Best Little Stories from the American Revolution

by C. Brian Kelly

  Alston visited Black’s widow the next day to express his regrets and blame the murder on his men.

  When Fanning heard about his friend Kenneth Black’s cruel fate, he wasn’t about to forgive and forget. Accounts vary, but Fanning himself wrote in 1790 that he trapped Alston and twenty-five men in an unnamed house soon after the Chatham raid, “as I was determined to make examples of them, for behaving in the manner they had done to one of my pilots [guides], by name Kenneth Black.”

  After an exchange of gunfire lasting about three hours, with four of Alston’s men killed and all but three allegedly wounded, the rebels offered to surrender, Fanning wrote. Alston’s “lady” did the negotiating of terms—“begging their lives”—and Fanning, “on her solicitation,” granted the desperate plea, even though he had lost two men in the gunfight and had seen four others wounded.

  Another account, furnished by Patriot General Butler (who later would ambush Fanning’s raiders after their Hillsborough strike), was much the same. But Butler noted that the “slabboards” house in question was Alston’s own home on the Deep River, a historic structure still standing today and known as the “House in the Horseshoe.” Butler numbered Alston’s force as fifteen to twenty men instead of Fanning’s estimate of twenty-five. Also, by Butler’s count, Alston “had seven Men wounded and Fanning had one or two killed.”

  Far more colorful, but possibly a bit apocryphal too, is the version developed by the Reverend E. W. Caruthers for his eighteenth-century book, Revolutionary Incidents: And Sketches of Character, Chiefly in the “Old North State.” Caruthers noted that the walls of the besieged Alston home were clapboard—meaning they were exceedingly flimsy. Thus, he went on to write, the Loyalist shots just whistled on through. Inside, Temperance Alston had tucked her two children into the fireplace for safety’s sake, then taken refuge in a bed. (Wouldn’t under the bed have been better?) Thus, the bullets simply whistled overhead. While some of the men in the Alston house fell, either wounded or killed, she and the children remained unharmed.

  Outside on this Sunday morning in August of 1781, the Loyalists gathered themselves for a bold charge. That failed when the man leading it, a Lieutenant McKay or McCoy, was struck down in his tracks by a rifle ball in the heart. Fanning then ordered—or “bribed,” says Robinson’s summary—a free black man to slip behind the house and set it on fire. But he, too, was shot by the defenders…by Alston himself, it is alleged.

  The defenders inside the house at this point were suffering fewer casualties than their attackers. Nonetheless, there came a turning point when Alston saw Fanning bring up an ox cart filled with hay or straw—obviously intent on setting it ablaze and rolling it up against the wooden house. Alston and his men were forced to surrender, or be shot one by one as they emerged from the burning house.

  And Mrs. Alston and her two children? What Fanning expected of their fate is unknown…thanks to the lady herself.

  With her husband and his men afraid to venture forth, even under a flag of truce, she volunteered to take the risk herself and discuss surrender terms with Fanning. Alston, to his momentary credit, at first objected but then finally agreed that even Fanning’s vengeful followers would balk at shooting down an unarmed woman. And so, Alston’s wife was the first out the door.

  Adds Caruthers: “As soon as Fanning saw her, he called to her to meet him halfway, which she did; and then, in a calm, dignified and womanly way, said to him:—‘we will surrender, sir, on condition that no one shall be injured; otherwise we will, make the best defence we can; and if need be, sell our lives as dearly as possible.’ Fanning, who could sometimes respect true courage, whether in man or woman, promptly agreed to the proposal, and honorably kept his word. The men all then surrendered and were immediately paroled.”

  All well and good it might seem…except that Robinson cites another source saying that while the prisoners were allowed to go free, Fanning’s men thoroughly looted and vandalized Alston’s house, even cutting open the feather beds.

