Fishing Creek, 18 August 1780

While the humiliating Camden defeat of 16 August 1780 was unravelling for General Horatio Gates and his troops, General Thomas Sumter, who had successfully detached himself from the fiasco, achieved success in taking control of a strategic ferry crossing on Carolina's Wateree River between Camden and Charlotte. A surprise attack totally subdued the British garrison there, and a bounty of war matériel was gained, along with 250 or so prisoners. Sumter, in no hurry to return to Camden, learned, by dispatch from William Davie, of Gates's demise and flight from the disaster that was Camden. 

Lord Cornwallis, in the meantime, learned of Thomas Sumter's raid and gain of valued British supplies and troops, and, in the aftermath of Camden, set Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton on Sumter's trail. It didn't take long.

The day after Camden, Tarleton spotted Thomas Sumter and his men alongside the riverbank of the Catawba River. The following morning, August 18th, Tarleton and his legion tracked Sumter to the junction of Fishing Creek with the river. Here the rebel troops stopped for lunch, along with some rest and relaxation. Sumter enforced no security precautions. "Sentries" enjoyed the afternoon along with their comrades. Tarleton and his men attacked the patriot rebels in total surprise, many, including Sumter, half-dressed and disarmed. Those who could, like Sumter, escaped by any means available. A huge number were casualties, and more than 300 were taken prisoner. More importantly, to the British, their men were rescued, and maybe most importantly: their matériel was recovered. The Americans gained nothing but another huge dose of humiliation as a coda to the Camden defeat.

Col. Davie, re: Hanging Rock, August 1780

From William R. Davie, The Revolutionary War Sketches of William R. Davie, Blackwell P. Robinson, editor (Raleigh, North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History. 1976):

Major Davie's detachment consisted of 40 mounted riflemen and about that number of Dragoons, and considering himself obliged to alarm the enemy in their camp at all events the same day, he approached the Hanging Rock about 1 o'clock, and fortunately while he was reconoitering their position to fix upon the point of attack, He received information that three companies of their mounted infantry returning from some excursion, had halted at a farmer's house, situated in full view of the camp. The House was placed in the point of a right angle made by a lane of staked and ridered fence; the one end of which opened to the enemy's encampment, the other terminated in the woods, the Major advanced on that next to the woods, and as the riflemen were not distinguishable from the Loyalists, they were sent round to the other end of the lane with orders on gaining it, to rush forward & fire on the enemy. The dragoons were divided so that one half could occupy the lane while the other half entered the field. This disposition was made with such promptitude that the attention or suspicion of the enemy was never excited, the rifle company under Capt Flenniken passed the camp sentries without being challenged, dismounted in the lane and gave the enemy a well directed fire. The astonished Loyalists fled instantly the other way, and were immediately charged by the dragoons in full gallop and driven back in great confusion; on meeting again the fire of the infantry they all rushed against the angle of the fence where they were surrounded by the dragoons who had entered the field and literally cut to pieces: as this was done under the eye of the whole British camp no prisoners could be safely taken which may apologize for the slaughter that took place on this occasion. They took sixty valuable Horses with their furniture and one hundred muskets and rifles; the whole camp beat to arms but the business was done and the Detachment out of their reach before they recovered from their consternation.

William Richardson Davie (1756-1820)

William Richardson Davie was born on June 22, 1756 in Egremont Parish, County Cumberland, England, the son of Scottish Presbyterians, Archibald and Mary Richardson. In 1764, the somewhat affluent Richardsons moved to the Waxhaws region near Lancaster, South Carolina, where Mary’s brother, William Richardson, was a prominent Presbyterian minister. Davie had been named for his uncle, and many historians have falsely deduced that William Richardson adopted Davie after the boy came to America. Although that’s not true, the two were close. When Richardson died, Davie inherited 150 acres and a large library. As an adolescent, Davie studied at Queen’s Museum, later Liberty Hall, in Charlotte. In 1776, Davie graduated with honors from Princeton University, then the College of New Jersey.

