The Swamp Fox

by John Oller

  Before Greene changed his mind or Sumter had a chance to say no, Marion chose to treat Greene’s letter as a yes. On May 27, after gathering up the militia at Cantey’s Plantation, he headed to Georgetown, arriving there the next day. Buoyed by the recent successes at Forts Watson and Motte, the militia had turned out in force. Having learned a few things at those forts, Marion proceeded to lay a standard siege by digging trenches. He again enlisted the help of local plantation slaves, one of whom allegedly furnished cattle and provisions to the British. According to one pension applicant, Marion had the “yellow man” (a term for a light-skinned mulatto) hanged.

  Although lack of artillery had been a primary factor in his previous three attempts on Georgetown, Marion again had none with him. Perhaps he was waiting on some, but in the meantime he resorted to artifice. He wheeled in mounted, peeled logs and had them painted black to resemble cannon. Maybe with that bluff and his superior numbers he could induce the defenders into surrendering.

  As it turned out, the enemy had no intention of putting up a fight. With their numbers greatly reduced, their commander, now the loyalist Robert Gray, was under orders to evacuate if seriously pressed. On the night of March 28, the same day Marion began the siege, the British spiked their cannons, boarded their ships, and left the city. They lingered in Winyah Bay outside town for a few days before sailing off to Charleston. Georgetown had fallen—finally—without a shot being fired.

  Marion was exultant. Never one to care much about clothing, he treated himself to a change of wardrobe, fitting himself out in a new suit of regimentals. The successful mission carried an added bonus: cut off from their supply base in Georgetown, Ganey’s Tories soon asked for a three-month ceasefire, later extended to a year, thus ridding Marion of a group who had been a thorn in his side for months. Ganey’s men even pledged to restore all slaves and other plundered property they had taken from Whig civilians. Marion’s euphoric mood was dampened only by the death of his last surviving brother, Isaac, in Georgetown on May 31.

  Understanding how proud Marion was of his accomplishment, Greene wrote from Ninety-Six to say that he took “great pleasure” in the reduction of Georgetown and that it would be “attended with many good consequences to that part of the country.” But he added that as soon as Marion was done dismantling the British fortifications there, he should swing back to the Monck’s Corner area to keep watch on Rawdon and “act in conjunction” with Sumter. In particular Greene was worried that a new force of some two thousand British soldiers in Charleston, recently arrived from Ireland, would march on Ninety-Six with Rawdon to try to raise Greene’s siege there. If they did, Greene told Marion, he should collect all the militia he could and join Sumter as soon as possible to stall the enemy’s progress. With the fall of Augusta on June 5 to the trio of Pickens, Lee, and Clarke, Greene was now obsessed with toppling Ninety-Six.

  Sumter was less effusive in complimenting Marion’s success at Georgetown. He sent the Swamp Fox a terse congratulation and told Greene that Marion had proceeded against that object despite Sumter’s request that he cover the countryside below the Santee and prevent the enemy from ravaging it. Sumter also informed Greene of some “unfavorable” information about Marion’s force: due to the very success of the Georgetown expedition, Marion’s men had begun to go home, considering their mission accomplished. As a result, Sumter believed Marion was “weak and badly armed” with very little ammunition. Sumter nonetheless assured Greene that he had given positive orders to Marion to march west with what he had and to collect more along the way.

  The siege at Ninety-Six was going slowly. The post was heavily fortified and defended by 550 provincials and militia under Lieutenant Colonel John Harris Cruger, a wealthy New York Tory. The area around Ninety-Six was heavily loyalist in sympathy—the equivalent of Williamsburg for the Whigs. Although Cruger’s defenders numbered only a third of Greene’s besiegers, they were highly motivated, as they included many locals with long memories of the bloody struggles between Tories and Whigs during the Snow Campaign. The two hundred loyalist militia believed their rebel captors would grant them little mercy if they surrendered and thus were prepared to defend the fort to the last extremity.

