by John Oller
Captain Postell and his brother, Major (later Colonel) James Postell, instantly carried off the mission without a hitch. Commanding separate companies of thirty-five men each, they burned large quantities of enemy supplies at Manigault’s Ferry above Nelson’s and at Wadboo Bridge and Keithfield Plantation, both near Monck’s Corner. John Postell took thirty-three prisoners and destroyed twenty casks of the enemy’s rum—rivaled only by salt as the staple most craved by the armies on both sides. Whether Marion’s men, who had not had any rations of rum for five months, adhered to his admonition not to indulge in any of the spirits is to be doubted.
Marion reported on the raids to Greene, who replied by asking that Marion “give my particular thanks to Major and Capt. Postell for the spirit and address with which they executed your orders over the Santee.” It was no small matter to Greene, as the supplies the Postell brothers destroyed would otherwise have made their way to Cornwallis’s army, which was being forced to live off a land already picked clean. As for the Postells, as William Dobein James would write, to them “nothing indeed appeared difficult.”
Greene’s letter, sent from North Carolina on February 11, included a more ominous note that did not sit well with Marion. General Thomas Sumter, Greene reported, had just returned to action and wished to call out the militia. Greene asked Marion to communicate with Sumter “and concert with him your future operations.” In other words, the Swamp Fox now had to answer to the Gamecock.
a Pickens, who took British protection after Charleston fell, had recently rejoined the patriot cause because he viewed the British as having violated the terms of his parole by destroying his property.
14
Hound and Fox
Thomas Sumter had been absent at Cowpens and had withheld his men from the battle. He was miffed at Nathanael Greene for having placed Daniel Morgan—and not him—in command of the Catawba region in the run-up to the battle. Sumter had even gone so far as to tell his militia not to obey any order from Morgan unless it came through him. A strong believer in the notion of “states’ rights” before that phrase entered general usage, Sumter considered himself under the authority of only one man: South Carolina governor John Rutledge. If Sumter did not like the orders he received from Greene or any other Continental officer, then he felt no obligation to obey them.
From a strictly legal standpoint Sumter was on defensible ground, as the Articles of Confederation, formally ratified in March 1781, did not give the federal government clear power over the states’ armed forces. Greene questioned that interpretation but felt constrained to recognize Sumter’s seniority over Marion under South Carolina’s military hierarchy (even though Marion still held a Continental commission and Sumter had resigned his in 1778). From a more practical standpoint Greene also needed to keep the influential Sumter happy, and he knew that Marion, as a dutiful soldier, would respect the chain of command. So would Andrew Pickens, promoted to brigadier general by Rutledge for his part in defeating Tarleton at Cowpens. And so Greene wrote flattering letters to Sumter praising his leadership qualities and placing Marion and Pickens at his disposal.
Sumter lost little time asserting his authority over Marion. With Cornwallis off chasing Greene through North Carolina, Sumter decided the time was right for attacking the smaller British outposts in South Carolina, and he asked for Marion’s help. Sumter had his eyes on three particular posts: Fort Granby on the Congaree River above where it meets the Santee; William Thomson’s plantation, known as Belleville, where the British had built a stockade thirty miles downriver from Fort Granby; and Fort Watson, a recently established outpost on Scott’s Lake, ten miles above Nelson’s Ferry. Sumter reckoned he could take them absent interference from Lord Rawdon’s forces at Camden, so he asked Marion—politely, at first—to distract Rawdon from that design. “If you can, with propriety, advance southwardly so as to cooperate, or correspond with me, it might have the best of consequences,” Sumter wrote on February 20 from near Fort Granby, to which he had laid siege the previous day.
