Tag: Yorktown

Fall 1781: Momentum of the Revolutionary War Shifts, So Does “The Cause”

There is light at the end of the tunnel, and there is movement afoot that takes place mainly north of the Potomac River that I contend is normal in this broken world. When freedom breaks out, there are those that instill fear in the people that politics, bigger and more centralized, is needed to secure our future.

While this article is a bit dated (I believe I was still in the US Navy at the time), it does point out a few things that I have been saying off and on in my blog over the past year or so. I bring it up now since my ongoing coverage of Francis Marion’s activities in South Carolina, which actually saved the colonies in their efforts to exit the British Empire, is entering the post-Yorktown phase where military conflicts and such give way back to the political.

The standard American myth celebrates the Constitution as the triumphant culmination of the American Revolution. This is largely untrue and misleading.

Everyone in government schools has heard, the Articles of Confederation was weak and ill equipped to govern the thirteen colonies, let alone all the additional lands that the Treaty of Paris granted in 1783:

The facts, and not that era’s fake news, paints a much different scene:

The alleged “critical period” between the end of the Revolution and the Constitution’s adoption was not dominated by economic depression, political turmoil, and international peril, jeopardizing the independent survival of the American experiment in liberty.

There was no actual threat, but a threat was thought up in the minds of those politicians whose political descendants include the politicians that orchestrated the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the so-called Civil War and so on. In each of these instances, there was a fear introduced into the population that without a war, catastrophe was imminent.

In context, backing up to the period of time before even the Declaration of Independence was penned (raw thoughts by Thomas Paine and edited by Thomas Jefferson), there was a joining of efforts from people in the thirteen colonies across a political and philosophical spectrum. On one hand, we have the RADICALS:

The American Revolution, like all great social upheavals, was brought off by a disparate coalition of competing viewpoints and conflicting interests. At one end of the Revolutionary coalition stood the American radicals—men such as Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Jefferson.

Although by no means in unanimous agreement, the radicals objected to excessive state power in general and not simply to British rule in particular. Spearheading the Revolution’s opening stages, they were responsible for the truly revolutionary alterations in the internal status quo: the abolition of slavery in the northern states, the separation of church and state in the southern states, the rooting out of remaining feudal privileges everywhere, and the adoption of new, republican state constitutions containing written bills of rights that severely hemmed in government power.

These were change agents, those daring visionaries that can see life lived differently, and at the same time knew that this would not be a utopia, but in reality would be a struggle, but a rewarding one.

On the other hand, was a class of people that we might consider to be nationalists or those whose major agenda was that of mercantilism:

At the other end of the Revolutionary coalition were the American nationalists; an array of mercantile, creditor, and landed interests. The nationalists went along with independence but opposed the Revolution’s libertarian thrust. They sought a strong American state with the hierarchical features of the 18th-century British state, only without the British.

So by the fall of 1781 as the British catastrophe at Yorktown reverberated throughout the British Empire, there were nationalist forces that were already parting ways with the radicals, and even the militias that brought them to this day.  By 1783, Francis Marion saw the writing on the wall. The NOV1782 election meant that Marion had to leave Pond Bluff yet again for the 06JAN1783 legislative session. Writing from there on January 18th he shared the inequalities that tainted his excitement about the future of the colony as well of the federation of states. It seems that the Rhode Islander Continental Nathaniel Greene was awarded 10,000 guineas from SC toward the purchase of a SC plantation and quoted an old saying “that kissed goes by favor”.  Georgia had also given Greene 24,000 acres as well. Marion eventually was awarded 300 acres in 1785.

It should be noted that the correspondence Marion had with Greene stopped abruptly as the hostilities stopped in DEC1782. Marion had hoped that Congress would follow through on the promise of a lifetime of half-pay for officers but it would be 50 years before that practice would finally start. Marion lamented that “idle spectators of war” were in charge now.

So too were the more nationalistic military leaders that benefited from a larger government:

Military conservatives such as George Washington induced Congress to focus the Revolutionary effort on a costly conventional force, the Continental Army, rather than the militias. By the 1781 Yorktown campaign, popular disgust at the army’s continuing hand-to-mouth existence gave the nationalists uncontested control of Congress. They proceeded to implement a financial program that gave the central government much more power.

While the nationalists attempted to strengthen the Articles of Confederation, their attempts through 1784 were met with resistance from the Radicals after the Treaty of Paris. The economic state of the states were generally fine economically except for two groups that put out a very public fuss:

In reality, American merchants were after uniform navigation laws, because they wanted some coercive means of monopolizing the American carrying trade. And American artisans wanted uniform protective tariffs to stop their customers from buying the cheap foreign goods flooding American markets at the end of the war. The unique economic fortunes of these two groups and their quest for special privileges contributed much to the exaggerated impression of postwar depression.