  Ironically, neither the defense nor siege should have even taken place. After abandoning Camden in March, Rawdon had ordered Cruger to evacuate Ninety-Six and head to the defense of Augusta. But the American militia intercepted Rawdon’s orders and Cruger proceeded to fortify the post to the point where it stood nearly impregnable. The primary fortification was an eight-sided, star-shaped earthen redoubt, protected by a wall with pointed stakes and surrounded by ditches and abatis. Cruger also had the benefit of a trio of three-pounders, unlike at Forts Watson and Motte, where the defenders were without artillery.

  Greene tried several shortcuts to overcome the defenses, none of them successful. He constructed a thirty-foot Maham Tower, but Cruger heightened the fort’s walls with sandbags, neutralizing the maneuver. Borrowing a tactic from the siege of Fort Motte, Greene had his men shoot flaming arrows atop the buildings, but Cruger’s men ripped the shingles off the buildings, eliminating their susceptibility to fire. Greene’s engineer, the Polish Thaddeus Kosciusko, who had built the fortifications at West Point, had a mine tunnel dug underneath the fort, but the defenders discovered the diggers and drove them off with bayonets (killing the brother of Andrew Pickens). Greene was thus forced to rely on classic, trench-digging siege operations that might eventually succeed but would take time. In effect, he was in a race to complete the siege before Rawdon, moving toward him with two thousand effectives, could get to Ninety-Six—hence his orders to Sumter and Marion to do everything possible to retard Rawdon’s advance.

  They failed to do so. Rawdon, though suffering the effects of malaria, got past them unmolested, and by June 18 he was within a couple of days of Ninety-Six. Having run out of time, his entrenchers anxious to fight, and now reinforced by Lee and Pickens back from Augusta, Greene ordered a desperate assault on the fort that day. The Americans fought valiantly but were turned back with heavy casualties. The next day Greene lifted the siege—at twenty-eight days, the longest field siege of the Revolution—and withdrew to the east.

  How had both Sumter and Marion so utterly failed to slow Rawdon’s movement? In Sumter’s case he was convinced that Rawdon was heading to Fort Granby to retake that outpost, so he stayed at Granby while Rawdon, avoiding that place, marched by way of Orangeburg and made it past the Gamecock. When one of Sumter’s detachments finally caught up with Rawdon’s rear, the rebels were trounced and Sumter’s militia deserted in droves.

  Marion had his own reasons. Sumter kept changing his orders on him, telling him first to come quick, then to halt, then to resume marching, but not to hurry because Rawdon was moving slowly and Greene’s siege was going well. On June 16, after the last of these fluctuating orders, Marion wrote Greene to say that although he was on his way to join Sumter, he feared that if he left the Nelson’s Ferry area, where he was, the enemy would destroy all the provisions south of the Santee. These, he explained, were the only available supply for Greene’s army until the crops north of the Santee could be harvested. In addition, he wrote, the British had augmented their force at Monck’s Corner, and if he were allowed to stay there and given ammunition, he could keep the enemy hemmed in close to Charleston and prevent them from foraging for subsistence in the countryside.

  Left unstated was perhaps the biggest reason for Marion’s reluctance: his men had no desire to travel so far from their homes to be part of a difficult and protracted siege operation. Nor were they eager to confront a two-thousand-man enemy force along the way.

  Greene was furious. A few days after ending the siege he wrote Marion to vent his frustration with the militia. Greene maintained that Ninety-Six had been on the verge of surrender and that if he had had Sumter and Marion to help him, the three of them could have defeated Rawdon instead of his having to abandon the operation. He told Marion it was a pity the militia
would not turn out to join a united operation. He avowed that Sumter’s and Marion’s militia needed to join forces with him, not fly around the country here and there on inconsequential little forays. Clearly irritated, he instructed Marion in no uncertain terms to link up with Sumter and follow the Gamecock’s orders.

  Greene had a habit of blaming everyone but himself for his setbacks—at Guilford Courthouse the North Carolina militia failed him; at Hobkirk’s Hill it was Sumter’s absence and a subordinate Continental officer’s order to retreat that were responsible for the loss. And thus he attributed the failed operation at Ninety-Six to the tardy South Carolina militia (and the absent Virginia militia, which Greene faulted Governor Thomas Jefferson for not sending). But Greene might also have looked in the mirror: inexperienced at siege operations, he failed to seize, early on, the small redoubt that protected the defenders’ vulnerable water supply. Doing so would have made short work of things, but by the time the redoubt was taken it was too late to make a difference.