Marion was then camped about twenty miles upstream from Snow’s Island on Jeffries Creek at the confluence of the Pee Dee. Ironically, he had been driven there by Rawdon, the man Sumter was now asking Marion to distract. Marion’s retreat to that location followed on the heels of his unsuccessful effort to enlist new militia west of the Santee, where he had ventured beyond his normal territory. Marion blamed the failure on Captain William Snipes, the man who had so valiantly captured Samuel Tynes. The hot-tempered, uncontrollable Snipes had been plundering the civilian population in that area, creating so many enemies that Marion’s recruiting efforts there proved fruitless. What’s more, Snipes, who was off on his own at this point, was claiming that he was acting under orders of Marion. An enraged Marion soon published a proclamation against looting, stating that certain unidentified parties not associated with his brigade were responsible and that once he published their names, anyone who found them was free to “put them to death” without being prosecuted. A few days later he issued another order stating that any persons who took provisions from a plantation without written authority from him would be deemed plunderers and would suffer accordingly.
His recruiting venture over, Marion headed back in the direction of Snow’s Island. Along the way he was chased by Rawdon. Like Tarleton, Rawdon narrowly missed catching the Swamp Fox, who this time escaped across Scape Ore Swamp southeast of Camden. And like Tarleton, Rawdon ended his chase to go after Sumter, whose presence to the west posed a threat to Ninety-Six. Rawdon reported Marion’s strength as three hundred, all mounted, and boasted to Cornwallis, much as Tarleton had, that he was taking measures to “prevent Marion from troubling us much more.” Rawdon did not specify what those measures were, but they would become apparent soon enough.
Moving from place to place at this point, Marion did not receive Sumter’s summons for help until February 26. In the meantime the impatient Gamecock had gone forward with two abortive missions. On February 21 Sumter lifted his siege of Fort Granby, undertaken without artillery, when he heard that Rawdon was coming to its relief. The next day, after a failed attempt to storm the stockade at Belleville, Sumter withdrew, leaving behind a detachment to watch the site; they were quickly driven off as soon as a fresh British detachment arrived from Camden.
When Marion finally received Sumter’s letter on February 26, he wrote back to say that the British position to the west was too strong for him to come to Sumter’s aid just yet but that he would try to get as close as possible. In fact, Marion was not enthusiastic about cooperating with Sumter. He considered him a rash showboater and viewed his plan to attack the recently reinforced posts as a fool’s errand. In addition, Marion’s men did not like straying so far from their homes, which were many miles to the east. But Marion recognized an order when he saw one. He moved more than a hundred miles west toward Sumter, although without the same sense of urgency that had marked his earlier raids.
Again Sumter could not wait. He impetuously struck near Fort Watson on February 28 but had to call off the action after losing eighteen killed. It was his third consecutive failed attack on a British post in a week. Later that same day he wrote Marion from near the Great Savannah above Nelson’s Ferry to reiterate his request to join him. “I shall wait impatiently for the happiness of an interview with you,” he told Marion. But although they were less than a day’s march from each other, the two partisan leaders failed to connect.
The next day, March 1, upon hearing that a British force was headed toward him, Sumter took flight north to the High Hills of Santee, grabbed his paralytic wife and their son, and rode another forty miles to Bradley’s Plantation beyond the Black River. Marion had made his way to the same vicinity, but while Sumter was heading north, Marion moved south toward the Santee. They probably missed each other by a matter of hours and may have literally passed in the night.
Not realizing just how close they had been, Sumter wrote Marion again on March 4 from Bradley’s to express disappoin
tment that he was “so far out of the way of meeting with you at a time when there is the greatest occasion for it.” But he still wanted Marion to link up with him. “I shall therefore remain at or near this place for that purpose,” Sumter wrote, “and beg that you may come this way with all possible speed; if not convenient with all your men to facilitate an interview, please to come with a few.”
Sumter waited another day, and when Marion did not come, he took his 250 men farther north, along with his wife and child. But along the way they stumbled upon a British force under Major Thomas Fraser that Rawdon had dispatched to intercept Sumter before he could join Marion. Fraser’s unit inflicted heavy casualties on Sumter’s group, which fled and continued their retreat north to the Waxhaws.
The Gamecock’s campaign to capture British outposts had ended in failure. It had been reckless to attack the posts without cannon to bombard them. His men also believed they had been misled as to Rawdon’s strength, for everywhere they turned, a large British detachment out of Camden seemed to appear. And they thought Sumter had used—or abused—them to rescue his family. Sumter was forced to explain himself in a long talk to his brigade, after which he released the militia to their homes for spring plowing. In a letter to Greene he made clear that he had received “no assistance from Genl. Marion,” and later he would blame Marion directly for not helping in his failed attacks on the posts.
