Skirmishes & Huck's Defeat, Summer 1780

Ramsour's Mill set the stage as July and early August of 1780 played out as a series of skirmishes traversing the Carolina backcountry. The absence of regular Continental army and any real general command structure allowed the rise of notable, innovative militia leaders such as Francis Marion, Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter (apart from his Fishing Creek episode), William Davie, and others. (Continental Line General Horatio Gates would not arrive in the Carolinas until late July.) Innovation and spontaneity were key factors within the geography of swamps, dense forests, thick underbrush, along with fickle weather patterns, which created challenges not traditionally experienced by British officers. The locals, both Patriot and Loyalist, knew the environment and how to best exploit it to advantage. Loyalists, however, had mostly British commanders who hadn't a clue as to the local terrain, but had to trust the locals for guidance. 

The men of the backcountry had been militarily seasoned, if not trained, by their "savage neighbors."* The Indian tactics they learned, out of necessity, were tree-to-rock, rock-to-tree, rifle, knife, and hatchet. They became experts of the surprise raid and hasty retreat, the silent disappearance into woods and swamps. These were precursors of modern guerrilla warfare.

Incidents at militia outposts such as Earle's Ford, Thicketty Fort, Rocky Mount, Cedar Creek, and Hanging Rock kept the game on, but the most pivotal encounter took place as a side effect of British Commander George Turnbull's order to apprehend backcountry rebel commanders John McClure and William Bratton. Colonel Turnbull was under the impression that Captain McClure and Colonel Bratton had returned home to oversee their wheat harvests. Captain Christian Huck, a fervent Loyalist, was on the receiving end of Turnbull's order and set out from Rocky Mount July 10th with a company of thirty-five British dragoons, twenty New York volunteers, and about fifty mounted Loyalist militia. 

"You are hereby ordered, with the Cavalry under your command, to proceed to the frontier of the province, collecting all the royal militia with you on your march, And with said force to push the rebels as far as you may deem convenient."

—Colonel George Turnbull to Captain Christian Huck, excerpt

Huck and his troops descended upon both the McClure and Bratton households, invoking terror as they might. McClure's brother and brother-in-law were captured and sentenced to hang. The McClure house was set afire. Mrs Bratton put up a good fight, despite being physically threatened with a reaping hook. She stood her ground and refused to give up any information. Huck, frustrated, moved along in his search to James Williamson's plantation. Bratton and McClure, in the meantime, had gotten wind of Captain Huck's pursuit and tactics, and devised a strategy to intercept Huck at Williamson's. They amassed a sizeable militia force from the surrounding countryside. At sunrise on July 12th, the patriot forces managed to trap the Loyalists in a fenced-in lane which ran from the main road to the Williamson home. The attack was a total surprise. Huck tried to rally his dragoons, but a single bullet from a sharpshooter killed the captain instantly. This was Huck's Defeat. The battle lasted only about ten minutes, but its implications would resonate far longer.

[Huck's Defeat] was the first check the enemy had received after the fall of Charleston; and was of greater consequence to the American cause than can be well supposed from an affair of small a magnitude as it had the tendency to inspire the Americans with courage & fortitude & to teach them that the enemy was not invincible. 

—Colonel William Hill*

* A nod to Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors, published 2008, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, N.Y.
* William Hill, Colonel William Hill's Memoirs of the Revolution, Columbia, South Carolina

Loyalist Robert Gray's "Observations"

Colonel Robert Gray resided in Cheraws District, South Carolina, and served as Justice of the Peace for that district in 1766. His name was listed on the roll, dated 2 September 1775, of a volunteer Rangers company from Camden District. He most likely joined the Loyalists after 1776. After the War, Gray relocated to Nova Scotia.

From "Colonel Robert Gray's Observations on the War in Carolina," South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. XI, No.3, July 1910:

The want of paying sufficient attention to our militia produced daily at this time the most disagreeable consequences. In the first place, when the rebel militia were made prisoners, they were immediately delivered up to the regular officers, who, being entirely ignorant of the dispositions and manners of the people, treated them with the utmost lenity and sent them home to their plantations upon parole and in short they were treated in every respect as foreign enemies. The general consequences of this was that they no sooner got out of our hands than they broke their paroles, took up arms, and made it a point to murder every militia man of ours who had any concern in making them prisoners. On the other hand whenever a militia man of ours was made a prisoner he was delivered not to the Continentals but to the rebel militia, who looked upon him as a State prisoner, as a man who deserved a halter, and therefore treated him with the greatest cruelty. ...

