with the context of things. You will find that Marion has a heart for the strategic importance of this port and what it would mean to the patriot cause. However, he was well aware of his limits and would not place his few men in harms way for his dream.
I do hope you are now even more curious about what made this militia leader tick .. if so, welcome aboard!
This battle in addition to Marion’s three victories were a major turning point in this war to be free of the British Empire. The resurgence in people’s heart for liberty represented a much needed boost in the morale of the people and soldiers alike, at least for those aligned with the principles of self-government and consent of the governed!
Well, I will guide you to one of the best historians of the region, J. D. Lewis who has researched the Carolina events of the Revolutionary War meticulously. From his page on this battle he states:
Major Patrick Ferguson was patrolling with a force of about 125 Provincials and over 1,000 Loyalist supporters attempting to pacify the countryside. With violence and atrocities rising on both sides, 1,100 to 1,600 Patriot Militiamen, most from North Carolina but with a good number of Virginians and South Carolinians, gathered to stop Major Ferguson and his troops. When Major Ferguson became aware of the large contingent of Patriots gathering, he decided it would be prudent to move back toward Lord Cornwallis’s larger army, now in Charlotte, North Carolina, a little over 40 miles to the east.
The Patriot Militia followed rapidly and, when Major Ferguson realized that they were overtaking him, he organized his defenses atop Kings Mountain, a wooded hill with a fairly clear top. On October 7, 1780, the Patriot Militia arrived at the base of the mountain and surrounded it. Soon they began scaling it on all sides. The Patriots had the advantage that the slopes of the mountain were very wooded, while the summit was not, exposing the Loyalists and Provincial troops to attack by the more-concealed Patriots. The defenders’ losses quickly mounted and, when Major Ferguson was killed, the fight went out of the remaining soldiers.
Of the Loyalist and Provincial troops, 157 were killed, 163 were severely wounded and 698 were captured. The Patriot Militia lost 28 killed and 62 wounded.
This battle was a direct result of Lord Cornwallis’ desire to squelch the patriot fever in the back-country of South Carolina. Cornwallis had thought that this effort would allow him to roll up into North Carolina and Virginia and suppress the quest for independence from the British Empire.
With three militia victories under Francis Marion and this militia victory at Kings Mountain, the southern colonies again had hopes that independence was still possible.
Francis Marion took this period of time to rest and regroup:
30SEP – 11OCT1780 Marion camps at Drowning Creek and has comms with Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates who informs him that South Carolina Gov. John Rutledge is in Hillsborough, NC.
12OCT – 23OCT1780 – Marion moves back to his camp at Port’s Ferry and rests.
On 24OCT1780 Marion would receive more Intel about some Loyalists in the area and set some plans in motions.
I have to admit, I probably told a fib, a lie. You see, part of American history has been dramatized if you will. There was a certain author of “history” that came along later in the early 1800s that put his own spin on American History which subsequently went into many of the textbooks we had in our schooling over the years. You too have probably been impacted. Have you ever heard that George Washington cut down a cherry tree? Enough said.
So too in my rendering of the Black Mingo Creek Battle around midnight back on 29/30SEP1780 when I said:
As his militia crossed the Willtown Bridge only a mile or so from Col. John Coming Ball’s camp the noise from the bridge’s planks alerted the Loyalist militia.
As the author of The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution John Oller points out, Francis Marion, an attentive guerrilla commander, who never wanted to expose his men to the enemy, would know that at midnight the woods are quiet enough, that horse hooves on a wooden bridge would definitely be heard by the enemy within a mile. Apparently, this particular “historical author”, Parson Weems, liked to embellish history to make a sale according to this Journal of the American Revolutionarticle:
Mason Locke Weems, better known as Parson Weems, considered himself an historian. But, he was far more interested in pleasing people than he was with writing history. His exaggerations and fabrications of fact led one commentator to remark that Weems had “a touch of the confidence man in him.”
Weems was born in 1759 and ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1784. Ten years later he became a traveling book salesman and author. He wrote sermons and religious tracts. His claim to fame, however, are his books on famous Americans from the Revolutionary period; Washington, Franklin, and Francis Marion.
Enough about Weems, and his spin on actual historical events, let’s get back to the story about what alerted John Ball’s Loyalist Militia on that night when Francis Marion’s militia approached.
As John Oller’s research shows:
At least four separate pension applications independently submitted under oath by veterans who fought with Marion at Black Mingo state that before crossing Willtown Bridge they spread blankets on it to prevent the Tories from hearing them ..
Well there you have it. Francis Marion’s leadership, combined being conservative with taking calculated risks, to make a difference one day or one battle at a time. It is this aspect that not only caused his men to trust him and go the extra mile for their leader, endeared many especially in the southern colonies after the war who saw him as the difference maker in their effort towards independence, but also caused many places to be named after Marion all over the country after the Revolutionary War for years to come.
So what did alert the Loyalist militia that night? Intel!
… in Marion’s letter to Gates a week after the battle. “They had intelligence of our coming,” Marion explained. That would indicate that it was not loud horse hooves a few moments before the battle that tipped off the Tories but rather some earlier advance warning. Marion was not the only person who had spies working for him. Plenty of Tories in the Black Mingo area would have been eager to spoil a patriot attack. Certainly that was true of Elias Ball. “He had about a hundred and fifty slaves, and he was a mean fella,” one of his descendants recalled. Perhaps Elias Ball or another local Tory got wind of the action and told his brother John…
Intelligence activities was a crucial aspect of this war, something we probably discount. But the fact that almost 40% of the civilian population considered themselves loyalists at some point of this war sure was a factor.
The impact of Marion’s militia delivering three victories in a row caused the Loyalists and their militia in the Santee area of South Carolina to lay low and refuse to take the field fearing Marion and his men would come calling. This psychological edge was dearly needed as this actually created a break in the violence on the innocent in this regions communities and also offered many of Marion’s men to return to their homes, especially the ones in the burnt-over districts that British leader Tarleton had laid waste to weeks earlier.
Immediately after Black Mingo, Marion wanted to go after Wigfall, who, along with Ball, had been sent into the Williamsburg area to keep the Whigs in check. Wigfall was now stationed with about fifty men at the Salem Black River Presbyterian Church upriver from Kingstree and was an especially enticing target for Marion. He had served under Marion earlier in the war, and Marion pointedly excluded him by name from the thanks he gave his officers at Dorchester. John Wigfall was one of those South Carolinians who blew with the prevailing winds, siding with whoever held the advantage. Marion wanted to pursue him but, as he told Gates, could not because “so many of my followers was so desirous to see their wifes and family, which have been burnt out.”
This lull in the action also allowed whatever harvesting that could be done to happen in earnest as the crops were getting ready and winter was coming.
Stay tuned for the next October adventure in American Revolutionary War South Carolina that did NOT include Francis Marion or his militia, the Battle of King’s Mountain on 07OCT1780 over 150 miles from where Marion and his men accomplished their victory on 29SEP1780.
This battle in addition to Marion’s three victories were a major turning point in this war to be free of the British Empire. The resurgence in people’s heart for liberty represented a much needed boost in the morale of the people and soldiers alike, at least for those aligned with the principles of self-government and consent of the governed!
