WEBVTT NOTE 55. The Emergence of Guerrilla Warfare in South Carolina 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.300 Volume 4, Chapter 55, The Emergence of Guerrilla Warfare in South Carolina 2 00:00:07.300 --> 00:00:15.400 Clinton had no qualms about his June departure north. Georgia and South Carolina were pacified, and that was that. 3 00:00:15.400 --> 00:00:22.200 North Carolina would be no problem either. Cornwallis could make a quick thrust into that state, 4 00:00:22.200 --> 00:00:28.900 and the British presence, heightened by the return of North Carolina's royal governor Josiah Martin, 5 00:00:28.900 --> 00:00:35.900 would inspire and activate the Tories. And so that state would be quickly pacified. 6 00:00:36.220 --> 00:00:41.120 From there the British would move up to the Chesapeake. Both British armies would unite 7 00:00:41.120 --> 00:00:47.940 in Virginia and then go on to subdue the Middle Colonies. No qualms were felt about the hostile 8 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:53.800 personal relations between Cornwallis and Clinton, nor about Clinton's failure the previous 9 00:00:53.800 --> 00:01:01.600 is made to mount an invasion of Virginia simultaneously with the attack on Charleston, a failure caused 10 00:01:01.600 --> 00:01:07.560 by the activities of the French fleet. Instead, Clinton confidently set sail for New York 11 00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:09.800 on June 8. 12 00:01:09.800 --> 00:01:16.600 Several factors, however, now began to change the military picture in the Lower South. A 13 00:01:16.600 --> 00:01:23.080 French fleet again prevented the British seaborne invasion of Virginia off the Chesapeake. A 14 00:01:23.080 --> 00:01:29.120 The severe shortage of supplies forced Cornwallis to postpone his march into North Carolina, 15 00:01:29.120 --> 00:01:35.440 and the southern Indians failed to take their expected part in the southern campaign. 16 00:01:35.440 --> 00:01:41.320 For one thing, the death of John Stuart, the esteemed British Indian agent in the South, 17 00:01:41.320 --> 00:01:46.040 deprived the British of much influence over the Indians. 18 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:52.460 The Spanish entrance into the war also gave the Indians more tasks to perform and a small 19 00:01:52.460 --> 00:01:57.580 Allpox epidemic blighted the fighting spirit of the Cherokee. 20 00:01:57.580 --> 00:02:03.740 Most important, however, was the emergence in South Carolina of that form of warfare 21 00:02:03.740 --> 00:02:10.220 most suited to the conditions of Revolutionary War, guerrilla warfare. 22 00:02:10.220 --> 00:02:16.740 In this case, small but compact and highly mobile, partisan bands of rebels organized 23 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:19.620 to harass and trouble the British. 24 00:02:19.620 --> 00:02:26.820 The three most noted guerrilla leaders were Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter and aptly named 25 00:02:26.820 --> 00:02:33.620 Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, all officers of the South Carolina militia. 26 00:02:33.620 --> 00:02:38.820 Several engagements between units of rebel and Tory militia were soon fought in the northern 27 00:02:38.820 --> 00:02:41.220 back country of South Carolina. 28 00:02:41.220 --> 00:02:46.500 A party of Tories was defeated by rebels at Fishing Creek and Colonel William Bratton 29 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:51.820 defeated a detachment of Tories near Windsboro on May 29. 30 00:02:51.820 --> 00:02:57.820 To crush the pesky rebel bands, Colonel George Turnbull, in charge of the substantial British 31 00:02:57.820 --> 00:03:04.260 camp at Rocky Mount, sent out Captain Christian Hooke and his Tory militia to plunder and 32 00:03:04.260 --> 00:03:08.820 destroy in the back country and to crush the rebel partisans. 33 00:03:08.820 --> 00:03:14.460 Camping northwest of Williamson's plantation, 400 of Hooke's militia were attacked in a 34 00:03:14.460 --> 00:03:20.460 and a withering surprise thrust by 260 rebel militia under Colonel Bratton. 35 00:03:20.460 --> 00:03:27.460 Bratton was able to attack Hooke on two sides and to fire at the defenders from behind fences. 