Washington's Immortals

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Chapter 39

  Ninety Six

  The sappers’ pickaxes and shovels dug into the hard South Carolina clay as they burrowed closer to the Star Fort in early June 1781. Sweating profusely while they worked under the dim flicker of candlelight, the Patriots added several yards to an underground tunnel that stretched back to American lines. This tunnel, designed to break through the stout and heavily defended walls of the British-held fort at Ninety Six, South Carolina, was the latest tactic the Polish chief engineer, Thaddeus ­Kosciuszko, had pulled from his arsenal of siege-warfare methods. Taking the fort was strategically important because it protected a great bastion of Loyalists and supported the British fort at Augusta, Georgia. Cornwallis acknowledged, “[Ninety Six] must be kept at all events & I think no reasonable expense should be spared—besides Georgia depends entirely upon it.”

  Named because it was ninety-six miles from the Indian settlement at Keowee, an important trading post, the town of Ninety Six was home to a garrison of 550 Loyalist troops led by Colonel John Harris Cruger. Born into a wealthy New York family, Cruger commanded a battalion of Loyalists from New York and New Jersey. Participating in the capture and siege of Savannah, he moved to South Carolina but was captured by partisans at a dinner party celebrating the king’s birthday. Fortunately for him, he was released in a prisoner exchange and was sent to Ninety Six with his men to improve its defenses. To the original palisade wall, he and his men had added a deep ditch surrounded by an abatis, and on two sides of the town they constructed additional works. To the west, new defenses protected Ninety Six’s water supply—one of the fort’s greatest vulnerabilities was its lack of a water source within its walls. To the east was the Star Fort, an impressive works with sharp angles designed to maximize the defenders’ line of fire and keep assault parties from approaching the fort’s walls. A trio of three-pound guns was also on hand.

  After the battle for Hobkirk’s Hill, Nathanael Greene had split his force and began mopping up the Carolinas. Forces led by his commanders Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Harry Lee—often accompanied by a small contingent of Marylanders—routed the British from their smaller outposts at Fort Motte, Granby, Watson, and Orangeburg. After the evacuation of Camden, only the exterior British posts at Ninety Six in South Carolina and Augusta in Georgia remained, although the Redcoats still retained control of Charleston and Atlanta. In 1781 Greene had yet to win a major battle in the South. The American, however, was winning strategically, forcing the British to abandon their outposts and lose influence and control over territory as well as over the Loyalist population that they were trying to protect and keep on the side of the Crown. The British were being forced to retreat and retrench farther toward their main base in Charleston.

  Now Greene and the main army set out to take Ninety Six. To achieve this objective, Greene brought with him 850 Maryland and Delaware Continentals plus approximately two hundred militiamen. The Patriots outnumbered the Loyalists nearly two to one, but given the strength of the defenses at Ninety Six, Greene felt that his troops were insufficient for a direct assault. Instead, they settled in to lay siege to the town. Helping him in planning was Major Joseph McJunkin, a wounded Patriot officer who had been taken captive by the British, “carried to 96 & put in Jail with prisoners of War.” Just a few days before Greene arrived, the Loyalists in Ninety Six paroled McJunkin. He recalled “[m]eeting Greene near 96 & being anxious that he should capture that place.”

  Inexperienced in siege warfare, Greene first directed Kosciuszko to begin constructing entrenchments about seventy yards from the Star Fort. The Loyalists soon moved one of the three-pounders into position and began to fire a devastating barrage. Supported by this cover, Loyalists from New York sallied forth from inside the Star and pounced on the Patriot working party constructing the trench, putting them to the bayonet. African American slaves then emerged from the fort to retrieve the Americans’ pickaxes and shovels.