  A family history of the Alstons, published in 1901, also suggests that Philip Alston was not so kindly treated after all. This account asserts that Fanning, in fact, sent Alston to the British base at Wilmington as a prisoner. The rebel partisan then was placed aboard a prison ship. After a time, half starved, he slipped overboard one night with a fellow prisoner and swam several miles to shore. They were so weak and hungry that they ate raw meat from the carcass of a dead sheep they found in a nearby swamp. From there they eventually completed their escape. While the Moore County Historical Society has branded this account as entirely fallacious, one has to wonder where its graphic detail came from.

  Oddly enough, a nearly matching account turns up in John C. Dann’s collection of pension applications by Revolutionary War soldiers, published in 1980 as The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence. In it, South Carolina native William Gibson is quoted as saying he and a Colonel Philip Alston of Moore County, North Carolina, squeezed through the portholes of a prison ship one night, dropped into the water below, and made their way to shore together in a joint escape from British captivity. It was several days before they reached friends and safety. They spent two days near Waxhaws, South Carolina, with a “Widow Jackson” who may have been future President Andrew Jackson’s mother.

  Gibson’s account is faulty as to dates and in relating how they were captured to begin with, but other details bear an uncanny resemblance to those in the Alston family history.

  Meanwhile, in the aftermath of Fanning’s attack on Alston’s home, outraged Patriot authorities sent a force of one hundred men after the Loyalist…to no avail. Fanning, in fact, was never brought to bay—he continued his harassment of North Carolina’s rebels even after the Yorktown surrender of October 1781. In February of the following year, a militia major from the Deep River area wrote his superiors a bitter plea for help in dealing with Fanning’s Tory band. “Their number is superior to mine at present,” wrote Major Joseph Rosser, “but the cruelty they have used by cutting and plundering the inhabitants where they go I am resolved to lose my life in the attempt [to stop them], whether you reinforce me or not…”

  Warning that Fanning was expected to be “raising Men fast,” Major Rosser also declared, “It would make you almost shed tears to see the barbarities of them wherever they go.”

  Naturally, accusations of “barbarities” coming from bitter enemies like Rosser could be dismissed as entirely predictable bias. And, true, both Fanning and Alston operated in a rough-and-ready environment in which neither side showed much constraint. All such considerations aside, though, there really is no doubting Fanning’s tendency to go well beyond the limits of military necessity.

  Consider the sequence of events set off the time that Randolph County resident Andrew Hunter had some unflattering things to say about the controversial Loyalist partisan. In response, according to Robinson’s book, Fanning “characteristically resolved to murder him [Hunter].” And sure enough, Fanning and his band soon tracked down and surprised Hunter on an outing to “procure salt on the Pee Dee [River].” With their quarry seemingly well in hand, the Loyalists took the time to settle down and partake of the provisions they had seized from him—after telling Hunter he would be hanged in fifteen minutes.

  Hunter had other ideas. He suddenly leaped into the saddle of Fanning’s favorite mare, a horse named “Red Doe,” and galloped off as his captors scrambled for their guns. They got off a volley of five shots but had to aim high for fear of wounding the leader’s prized mount. One missile struck Hunter in the shoulder, but he simply kept riding and succeeded in avoiding recapture.

  Fanning, being Fanning, would not let the matter rest there, especially since a favorite pair of pistols—presented by his British commander at Wilmington—had ridden off with the mare. In no time, Fanning and his men descended upon Hunter’s home, looted it and—worst of all—abducted Hunter’s wife, who was “far advanced in pregnancy,” plus a number of Hunter’s
slaves. Fanning then held them all in an isolated wood on Bear Creek in today’s Moore County, but sent word to Hunter offering to exchange the hostages for the horse and pistols.

  After a mysterious lapse of five days, Hunter sent back word of his own. Too bad, he reported. He had gotten rid of the horse and could not now retrieve it.

  Infuriated, Fanning gathered up his men, along with the slaves, and rode off. Hunter’s pregnant wife was left to her own devices in the remote, wooded hideaway. Fortunately though, one of the Loyalist’s men circled back and told her how to reach a nearby home. She followed his directions and in a short time was reunited with her husband, who not only recuperated from his wound but for many years “revelled in telling of this affair.”