36 00:03:27.460 --> 00:03:37.460 The result was the killing of Hooke and the crushing of his forces, which suffered almost 90 casualties, while the rebels lost only one man. 37 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:47.460 This victory had been achieved by a truly democratic people's army, in which every action was decided upon by a vote of all the militia. 38 00:03:47.460 --> 00:03:55.460 Sumter, too rash and too willing to engage in open confrontation to be a first-rate guerrilla fighter, 39 00:03:55.460 --> 00:04:02.460 felt emboldened enough by the victory at Williamson's plantation to launch a direct attack on Rocky Mount itself. 40 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:08.380 and Self. Gathering perhaps 600 militia at Mecklenburg, North Carolina, near the South 41 00:04:08.380 --> 00:04:15.300 Carolina border, he struck directly at the well-fortified British post on July 30. Several 42 00:04:15.300 --> 00:04:21.500 assaults failed, however, and he wisely withdrew before losses should become too heavy. It 43 00:04:21.500 --> 00:04:27.460 should be noted that the roundup of Tory support in the Sheraw district was so spotty that 44 00:04:27.460 --> 00:04:34.460 The climactic battle in this series of skirmishes came on August 8th at Hanging Rock. Here Major John Cardin held a strong position with 500 Tories. Sumter, with 800 South Carolina Militia, was the first of its kind. 45 00:04:57.460 --> 00:05:27.460 The British had decided to attack. A comedy of errors brought all of Sumter's men to attack the British left flank and to good advantage. When Cardin tried to outflank the Americans on his left, the rebel militia swiftly opened up a withering fire from behind trees. The British were completely routed and the American militia plundered and looted, heedless of the remainder of the enemy. 46 00:05:27.460 --> 00:05:35.300 of Draw, but he had achieved a notable victory, inflicting over 200 casualties upon the 500 47 00:05:35.300 --> 00:05:37.100 defending Tories. 48 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:43.420 All in all, during July and early August, no fewer than 12 battles were fought between 49 00:05:43.420 --> 00:05:49.100 Tory and rebel bands in the Carolina back country, and a string of rebel victories made 50 00:05:49.100 --> 00:05:53.780 the British position highly precarious in the interior. 51 00:05:53.780 --> 00:06:00.140 These American victories took place in frays between modest-sized forces, but they were 52 00:06:00.140 --> 00:06:06.480 a portent of a rising threat of rebel militia in the northern backcountry, as well as a 53 00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:11.300 slip in the effectiveness of the British occupation. 54 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:16.780 While the British-led Tories were suffering these reverses, Toryism in the North Carolina 55 00:06:16.780 --> 00:06:23.780 in a back country received a severe setback. Restlessly failing to wait for Cornwallis's 56 00:06:23.780 --> 00:06:30.780 march, Colonel John Moore of Ramsours Mill near the South Carolina border gathered a 57 00:06:30.780 --> 00:06:39.780 formidable force of 1,300 Tories to join British forces in Camden. Nearby Colonel Francis Locke 58 00:06:39.780 --> 00:06:44.780 assembled four hundred patriot militia and launched an attack upon Moore. 59 00:06:44.780 --> 00:06:51.780 Although lacking central command, each officer acting on his own as representative of his men, 60 00:06:51.780 --> 00:06:59.780 the numerically inferior American force managed to attack the Tories front and rear on June 20. 61 00:06:59.780 --> 00:07:05.780 A fierce hand-to-hand combat completely routed and scattered the Tories, 62 00:07:05.780 --> 00:07:13.360 Tories, even though American losses were proportionately higher. Once again, Toryism was crushed in 63 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:20.980 backcountry North Carolina before the British could arrive, and only 30 men reached Camden. 64 00:07:20.980 --> 00:07:26.780 This route of North Carolina Tories was to deprive Cornwallis of a great deal of effective 65 00:07:26.780 --> 00:07:30.220 Tory support in that state. 66 00:07:30.220 --> 00:07:36.260 All in all, the British attempt to rely on the raising of Tory troops in South Carolina 67 00:07:36.260 --> 00:07:39.660 proved not very successful. 