Too young to take a leading role in the American opposition to British imperial polices, Davie enlisted in the Patriot cause once the Revolutionary War began and fought with considerable courage during the entire conflict. From 1777 to 1778, Davie served under General Allen Jones. (In 1782, Davie married Jones’s daughter Sarah—an unusual match to be sure, for Willie Jones, Sarah’s uncle, was the dean of North Carolina’s Radicals, and later, its Anti-Federalists.) Badly wounded in June 1779 in the Battle of Stono Ferry near Charleston, Davie spent the next several months convalescing and reading law with Judge Spruce Macay in Salisbury. As the fighting in the South intensified, Davie organized a troop of cavalry and returned to active duty. By September 1780, Davie had risen to the rank of colonel, and his subordinates included the future president Andrew Jackson [as a 13-year-old courier]. In December 1780, General Nathanael Greene, commander of Continental forces in the South, appointed Davie his commissary general—a critical yet thankless post.

After the war, Davie settled in Halifax and started a successful legal career. James Iredell, the distinguished North Carolina jurist, ranked Davie alongside Alfred Moore, a future justice of the United States Supreme Court, as one of the two best lawyers in the state. Davie’s most controversial case may have been his defense of three Tory officers charged with treason. Defeated in court, Davie secured pardons for the men from the governor. Elected to the House of Commons in 1784, Davie generally allied himself with the legislature’s conservative faction. Accordingly, he supported sound money and compliance with the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War, called for the payment of pre-war debts owed to British creditors, and encouraged the return of confiscated Loyalist property.

Davie’s effective performance in the House of Commons led to his selection as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention that assembled in Philadelphia in May 1787. Davie said little during the debates, seeming to defer to the experienced Hugh Williamson, the de facto leader of the North Carolina delegation. Yet Davie arguably cast the single most important vote of the convention. Serving on the Grand Committee appointed to consider the issue of representation in Congress, Davie voted for the Great Compromise providing for representation based on population in the House of Representatives and for state equality in the Senate. Davie’s vote made North Carolina the only large state to support the compromise, and it helped break the deadlock between the large and small states. Called away on legal business before the end of the convention, Davie did not sign the Constitution.

In North Carolina, however, Davie adamantly supported the ratification of the document. He served in the Hillsborough (1788) and Fayetteville (1789) conventions called to consider ratification of the Constitution. Even though Davie and Iredell led the outnumbered Federalist forces at the Hillsborough convention, delegates voted 184 to 84 against ratification. After the Constitution had taken effect, a second convention in Fayetteville finally approved it.

(Source: North Carolina History Project, John Locke Foundation, ©2007, http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/115/entry)

Hanging Rock: A Pictorial History

From Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. II, by Benson J. Lossing, 1850, Chapter XVII:
Leaving Charley to dine upon the verge of the stream, I proceeded to Hanging Rock, of whose immensity I had heard frequent mention. It is a huge conglomerate bowlder, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, lying upon the verge of the high east bank of the creek, nearly a hundred feet above the stream. Around it are several smaller bowlders of the same materials. It is shelving toward the bank, its concavity being in the form of the quarter of an orange paring, and capacious enough to shelter fifty men from rain. Beneath its canopy, let us turn to the record of history.
Near the Hanging Rock, on the western bank of the creek, Lord Rawdon, the British commander in that section, had established a post, which was garrisoned by the infantry of Tarleton’s legion, part of Brown’s corps of South Carolina and Georgia Provincials, and Colonel Bryan’s North Carolina Loyalists; the whole were under the command of Major Camden, with the Prince of Wales’s American regiment, in number about five hundred. The greater portion were Loyalists, the remainder were regulars. In the formation of the camp, the regulars were on the right; a part of the British legion and Hamilton’s regiment in the center; and Bryan’s corps and other Loyalists some distance on the left, Hanging Rock Creek being in the rear. As we have seen, Major Davie proceeded to an attack upon this post, simultaneously with Sumter’s assault on Rocky Mount. Davie, with his cavalry, and some Mecklenburg militia, under Colonel Higgins, marched toward Hanging Rock. As he approached, he was informed that three companies of Bryan’s Loyalists, returning from a foraging excursion, were encamped at a farm-house. He fell upon them with vigor, in front and rear, and all but a few of them were either killed or wounded. The spoils of this victory were sixty horses with their trappings, and one hundred muskets and rifles. This disaster made the garrison exceedingly vigilant.
We have observed that after the assault on Rocky Mount, Sumter crossed the Catawba, and proceeded toward Hanging Rock [6 August 1780]. He marched early in the morning cautiously, and approached the British camp in three divisions, with the intention of falling upon the main body, stationed upon the plain at Coles’s Old Field. The right was composed of Davie’s corps and some volunteers, under Major Bryan; the center, of Colonel Irwin’s Mecklenburg militia; and the left, of South Carolina regulars, under Colonel Hill. Through the error of his guides, Sumter came first upon Bryan’s corps, on the verge of the western bank of the creek, near the Great Rock, half a mile from the British camp. Irwin made the first attack. The Tories soon yielded and fled toward the main body, many of them throwing away their arms without discharging them. These the Americans seized; and, pursuing this advantage, Sumter next fell upon Brown’s corps, which, being on the alert, poured a heavy fire upon him from a wood. They also received him with the bayonet. A fierce conflict ensued, and for a while the issue was doubtful. The riflemen, with sure aim, soon cut off almost all of Brown’s officers and many of his soldiers; and at length his corps yielded and dispersed in confusion. The arms and ammunition procured from the vanquished were of great service, for when the action commenced, Sumter’s men had not two rounds each.
Now was the moment to strike for decisive victory; it was lost by the criminal indulgence of Sumter’s men in plundering the portion of the British camp already secured, and drinking freely of the liquor found there. A similar cause plucked the palm of victory from the hands of Greene at Eutaw Springs. Sumter’s ranks became disordered; and while endeavoring to bring order out of confusion, the enemy rallied. Of his six hundred men, only about two hundred, with Davie’s cavalry, could be brought to bear upon the remaining portion of the British, who were yet in some confusion, but defended by two cannons. Sumter was not to be foiled. With a shout, he and his handful of brave men rushed forward to the attack. The enemy had formed a hollow square, with the field-pieces in front, and in this position received the charge. The Americans attacked them on three sides, and the contest was severe for a while. At length, just as the British line was yielding, a re-enforcement, under Captains Stewart and M‘Donald, of Tarleton’s legion, returning from an excursion toward Rocky Mount, appeared, and their number being magnified, Sumter deemed a retreat a prudent measure. This was done at meridian, but the enemy had been so severely handled, that they did not attempt a pursuit. A small party appeared upon the Camden road, but was soon dispersed by Davie. Could Sumter have brought all of his forces into action in this last attack, the rout of the British would have been complete.