  He and his wife subsequently lived on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina, above Mars Bluff, where Andrew Hunter was considered a man of “respectability and wealth.” Thus, the hard times of the Revolutionary period ended happily for at least one couple.

  Fanning, meanwhile, gradually faded from sight. As the hostilities ended, he moved back to South Carolina. Later, he took up residence in St. Augustine, Florida, followed by a final move to Nova Scotia, home in the end to many a disappointed Loyalist. He died there in 1825.

  Begged Not to Fight

  ON THE EVE OF AMERICAN REVOLUTION, ISAAC HAYNE OF SOUTH CAROLINA’S Low Country—devoted family man, planter, horse breeder, Royal Assembly member—seemingly was sitting pretty. He owned three plantations covering a total of 2,251 acres. He held valuable city lots in Beaufort and Charleston, along with additional acreage in South Carolina and nearby Georgia. And he was a partner in an iron foundry.

  Born in 1745, he was twenty when he married a minister’s daughter and only twenty-five when he was elected to the Royal Assembly in 1770. Clearly, the master of Hayne Hall in Collecton County was a widely respected young man with nothing but a bright future ahead of him. He was courageous and fully ready to stand up for his principles, too.

  In the revolutionary turmoil that soon engulfed his state, however, there came a time when he repeatedly begged not to fight for either the Loyalist or the rebel side. Even so, by the end of 1781, Isaac Hayne was dead—hanged by the British.

  What happened to make a martyr of this American Patriot?

  His early military career is not well known, but it seems that he was an active rebel—a South Carolina militia colonel, in fact—when taken prisoner by the British soon after their seizure of Charleston in May 1780. No friend to the Crown on another score, he was also co-owner of the Aera Ironworks in York County, which supplied the Patriot cause with tools, cannon, and ammunition until destroyed in 1780 by a raiding Loyalist party led by Captain Christian Huck. By most accounts, Hayne accepted the standard, no-more-fighting parole status initially offered to him, rather than be a prisoner of war. However, in July 1780, the British recanted and demanded he swear allegiance to the Crown as well.

  This meant a Hobson’s choice between joining the enemy or accepting prisoner status. Adding to the tough circumstance for Hayne was the fact that his wife, Elizabeth, and some of their children had come down with smallpox. He was badly needed at home! Elizabeth, in fact, was so ill that she died the next month.

  The agonized planter saw duty to his family as coming first and signed the dread oath after British officers promised he would not be asked to take up arms against his fellow Patriots. Even with that concession, however, his choice grated. “…[A]s they allow no other alternative than submission or confinement in the capital at a distance from my wife and family at a time when they are in the most pressing need of my presence & support,” he wrote to fellow rebel David Ramsay, “I must for the present yield to the demands of the conquerors.” At the same time, Hayne took pains to assure his compatriot that the decision to return home while freshly sworn to the British side was “contrary to my inclination” and, indeed, “I do not mean to desert the cause of America.”

  For the next year or so, Hayne abided by the terms of his new parole status, staying at home and staying out of trouble. Quite naturally, it was no easy task to refuse the entreaties of partisans from both sides to come out and fight—for their side, of course. Still, for that length of time, Hayne was able to reject all such “offers,” even going so far on one occasion as to hide his horses from visiting Patriot militiamen so as not to appear to the British to be working with the Patriots behind the royal back.

  Neither side was any too happy with Hayne’s determination to keep to his parole. Both the Loyalists and the British themselves violated their own earnest promises that he wouldn’t be asked to fight in their ranks.

  On the American side, a fellow militia colonel, William Harden—the very man who didn’t get to see those horses—was thoroughly annoyed by Hayne’s stand. Writing to the famous South Carolina “Swamp Fox,” Francis Marion, Colonel Harden said that Hayne was “staying on too much formality” in regard to the stringent British parole requirements. Harden also said he was “disappointed and impatient” with the reluctant Patriot.