68 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:46.020 It is true that effective Tory militia units were organized in the strong Tory areas of 69 00:07:46.020 --> 00:07:52.740 Orangeburg and the Little Pee Dee River in the interior regions closer to the coast. 70 00:07:52.740 --> 00:07:59.780 And at Charleston, Cornwallis was able to form 11 Tory companies totaling 400 men for 71 00:07:59.780 --> 00:08:01.700 for Garrison Duty. 72 00:08:01.700 --> 00:08:07.660 But in the Camden and Sheraw areas, the results were disappointing, and attempts to form two 73 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:12.940 provincial battalions of South Carolina Tories were abject failures. 74 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:17.360 Some of the obstacles to Tory recruitment were simple supply problems. 75 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:23.360 There was a scarcity of both small arms for militiamen and horses for mobile cavalry to 76 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:28.340 check rebel guerrilla raids on back country Tories. 77 00:08:28.340 --> 00:08:33.540 More important in the failure was a shortage of qualified Tory officers. 78 00:08:33.540 --> 00:08:40.640 The great bulk of back-country officer material either had become rebels or had fled the state. 79 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:46.780 Above all these problems, however, stood the alienation of public opinion, generated by 80 00:08:46.780 --> 00:08:53.340 the widespread plundering and atrocities committed against the civilian population by the vengeful 81 00:08:53.340 --> 00:09:14.340 This revolutionary war was, to an extent, undreamed of by the British, a people's war in which public opinion provided the indispensable groundwork for committed revolutionary effort. 82 00:09:14.340 --> 00:09:22.340 This and their careless assumption that the South Carolina back country was staunchly Tory ignored the dynamics of the situation. 83 00:09:22.340 --> 00:09:33.340 These people had been largely indifferent to the revolution, or their support had been lukewarm, and they therefore needed to be wooed by the British. 84 00:09:33.340 --> 00:09:39.340 Instead, they suffered plundering and the exigencies of martial law. 85 00:09:39.340 --> 00:09:50.340 British and Tory actions thereby pushed these men of the back country into ardent support of the revolution during the critical summer of 1780. 86 00:09:50.340 --> 00:09:58.180 of 1780. As Smith concludes, British officials no more comprehended the situation that confronted 87 00:09:58.180 --> 00:10:04.820 them in the South than they understood the extent of revolutionary sentiment in America. 88 00:10:04.820 --> 00:10:12.160 They failed to see that a permanent restoration of law and order in South Carolina rested 89 00:10:12.160 --> 00:10:19.660 not on the strength of the loyalist as they had originally calculated, but on pacification 90 00:10:19.660 --> 00:10:34.660 of the Revolutionist, Peace in the South depended upon reconciling rebels to British authority and upon rapidly organizing loyalists to quell any minor rebel resurgence. 91 00:10:34.660 --> 00:10:40.660 Any major revulsion against British control was not anticipated. 92 00:10:40.660 --> 00:11:00.660 The successful rise of rebel militia bands in the back country of the Carolinas and even in Georgia led Cornwallis to complain on August 6 that all of Upper South Carolina was in an absolute state of rebellion, every friend of government has been carried off and his plantation destroyed. 93 00:11:00.660 --> 00:11:13.660 All this only confirmed him in his belief that he must soon invade North Carolina, and with his main force reduce the back country of the Carolinas to British control. 94 00:11:13.660 --> 00:11:26.660 This belief was reinforced by the news that a new continental American army was moving southward, news that inspired and emboldened the rebels and disheartened the Tories of the back country. 95 00:11:26.660 --> 00:11:39.660 Only a successful Cornwallis presence in North Carolina, the checking of the new American army and the reduction of the Carolinas could save the interior of all the southern states for the British. 96 00:11:39.660 --> 00:11:51.660 Cornwallis determined to take his main force to Camden, preparatory to moving north, leaving detachments particularly at Charleston, Augusta and 96. 97 00:11:51.660 --> 00:11:56.660 In 1996, on August 10, he left Charleston for Camden.