  Marion did not respond to Greene, but given Marion’s thin-skinned nature it is safe to assume he did not take kindly to Greene’s criticisms. However, the debate over who lost Ninety-Six soon became moot, as the British ended up evacuating it a couple of weeks later. After briefly pursuing Greene, Rawdon had to call off the effort because his men were starving and too tired and sick to go on. They had just marched two hundred miles in two weeks in heavy woolen uniforms through 100-degree temperatures and humidity that the mostly Irish unit was not accustomed to suffering. Some of them carried parasols to shield themselves from the sun, to no avail—fifty died of heatstroke. Marion’s intelligence network allowed him to assure Greene that Rawdon’s soldiers were “so fatigued they cannot possibly move.”

  Returning to Ninety-Six, Rawdon found it so lacking in supplies that it could not be held. With the other outposts having fallen, the garrison there could not be resupplied. Rawdon had come to realize that winning battles did the British no good as long as the army could not be provisioned. He headed to Orangeburg to reestablish a position there, leaving orders for Cruger to abandon Ninety-Six, which he did on July 8. The loyalists in the area dared not stay to be persecuted by vengeful Whigs. After accepting Rawdon’s offer to provide them safe haven near Charleston, a group of them began a long, depressing march to the Lowcountry, where they built themselves huts they called Rawdon Town.

  Once again Greene had won by losing. Searching for a way to press his advantage, he called the triumvirate of Sumter, Lee, and Marion to a summit meeting. A few days after the fifth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence the four of them met for the first time as a group at Ancrum’s Plantation on the Congaree, forty miles southwest of Camden. Greene wanted to draw Rawdon into battle at Orangeburg, but despite being reinforced by 350 men under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart up from Monck’s Corner, Rawdon declined to come out and fight. His soldiers had had enough, as had the twenty-six-year-old Rawdon. Too sick to go on, he returned to Charleston and on August 21 sailed for England to recuperate. He would be captured on the voyage by privateers and turned over to the French; eventually he was exchanged for an American officer.

  Greene had briefly considered an offensive attack on Rawdon and Stewart’s combined force at Orangeburg, but when he rode out with Sumter and Marion to reconnoiter the British position on July 12 they concluded that the enemy was too well protected on favorable ground. By this time, too, the American army was exhausted by the heat and lack of provisions. The men from Virginia and northward, accustomed to corn and wheat bread, could not stomach the local rice. With no beef available, the soldiers were reduced to eating frogs and alligators. Satisfied that Rawdon had refused his offer of battle, Greene took his men to the cooler, breezier High Hills of Santee for the summer.

  There would be no rest, though, for the Swamp Fox.

  19

  Dog Days

  It came to be known as the Dog Days campaign, named for the hottest part of the summer. And it ended with the final and total rift between Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter.

  With the fall of Georgetown and Ninety-Six, the British in South Carolina were left holding only two significant outposts outside of Charleston—Monck’s Corner, thirty miles north of the city, and Dorchester, twenty miles northwest of it. The only British army still in the field in the state was the one at Orangeburg, command of which passed from Rawdon to Stewart. Sumter persuaded Greene to let him lead an expedition to capture the two remaining outposts, thereby cutting off the British in Charleston from the army in Orangeburg.

  To carry out this mission Sumter wanted command not only of his own regiments but also those of Lee and Marion. Greene agreed, his only stipulation being that Sumter make it a quick operation so his forces could return to assist the main army. Ultimately Greene’s goal was to drive all of the British and loyalist forces back against the coast and confine them to the Charleston area; there they would be vulnerable to a land siege by the Americans and, as Greene later came to hope, a naval blockade from the French fleet.

  Because he was with Sumter when Greene approved this expedition, Marion could no longer hide from the Gamecock. On the night of July 12, as directed by Sumter, Marion headed off toward Monck’s Corner with his 180-man mounted force. Lee and his Legion, numbering 150, moved to secure Dorchester in cooperation with Colonel Wade Hampton, who was leading a detachment of Sumter’s cavalry. Sumter himself, with several hundred mounted infantry and a six-pounder, trailed behind the subordinate commanders. All told, the Americans were fielding upward of six hundred to seven hundred men.