[The inhabitants of Williamsburg Township, South Carolina] carried on a continual predatory war against the rebels and sometimes surprised them at their musters. In short, they carried on the war against the rebels precisely as they had set the example and as the post at George Town supplied them with arms and ammunition they overawed and harassed Marion's brigade so much that he was obliged to leave the inhabitants of the Cheraw District at home to protect their properties while he could only call out the people of Williamsburgh Township and the neighborhood of George Town; when a small party of rebels ventured among them they were cut to pieces—when a large body invaded them, which they found they could not withstand, they hung in small parties on their skirts, harassed them with false alarms, killed their sentries, drove in their pickets, and soon compelled them to leave the country. It may not be improper to observe that the rebel militia did not at all times turn out voluntarily under their leaders, for when they were averse to an expedition they compelled them on pain of death and there have been often severe examples made of them. On the other hand the Little Pee Dee men only defended their own country and never went upon a more distant expedition than to Georgetown. The rebel militia from Bladen County in North Carolina at times also harassed the loyal inhabitants of Little Pee Dee, but with little effect. ...

Lord Rawdon finding [the rebels] had out marched him sent for Major Frazer of the South Carolina Regiment to march with it and intercept them at Lynch's Creek. They had just crossed the creek when Maj. Frazer came up with them who attacked them and routed their whole body in a few minutes. They were now exceedingly dejected; instead of 300 men under Lord Rawdon's command they had seen so many different detachments of troops superior to their whole force that they despaired [sic] of success and notwithstanding Sumpter who had carried off a number of Negroes, offered one to every person who would enlist for ten months as a dragoon to form a body of state cavalry, he could hardly procure a single recruit and he began to grow extremely unpopular. ...

We soon lost great part of the backcountry, the cruelty exercised by the rebels on our militia exceed all belief. Lord Rawdon finding he could not bring [Nathanael] Greene to action embarked for England on account of his health. ...

[F]rom this place to what is now called the Ridge betwixt Saluda and Edisto Rivers on the road to Ninety Six on one hand and from a few miles to the Southward of Santee to the Salkehatchie on the other, the inhabitants refused to submit to the rebels although left by the army and surrounded at almost every hand the enemy who were in possession of Ninety Six district and the disaffected inhabitants of the Forks of Santee, the country betwixt Salkehatchie and Savannah Rivers and all the rice lands from thence to Ashley River in short, the whole province resembled a piece of patch work, the inhabitants of every settlement, when united in sentiment being in arms for the side they liked best and making continual inroads into one another's settlements. ...

The district of Ninety Six being all this while much divided in sentiment suffered severely. The Tories in many places would neither submit nor go to Charles Town, they hid themselves in the swamp, from whence they made frequent incursions upon their enemies. When opposed by a superior force they dispersed, when the storm blew over they embodied again and recommenced their operation. A petty partisan [war] started up in every settlement and headed the Whigs or Tories, both parties equally afraid of the other, dared not sleep in their house, but concealed themselves in swamps, this is called lying out. Both parties were in this condition in general all over Ninety Six District and every other part of the province wherever it was checkered by the intersection of Whig and Tory settlements. ...

The swamps were filled with Loyalists, the rebels dare not sleep in their houses, and Sumpter irritated by the hostility of the Country, got the Catawba Indians to track the Loyalists from the swamps, which were at the same time traversed by large parties of armed rebels to kill or take the Tories. ...

Gen. Rutherford who commands the militia brigade from Mecklenburg and Salisbury is a perfect savage and bears the most rancorous hatred to Tories. ...

Nathanael Greene to Francis Marion, 4 December 1780:

". . . I have not the Honor of your Acquaintance but am no Stranger to your Character and merit. . . . Untill a more permanent Army can be collected than is in the field at present, we must endeavor to keep up a partizan war and preserve the tide of sentiment among the People as much as possible in our Favour. Spies are the Eyes of any army. . . . At present I am badly off for Intelligence. It is of the highest Importance that I get the earliest Information of any Reinforcements which may arrive at Charlestown or leave the Town to join Lord Cornwallis. I wish you therefore to fix some Plan for procuring such Information and for conveying it to me with all possible Dispatch. The Spy should be taught to be particular in his Enquiries, and to get the names of the Corps Strength and Commanding Officer's name, Place from whence they came and where they are going. It will be best to fix upon some Body in Town to do this, and have a Runner between you and him, to give you the Intelligence as a Person cannot make these Enquiries without being suspected who lives out of Town. The utmost Secrecy will be necessary in this Business."