As we see today, coercive means to monopolize as well as protective tariffs are tools used yet today in 2019. Capitalism will always look to enhance their position by government if it will let them. Corporatism is the curse of politics gone too far.

So the Coup d’etat of the cause for the freedoms gained by the American Revolution would come at a convention in Philadelphia in 1787 whose purpose was to rework the Articles of Confederation, however:

Its official function was to propose revisions to the Articles. But the delegates, meeting in secret, quickly decided to draft a totally new document. Of the 55 delegates, only 8 had signed the Declaration of Independence. Most of the leading radicals, including Sam Adams, Henry, Paine,Lee, and Jefferson, were absent. In contrast, 21 delegates belonged to the militarist Society of the Cincinnati. Overall, the convention was dominated by the array of nationalist interests that the prior war had brought together: land speculators, ex-army officers, public creditors, and privileged merchants.

Things had definitely changed in one decade’s time, and not for the better! Look how far we have come since then.

Not cool!

We are much “safer” today as a result of the this early course change in this nation’s history, safe as slaves.

-SF1

SEP – NOV1781 – Slow Push on British and Loyalist Troops Toward Charlestown

Port of Wilmington, North Carolina – evacuated by the British forces on 14NOV1781

One might figure that with the Battle of Eutaw Springs done, there is little to do at this point of the Revolutionary War or for what was actually the civil war in SC between Whigs and Tories and those who switched sides back and forth. There is also the transition from a British military presence for 12-18 months that displaced civil government as so we see at this time Gov. Rutledge attempting to piece back together something.

Post Eutaw Springs battle, Greene dispatched Lee and Marion to attempt to get in front of Stewart’s British forces as they withdrew towards Charlestown but 400 fresh Brits arrived in Moncks Corners from Charlestown itself to cover the retreat.

On 12SEP1781, Stewart, who was wounded, was temporarily replaced by Col. Paston Gould, who had been Balfour’s position until he was promoted to commandant of the Charleston district for the British.

Gould had stayed put in Charleston until now and was unfamiliar with the territory. He briefly took an expedition out towards Greene but then came back to a point 50 miles outside Charleston while half his men came down with seasonal fever. He returned to Charleston and was replaced by Gen. Alexander Leslie and Steward, having recovered from his wounds, took command of 1,200 troops 7 miles north of Moncks Corners where he proceeded to raid plantations for food (harvest time was getting near), capturing slaves including women and children to return to Charleston where they were put to work strengthening British fortifications there.

At this time Greene felt confident with the British south of the Santee to take his own sickly army to the High Hills of the Santee to recover. Marion camped 50 miles away on the Santee ready to deploy but he himself was hit with the seasonal fever in spite of his vinegar and water concoction.

Between daily correspondence with Greene on intelligence reports and sometimes two letters a day from Gov. Rutledge in getting the right people in the right positions in the new civil government especially justices / judges, it was a different kind of busy for Marion.

Gov. Rutledge offered a Clinton-like proclamation that now allowed Tories to be pardoned and reunite with their families if they serve 6 months in the patriot militia.

Gov. Rutledge’s proclamation states that all Loyalists except those who held commissions from the British government could have:

“a free pardon and permission for their wives and families to return and reoccupy their possessions, on condition that such men appearing at our headquarters, or before a Brigade or the Colonel of any Regiment, and there subscribing an engagement to serve the State faithfully as militia men for six months.”

Those who declined this pardon faced banishment and property loss similar to the Clinton order a few years prior. 27SEP1781 was the day the amnesty proclamation was made official and gave 30 days for men to meet with a brigadier general of SC.

By early October 1781, Marion was able to attend to family matters as he continued to assist his nephews in collages in the north with a shipment of indigo to Philadelphia to supply them with winter clothes, etc.

By early November 1781, with all these distractions, it was learned that on October 19th Cornwallis surrendered ALL his troops at Yorktown.

With this news, Marion actually arranged for a celebration at a local plantation, a ball for his officers and area ladies, yet Marion remained subdued during the festivities. He still had on his mind two patriots that were still in prison, one would die there and the other would remain there until the official end of the war.

NOTE: Unlike what history books claim today, Yorktown was NOT the end of the Revolutionary War !!!

One more domino to fall was when the British evacuated the port of Wilmington, North Carolina on 14NOV1781! This too gives those in South Carolina hope that the evacuation of Charlestown, South Carolina is next!

Stay tuned for more details on the 1781 fall season in South Carolina where the British forces in Charlestown could be resupplied from the sea at any time to renew a push into this rebellious colony that seceded from the British Empire.

-SF1