His shoulder still hurting from the buckshot that had struck him at Blackstock’s in November, Sumter took his family up to the New Acquisition District just below Charlotte. There he would nurse his actual wounds, lick his figurative ones, and harbor a grudge against Francis Marion.
WITH SUMTER GONE, Marion was again the lone patriot military leader operating in South Carolina. Greene, who had successfully crossed the Dan River into Virginia ahead of Cornwallis, was now back in North Carolina, reinforced and resupplied, preparing to engage the British army in open battle. Lee, Pickens, and William Washington were all either with or assisting Greene, leaving Marion with no possibility of reinforcement. As a result, Lord Rawdon was now in a position to concentrate on Marion, and as he told Cornwallis on March 7, he intended to “press him to the utmost.”
To carry out that task Rawdon chose a man who would prove to be Marion’s most persistent and adept adversary among all the various British commanders he faced: the redundantly named John Watson Tadwell-Watson. The London-born, thirty-two-year-old Watson was a lieutenant colonel in the elite 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards (Scots). He enlisted in the war in America to escape his gambling debts. After serving three years in the North he arrived in Charleston in December 1780 to join Leslie’s forces marching to reinforce Cornwallis. While on winter garrison in Philadelphia in 1778 he had run a fellow officer through the arm in a sword duel, and by the time he came south he had acquired a reputation of being difficult to work with.
It seems that none of the British high commanders wanted him. Rather than take him along to North Carolina with Leslie, Cornwallis assigned Watson to Rawdon in Camden, telling Rawdon, “I know I do not make you a great present in the person of Colonel Watson.” When Rawdon agreed to take him, Cornwallis expressed relief to Tarleton that neither of them would have to deal with that “plague.” Then Rawdon decided he didn’t need Watson with him at Camden either and instead gave him the job of dealing with the rebel militia between Camden and Georgetown, meaning Marion.
Watson was, in effect, to lead the counterinsurgency. He did not relish the assignment, but Balfour told him that having an independent command was more prestigious than being a mere cog in the regular army. Unfamiliar with the southern terrain or guerrilla warfare, Watson asked a superior how to deal tactically with the irregular forces, to which the officer just shrugged his shoulders.
On his way to joining Cornwallis, Leslie dropped off Watson’s men near Nelson’s Ferry, where Watson joined them on Christmas Day. In taking post at Nelson’s, Watson was replacing the hapless McLeroth, who had failed to deal aggressively enough with Marion. Watson made his first order of business the establishment of a new outpost overlooking the Santee River to serve as a base of operations. For his location he chose Wright’s Bluff on Scott’s Lake, ten miles upriver. There, atop an ancient Indian mound, he built a small fort and named it for himself.
It was Watson’s force that successfully repelled Sumter’s attack near the fort on February 28. After Sumter’s departure north, Watson was ready to put into action the measures Rawdon had promised Cornwallis would “prevent Marion from troubling us much more.” It was a closely guarded secret, as reflected in Balfour’s note to a fellow officer on March 5, revealing that “a movement is intended against Marrion [sic], as little intelligence as is possible should be given of the movement.”
The plan was for Watson to move south and east along the Santee in pursuit of Marion; meanwhile Lieutenant Colonel Welbore Ellis Doyle would bring his loyalist provincials from Camden in the direction of Snow’s Island, where the British had a general idea of the location of Marion’s camp. Watson would pursue Marion from the front and Doyle would attack from the rear in a lethal pincer movement that would trap the Swamp Fox in his lair. This time Rawdon was expecting Watson and Doyle to succeed where a long list of others had failed: Wemyss, Ganey, Tynes, Tarleton, McLeroth, and Rawdon himself.