  Stung by this first failure, Greene moved his sappers back about twelve hundred yards from the Star and again began construction of parallel trenches designed to get them closer to the walls of the fort. It took ten days to get back to the point where they had first begun digging. The fort’s defenders became masters of the counterattack, and the excavation parties were frequently interrupted by sorties from the strongpoint. Despite the Loyalists’ seemingly relentless assaults, the Patriots persisted, and their tunnels inched closer to the fort. Greene’s men continued digging until they were within thirty yards of the walls, where they constructed a Maham tower. Ordinarily, the tower would have allowed Greene’s riflemen to shoot down into the fort, but Cruger’s Loyalists countered the threat by piling sandbags on top of their existing fortifications, leaving slits through which they could fire back at the Patriots. They also attempted to set the tower on fire by launching heated cannonballs—but to no avail—as the tower was constructed of green wood. In response, the Patriots shot flaming arrows into the town, forcing Cruger to order teams of workers to tear the roofs off all the buildings within. As June progressed, the scene was beginning to look more desperate for the besieged; the Loyalists were now so harried by Greene’s men that they could counterattack only at night.

  After having successfully attacked Augusta, Lee and Andrew Pickens arrived at Ninety Six on June 8, bringing with them a number of Loyalist prisoners whom they paraded in front of the fort. Instead of disheartening those inside, the pathetic spectacle backfired: the sight of their fellow soldiers as POWs steeled their resolve. They continued to defend the town, more determined than ever to resist.

  Hoping to take advantage of the brutal Carolina summer temperatures, Greene sent Lee’s men to attack the defenses that surrounded the town’s sole water supply, a small creek. Their sappers immediately began digging trenches on the west side of town. The Loyalists responded by stepping up their nighttime attacks. Despite these efforts, it soon became very difficult for the Tories to get access to the water. They sent slaves to the creek under the cover of darkness, but the supplies they were able to bring back couldn’t satisfy the needs of the town. Still, the tenacious Loyalists held on.

  On June 11 a messenger brought Greene the news that two thousand British reinforcements had landed in Charleston and were on their way to Ninety Six, led by Lieutenant Colonel Francis, Lord Rawdon. Greene ordered Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion to delay the Redcoat advance, but the two officers misjudged the route Rawdon intended to take. As a result, the Redcoats bypassed the Americans, marching unhindered straight for Ninety Six.

  The defenders inside the fort also soon learned that relief was coming; this knowledge greatly fortified their resolve, despite the tremendous hardships imposed by the Patriots. On June 17 a Loyalist messenger approached the town casually on horseback. He chatted easily with Greene’s forces, posing as a friendly local who was merely curious about the standoff. In this way, the messenger gradually made his way toward the front lines, where he suddenly spurred his horse and took off, galloping directly toward the gate, while shouting and waving a letter above his head. Somehow, the messenger managed to evade fire and make it safely behind the walls of the fort. Almost immediately, the Loyalists let up a great cry of celebration, and the sound of a feu de joie was heard from within the fort, sending the Patriots a clear message that the Redcoat reinforcements were on their way.

  Now nearly out of time, Greene had all but exhausted his options. He first attempted to set the fort on fire, but the Loyalists discovered his plan and thwarted the effort. Next he attempted to blow a hole in the defenses with explosives, but again the defenders rebuffed the attempt. Having tried everything else, Greene began laying plans for an assault on both sides of the fortifications. To attack the east side, he would send two groups of assault forces. The first, a forlorn hope, would cut through the abatis and then fill the ditch that ringed the town with bundles of sticks. The second group would then charge through the gap in the abatis and rush up to the walls
carrying long, hooked poles. They would then use these poles to remove the sandbags from the top of the wall, leaving the Star Fort vulnerable to fire from the Maham tower. Now protected by this covering fire, the first group would then climb over the defenses and begin their attack on the defenders within. On the west side, the plan was much less complicated: they would simply assault the stockade en masse, relying on their numbers to force their way through and into the town. Greene hoped the enemy troops would be trapped between the two assault forces.