  Marion’s unit had recently undergone several high-level personnel changes. Hugh Giles, as close as anyone to being Marion’s co-commander, had retired to his estate near Snow’s Island in late June. Twenty-seven-year-old John Ervin, who had curbed his previous house-burning appetite, replaced Giles as a full colonel.

  Also in June, Greene commissioned as lieutenant colonels Peter Horry and Hezekiah Maham (of tower fame), each to raise an elite corps of dragoons who, like Lee’s Continental Legion, would be elegantly dressed and well armed (except they would wear blue rather than green coats). Greene wanted a body of South Carolina horsemen more reliable and permanent than the mounted militia, and in exchange for being paid the same as Continentals, the new troops had to agree to serve at least a year. Greene allowed that the dragoon units could impress as many horses as they could find, not only from loyalists but even from Whigs if not already in service to the patriot cause, provided they gave receipts for their value for later reimbursement.

  The idea, logical in concept, was plagued from the start by rivalries and ambiguities. Horry and Maham, though both Huguenots, had oil and water personalities—Horry was thoughtful and sensitive, Maham quick tempered and scornful of others’ opinions. Horry, thirty-four, was a born aristocrat, son of a wealthy plantation owner, whereas the forty-two-year-old Maham had worked the fields as a plantation overseer in his youth before being granted land in St. Stephens Parish to start his own farm.

  Complicating matters, their commissions from Greene were dated the same day, creating a conflict regarding which of them was the more senior. Maham considered himself at least equal in rank to Horry or even senior, as he had formed his state cavalry troop before Horry managed to raise his. Although Horry had an earlier Continental commission that was senior to Maham’s, Maham viewed it as irrelevant, as Horry had been furloughed as a Continental officer before the fall of Charleston in 1780. Moreover, while Horry was on furlough Maham had been riding cavalry to harass the British invaders. When Horry asserted seniority and said he would take the matter to Greene, Maham suggested they draw lots to settle the issue. (They never did.)

  Greene sided with Horry on the seniority question because Horry had never voluntarily resigned his senior Continental commission. Greene also told Horry that he could not believe Maham would seriously contest Horry’s claim. But Maham refused to yield the point, and Greene did not step in to resolve the dispute
.

  There was also a question of to whom Horry and Maham reported. Although some thought was given to placing the new regiments on the Continental line, they were raised as state troops. Officially, then, Horry and Maham reported directly only to South Carolina governor Rutledge and on a “dotted line” basis to Greene.

  So where did Marion fit in? He still considered Horry and Maham to be subordinate officers, subject to his orders in fact if not in law, and Greene (and later Rutledge) came to concur with that view. But Maham preferred to think of himself as an independent commander, answerable only to Greene. And Horry chafed at the restrictions Marion continued to impose. Horry wanted to employ Sumter’s Law to promise bounties to enlistees in the form of confiscated slaves, but Marion would not allow it. Horry grudgingly told Greene he would continue to serve under Marion until he managed to recruit enough new men to act on his own. Unfortunately Greene’s unwillingness to clarify matters at the outset would lead to poisonous relations among Horry, Maham, and Marion in the months ahead.

  One of Marion’s more nettlesome ex-brigadesmen also had his career terminated around this time. In early June, Captain William Snipes was the target of a surprise attack at his plantation fifty miles west of Charleston. The daring raid by the Queen’s Rangers, an esteemed loyalist provincial cavalry unit, was led by John Saunders, the former Georgetown commandant who had imprisoned the flag-carrying John Postell in March. Saunders was accompanied by Thomas Merritt, who had been captured by Marion’s men, despite carrying a flag of truce, in retaliation for the imprisonment of Postell, only to escape during Doyle’s raid on Snow’s Island. Saunders’s Rangers killed about twenty of Snipes’s men and took one prisoner who, on Saunders’s orders, was mercilessly hacked to death. Snipes managed to escape but fought no more.a