Gen. Nathanael Greene, re: The Backcountry

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse, by John Buchanan, ©1997, John Wiley & Sons, page 140:

"Even General Nathanael Greene, whose highly critical views of militia were well known and often justified, in a letter to Alexander Hamilton nevertheless admitted that 'there is a great spirit of enterprise among the back people; and those that come out as Volunteers are not a little formidable to the enemy. There are also some particular Corps under Sumpter, Marion and Clarke that are bold and daring.'"

Francis Marion (1732–1795)

Francis Marion was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Continental Army and, later, Brigadier General in the South Carolina Militia during the American Revolutionary War. He became known as the "Swamp Fox" for his ability to use decoys and ambushes to disrupt enemy communications, capture supplies, and free prisoners. His strategic use of guerrilla tactics helped set in motion the decline of open battles in the conflict. Before the Revolutionary War, he was a sailor.

Marion is considered one of the fathers of modern guerilla warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the U.S. Army Rangers.

When Charleston fell on 12 May 1780, Francis Marion escaped capture because he had broken an ankle in an accident and had left the city to recuperate. Following Gen. Isaac Huger's defeat at Moncks Corner and the Waxhaw Massacre of Col. Abraham Buford's men by British Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his Green Dragoons, Marion organized a small troop, at first consisting of between 20 and 70 men—the only force then opposing the British Army in the state. At this point, he was still nearly crippled from the slowly-healing ankle.

He joined General Horatio Gates just before the Battle of Camden, but Gates sent him to take command of the Williamsburg Militia in the Pee Dee area, asking him to undertake scouting missions and impede the expected flight of the British after the battle. Marion thus missed the battle, but was able to intercept and recapture 150 Maryland prisoners, plus about twenty of their guards, who had been en route from the battle to Charleston. The freed prisoners, thinking the war already lost, refused to join Marion and deserted.

However, with his militiamen, Marion showed himself to be a singularly able leader of irregulars. Unlike the Continental troops, Marion's Men, as they were known, served without pay, supplied their own horses, arms, and, often, their own food. All supplies that were not obtained locally were captured from the Loyalist forces.

Marion rarely committed his men to frontal warfare, but repeatedly surprised larger bodies of Loyalists or British regulars with quick surprise attacks and equally quick withdrawal from the field. After the surrender of Charleston, the British garrisoned South Carolina with help from local Tories, except for Williamsburg, which they were never able to hold. The British made one attempt to garrison Williamsburg at Willtown, but were driven out by Marion at the Battle of Mingo Creek.

The British despised Marion and repeatedly tried to neutralize his force, but Marion's intelligence-gathering was given advantage by overwhelming Patriot loyalty in the Williamsburg populace.

Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, sent to capture Marion, despaired of finding the "old swamp fox", who eluded him by travelling along swamp paths. Tarleton and Marion were sharply contrasted in the popular mind. Tarleton was hated because he burned and destroyed homes and supplies, whereas Marion's Men, when they requisitioned supplies, or destroyed them to keep them out of British hands, gave the owners receipts for them. After the war, most of the receipts were redeemed by the new state government.

Once Francis Marion had shown his ability at guerrilla warfare, making himself a serious nuisance to the British, Gov. John Rutledge (in exile in North Carolina) commissioned him a brigadier-general of the South Carolina state troops.

When Gen. Nathanael Greene took command in the south, Marion and Lieutenant Colonel Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee were ordered in January 1781 to attack Georgetown, but were unsuccessful. In April, however, they took Fort Watson and in May, Fort Motte, and succeeded in breaking communications between the British posts in the Carolinas. On August 31, Marion rescued a small American force trapped by Major C. Fraser with 500 British. For this, he received the thanks of the Continental Congress. Marion commanded the right wing under General Greene at the Battle of Eutaw Springs.

In 1782, during his absence as State Senator at Jacksonborough, his brigade grew disheartened and there was reportedly a conspiracy to turn him over to the British. But in June of that year, he put down a Loyalist uprising on the banks of the Pee Dee River. In August, Francis Marion left his brigade and returned to his plantation.

(Source: Wikipedia)