  As dawn broke on June 18, the Americans put their plan into effect. At noon they fired a signal gun. The men in the Maham tower and in the advance trenches opened fire on the Star Fort, as the Marylanders in the forlorn hope charged across the open field. Led by Lieutenant Edward Duvall, the group of Marylanders, including Captain Perry Benson, Captain George Armstrong, Thomas Carney, and many others, rushed toward the fort “amid the thunder and smoke.” They leaped into the ditch surrounding the fortifications, and axe-men began cutting through the abatis. “Through every loophole and crevice the fatal balls of the rifle poured down, and the projecting and re-entering angles hemmed them in between two walls of fire. Above bristled a deadly array of pikes and bayonets. As the abatis yielded to their efforts, they became at every instant more and more exposed. Officers and men fell around them on every side.”

  Captain Armstrong of the 1st Maryland Regiment was killed. Lieutenant Duvall was wounded, as was Captain Benson, whom Thomas Carney “carried . . . on his shoulder to the place where the surgeon [Doctor Pindell] was stationed.” Benson never forgot that Carney saved his life, and the two men became lifelong friends.34

  34. After the war, the men would also visit each other when they were nearby. Benson would rise to the rank of general in the Eastern Shore militia during the War of 1812. He stopped the British landing and attempt to seize Saint Michaels, Maryland. Benson would also be one of eastern Maryland’s official delegates to receive Lafayette when he triumphantly returned to America in 1824. It’s highly likely that Thomas Carney was there as well.

  For forty-five minutes, the men fought in the ditch, breaking through the abatis as the hookmen struggled to pull down the sandbags and breach the Star Fort’s walls. Lieutenant Samuel Selden, commanding the Virginians in their forlorn hope, was also wounded “in an attempt to remove some bags of sand the enemy had placed on the Breast works,” and the group sustained many casualties. The high number of killed and wounded convinced Greene to call off the attack. Despite the galling fire, most of the wounded were brought back to the safety of the American lines, including Selden, who had been hit in the arm: “a [musket] ball entering his wrist, shattering the bone of the limb nearly to his shoulder.” Usually in cases like this, the accepted remedy of the time was for the surgeon to amputate the arm while his assistants held down the patient. But Selden refused to be restrained, choosing instead to hold the doomed limb steady himself. “To this end Selden would not submit. It was his right arm he was about to lose. He sustained it with his left during the operation, his eyes fixed steadily upon it, nor uttered a word, till the saw reached the marrow, when in a composed tone and manner he said, ‘I pray you Doctor, be quick.’”

  Also wounded in the forlorn hope was John Bantham, an original member of Smallwood’s Battalion. This was actually his second forlorn-hope mission, the first being Stony Point. At Ninety Six, he “got his skull bone broke.” Another member of the 400 who enlisted in July 1776, Briant Munrow, took a wound severe enough that he “had a furlough to go home till recovered of his wound.” Gassaway Watkins, who had taken command of the company formerly led by Captain Beatty, also took part in the assault. For these Boys of ’76, the last five years had been some of the hardest of their lives: marching thousands of miles, starving, and surviving smallpox and numerous other maladies, several subzero winters, and British bullets. But these men of iron from the Maryland Line and their brother regiment the Delaware Blues led by example and kept the army together. They were slowly clearing South Carolina of the British even after they had been defeated in battle.

  Lee and Bob Kirkwood’s company assaulted the stockade on the opposite side of the Star Fort and seized it according to plan. All seemed to be going well, until the Loyalists sent out a group of thirty men to attack the gathering assault forces. In a bloody, vicious fight, the two groups beat at each other with clubbed muskets and bayonets. Eventually, two of the Patriot commanders fell, and the rest retreated. At that point, 127 of Greene’s men had been killed or wounded, with another twenty missing, while the Loyalists lost eighty-five. With Rawdon now just thirty miles away, Greene had no choice but to abandon his position and move on. Morale in his army sank to an all-time low. Lee reported, “Gloom and silence pervaded the American camp; everyone mortified. Three days more and Ninety Six must have fallen; but this short space was unattainable. . . . Greene alone preserved his equanimity; and highly pleased by the unshaken courage displayed in the assault, announced his grateful sense of the conduct of the troops.”