  In the end, though, Hayne at last came out and fought. It was in July 1781, a year after he had been forced to agonize over his parole-versus-prisoner choice. By now, British fortunes in South Carolina were at low ebb. The Crown’s forces had been pushed into an enclave incorporating Charleston and environs. Still concerned with adopting a course of honor in the affair, Hayne decided that he no longer had to feel bound to a conquering enemy who had been forced to give up his occupied territory. Thus, Hayne hastened to Colonel Harden’s side on the banks of the Ashepoo River—quite ready for action.

  Days later, Colonel Hayne led his militiamen to the outskirts of British-held Charleston and, in spectacular style, surprised the alleged turncoat General Andrew Williamson in his bed and carried him off in the night, bedclothes and all, to answer the rebel accusation that he had turned traitor (a highly questionable charge, it so happens).

  Unfortunately, a pursuing party of British dragoons caught up with the militiamen and recaptured Hayne. Now, it would be a British accusation lodged against him, with consequences equally as grave as those that Williamson might have faced. And it wasn’t long before the British acted to make a drastic example of their newly recaptured prisoner. In one sense, he had broken parole. Worse than that, he had gone back on his oath of allegiance (never mind that it was forced upon him to begin with). Specifically, the ruling by a court of inquiry was that he had been found “under arms raising a regiment to oppose the British government, though he had become a subject and had accepted the protection of that government after the reduction of Charleston.” The penalty prescribed would be death by hanging.

  The outcry was instant, as rebels, average citizens, and even key Charleston Loyalists protested the severity of the sentence. Petitions were circulated and personal appeals taken to British headquarters, all to no avail. Not even an ailing William Bull, the colony’s former royal governor, had any mitigating effect on the British military authorities when carried before them on a litter to add his plea for mercy in Hayne’s case.

  Despite all the public and private outcry, neither Colonel Francis Lord Rawdon, British field commander for South Carolina, nor his subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Nisbet Balfour, commandant of British occupation troops in Charleston, would budge on the grim matter.

  On August 4, 1781, the appointed day of execution, thousands lined the streets of Charleston, many openly weeping as Colonel Hayne was marched past on his way to the gallows. A friend urged him to show the onlookers how bravely an American could die, and Hayne answered, “I will endeavor to do so.” Minutes later, he stood on the cart beneath the noose. The hangman was fumbling with a cap, having trouble with it. What was he trying to do, Hayne quietly asked his executioner. Trying to pull it down over the eyes, the prisoner was told.

  “I will save you that trouble,” said Hayne, and he pulled the cap down over his face himself. Seconds later, it was all over.

  Over, yes…except that the unfortunate Hayn
e never did strike his countrymen as a culprit deserving of hanging. Rather than sap or undermine Patriot resolution, his execution immediately strengthened it. Rather than an example, the British had created a memorable martyr to the American cause.

  Deadly Duel in Georgia

  IT WAS THAT KIND OF AGE, THAT KIND OF TENSION, AND THAT KIND OF PUBLICLY declaimed insult. Button Gwinnett, delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and president of Georgia, was, according to his political enemy Lachlan McIntosh, “a Scoundrell & Lying Rascal.”

  The Georgia general, a friend of George Washington, said it out loud on the floor of the Georgia Assembly on May 15, 1777, in front of everyone who counted, politically.

  That very evening, a written challenge came flying back, demanding “satisfaction” the next morning, “before sunrise.” The place: “Sir James Wright’s pasture,” property of the now-deposed royal governor, one mile from “downtown” Savannah.

  The general replied that although the hour requested was an early one, he indeed would be there, “with a pair of pistols only.”

  In one way, their dispute echoed the long-standing tension between the two Whig factions of Revolutionary Georgia. One could well consider the two duelists as the icons of the moment for those two groups—the Savannah-oriented aristocrats of the colony versus the more plebian-minded coastal and backcountry residents. General McIntosh, Continental Army officer and socially prominent planter, was the very embodiment of the first group—the “Establishment.” The English-born Gwinnett, on the other hand, a failed merchant and planter, was more the grassroots player of his day. Adept at politics, he arguably was the central figure in the formation of Georgia’s Popular Party, which often was at odds with the more aristocratic faction (usually associated with Savannah’s Christ Church Parish).