"He beat them back! beneath the flame
Of valor quailing, or the shock!
He carved, at last, a hero’s name,
Upon the glorious Hanging Rock!"
With his few prisoners and booty, Sumter retreated toward the Waxhaw, bearing away many of his wounded. The engagement lasted about four hours, and was one of the best-fought battles, between militia and British regulars, during the war. Sumter’s loss was twelve killed and forty-one wounded. Among the former were the brave Captain M‘Clure, of South Carolina, and Captain Read, of North Carolina; Colonel Hill, Captain Craighead, Major Winn, Lieutenants Crawford and Fletcher, and Ensign M‘Clure, were wounded. The British loss exceeded that of the Americans. Captain M‘Cullock, commander of the legion infantry, and two officers and twenty privates of the same corps, were killed, and forty were wounded. Brown’s regiment also suffered much. Bryan’s Tories did not stop to fight, "-------------------- but ran away,
And lived to fight another day."

"The New Rising"

When Charleston fell to the British on 12 May 1780, the British took 5,683 Continental troops as captives. State government collapsed. Charleston was the capital of South Carolina and there was no organized resistance elsewhere in the state. In fact, most residents acquiesced and allowed Lord Cornwallis and his forces to occupy South Carolina at their leisure.
York was the first, and for some weeks the only, district to refuse to accept allegiance to the British king. The "new rising," as the resistance movement in the New Acquisition (of which York was part) was called, was led by Colonels William "Billy" Hill, Samuel Watson, and Edward Lacey, along with Capt. Andrew Neel. Within the month, they agreed to gather their followers under the direction of Thomas Sumter, a Virginia-born resident of the High Hills of the Santee.
A high percentage of the farmers of the New Acquisition were Scots-Irish Presbyterians with a long history of opposition to the English and their ecclesiastical oppression in "the old country." The British forces, quite aware of this long-standing hatred, singled out Presbyterian churches for burning, calling them "sedition shops," and also targeted the libraries of Presbyterian ministers.
The first military unit to form with the goal to regain the state met in York District. William Hill and Andrew Neel were elected as leaders. They established a camp, raised the American flag, and sent word to other potential leaders of their action.
In June and July of 1780 there was much military action in the area as Thomas Sumter rallied not only William Hill's forces but those of Edward Lacey and William Richardson Davie behind him.

(Source: Gen. Thomas Sumter in York County, by Louise Pettus, 2005)