  Greene marched his men northeast, toward Charlotte, North Carolina. After dispatching a few men to reinforce Ninety Six, Rawdon followed in hot pursuit. About forty miles into the chase, his men caught up to Greene’s rear guard—Lee’s Legion and Kirkwood’s infantry. This time, however, the Americans prevailed. For more than two weeks, the Redcoats had been marching through the oppressive Carolina heat and humidity in their woolen uniforms. The arduous journey had already claimed more than fifty of Rawdon’s soldiers. The Redcoats were also short on food and salt, and the spent troops proved no match for the Americans, who were relatively well rested following their siege of Ninety Six. Rawdon quickly pulled his forces back to the fort. He ordered the evacuation of the town and commanded the Loyalist troops to follow his own men back to Charleston.

  Sensing an opportunity, Greene sent Lee and Kirkwood orders to get in front of the enemy and cut them off. Now it was the Delaware troops’ turn to fall victim to exhaustion. In the twenty-three days after the failed attack at Ninety Six, the infantrymen marched an astounding 323 miles. Rawdon, joined by some reinforcements, holed up in the town of Orangeburg, South Carolina. For having been constantly on the move, the army was remarkably upbeat. Williams noted, “Army in good spirits thou a little like my old my coat grown old . . . [I] have seldom taken off my sword or boots to sleep and horse is constantly saddled.” Greene called in Marion and Sumter with a view to attack the Star Fort again, but his troops were out of food and nearly spent. “Never did we suffer so severely as during the few days’ halt here [in Orangeburg]. Rice furnished our substitute for bread, which, although tolerably relished by those familiarized with it . . . was very disagreeable to the Marylanders and Virginians, who had grown up in the use of corn or wheat bread.” With few beef cattle available, the men turned to a food supply that was much more abundant—frogs. “Even alligator was used by a few; and very probably, had the army been much longer detained up on that ground, might have rivalled the frog in the estimation of our epicures.”

  Knowing that his men were in no condition to fight, Greene gave up his plans to capture the fort at Ninety Six. Instead, in July 1781 he led the bulk of his men to the high hills of the Santee, an oasis of defensible high ground. It offered plenty of grain, cool breezes, and—most important—a place to rest and recuperate. Lord Rawdon was also headed for a rest—but in his case it was much more permanent. The strains of war had taken their toll on his health and, although only twenty-seven years of age, he was deemed no longer fit for combat and sent back to Britain.

  Their time in the hills gave Greene and the Marylanders the rest they needed. Additional troops had filtered in, and Greene now had twenty-four hundred men under his command. George Washington ordered Greene to resume offensive operations in South Carolina and to continue to take out the remaining British outposts outside Charleston. This also limited the enemy’s ability to send reinforcements from Charleston to Cornwallis in Yorktown. A Bri
tish force of two thousand led by Rawdon’s replacement, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart, came out of Charleston to meet them. Stewart, a career officer, rose from the rank of ensign to major general after the war.

  At this point in the war, a bizarre phenomenon became apparent: many of Greene’s troops were British deserters, but a large portion of Stewart’s men had formerly fought for the Patriots. “We fought the enemy with British soldiers, and they fought us with those of America,” noted Greene.

  As Greene’s army marched south, his men were still poorly clothed and poorly equipped. “Hundreds of my men were naked as the day they were born. Their bare loins were by galled their cartridge boxes while a clump of rags or a tuft of moss alone protected their shoulders from being chafed by their guns.”

  Greene’s army camped near Eutaw Springs, an area where an underground river briefly appears aboveground near present-day Eutawville, South Carolina, about fifty miles northwest of Charleston. Stewart’s men had difficulty finding Greene because the locals had “rendered it impossible [to scout], by waylaying the bye-paths and passes through the different swamps.” Famished and unaware that their enemy was nearby, Stewart’s men began collecting provisions from the surrounding area.

  Chapter 40

  Eutaw Springs

  On the evening of September 8, 1781, shots rang out somewhere near the front of the long column of Patriots. Nathanael Greene’s army, which had been marching since four in the morning, instantly became more alert. Stationed at the rear, the Marylanders couldn’t see what was happening at the front of the line—they could only hear the gunfire.