On March 7 Watson moved out from his fort in search of Marion and arrived that day at Blakely’s Plantation near Kingstree. It was a formidable force. He had with him at least 500 men, including his own battalion of more than 300 provincial light infantry, predominantly veterans from New York and New Jersey; remnants of McLeroth’s old 64th Foot; 150 mounted loyalist militia under Lieutenant Colonel Henry Richbourg; and 20 dragoons from Harrison’s South Carolina Rangers led by Major John and Captain Samuel Harrison. Watson also took with him two three-pounders (grasshoppers) Rawdon had given him. Watson left the fort to be guarded only by forty of his most incapacitated soldiers, an indication of how high a priority he placed on his search-and-destroy mission in the countryside.
When Watson moved out, Marion was not far away. He was camped along the Santee, probably at Mount Hope, the plantation of John Cantey, the brother-in-law of Thomas Sumter. Marion had learned of Watson’s presence from one of his scouts, Captain Zach Cantey, of the same family, who spotted Watson’s campfires near Nelson’s Ferry and rushed to warn the partisan general. That information partially explains why Marion did not hurry to join Sumter at this time; Watson was coming after him in full force, and self-preservation was his main concern.
With three or four hundred horsemen, Marion had the cavalry advantage, which was important in the southern theater. Watson had greater total numbers, a higher percentage of veterans, and the benefit of artillery. On paper they were about evenly matched.
As usual Marion sought to compensate for his lack of numerical superiority with the element of surprise. On the morning of March 8 he took his brigade by rapid march to Wyboo (Wiboo) Swamp, about halfway between Murray’s and Nelson’s Ferries on the Santee, and set an ambush on a causeway passage there.a Watson was not fooled, as scouts (locals under Harrison or Richbourg) had informed him that the causeway was a likely spot for Marion to lie in wait.
When Watson arrived at the swamp, around 11 a.m., he and Marion sat atop their horses, staring at each other across the causeway. Behind them were, respectively, Watson’s magnificently uniformed troops, among the world’s finest, and Marion and his poorly equipped men in homespun. With the partisan commander were his stalwarts: the Horry brothers, Hugh Giles, Major John James, and others who had been there from the beginning. He was in familiar territory, not far from his Pond Bluff home. This was to be High Noon for Marion’s brigade, the moment that would separate all that had come before from all that lay ahead. There would be no hit-and-run raid at Wyboo, no guerrilla ambush, and no turning back. The time had come for Marion’s men to test their mettle in open battle.
Watson started the engagement by sending Colonel Richbourg and his Tory
horsemen charging along the quarter-mile causeway toward the patriots. Richbourg had once served in South Carolina’s Whig militia and was married to a member of the patriotic Cantey family of Sumter’s wife. But he turned into a staunch Tory after the rebels plundered his home, and thus he welcomed the chance to lead the attack.
Although he had not gained the advantage of surprise, Marion still could not resist a little sleight of hand. He retreated with most of his men to the woods, several hundred yards back, to prepare, and he placed Peter Horry’s cavalry in advance at the swamp. A few moments later, as described by an American participant in the action, the enemy “came dashing up, expecting to find us all in confusion and disorder, but to their astonishment we were ready for the attack, and perceiving this, they called a halt, at which time Marion and Horry ordered a charge.” Horry’s cavalry went hurtling forward to engage Richbourg’s mounted militia and pushed them back toward the line of Watson’s main body. Then they received what none of Marion’s men had faced in a land battle before—cannon fire. Watson’s two field pieces sprayed Horry’s men with grapeshot, a cluster of small metal balls packed in a canvas bag or metal canister that spread out from the muzzle on firing, giving a devastating effect similar to a giant shotgun. It was especially effective when launched against men in a confined space, as the patriots were on the causeway. Horry’s men were thrown back and dislodged, at which point Watson sent Harrison’s dragoons in pursuit.
Private Gavin James, a second cousin of the major and a man of gigantic size, came forward to dispute their passage and slew two or three Tories with his musket and bayonet, dragging one of them fifty yards as the dying man clutched the barrel of James’s gun. At that point Marion ordered another cavalry charge, led by Captains Daniel Conyers and James McCauley, and in hand-to-hand combat Conyers killed one of Harrison’s officers.
