The Swamp Fox

by John Oller

  Marion did not miss having Snipes with him on his expedition to Monck’s Corner; the man had been a hopeless plunderer. But he was glad for the time being that Horry and Maham were accompanying him, for he prized both of them as soldiers. The mission held particular significance for Marion, for he was, in effect, going home to oust the British invader from the area of his birth.

  Lieutenant Colonel James Coates, who had just arrived in Charleston in June, led the British opposition at Monck’s Corner. Coates had with him 500 to 600 British redcoats from the 19th Regiment of Foot—recent arrivals from Ireland who had yet to see combat. Added to this force were 100 to 150 provincial cavalry under the command of twenty-five-year-old Major Thomas Fraser of the South Carolina Royalists. Fraser’s dragoons included remnants of John Harrison’s South Carolina Rangers as well as members of the Queen’s Rangers, the unit who had struck at Snipes’s plantation. The loyalist cavalrymen, most of them from South Carolina, knew the territory as well as Sumter’s and Marion’s men.

  Sumter’s plan was to surround Coates at Monck’s Corner and cut off his escape routes to Charleston as well as any reinforcements from Orangeburg. Lee, from the west, took Dorchester without opposition after the British abandoned the post there. Hampton seized control of the main route south from Monck’s and thundered even at the gates of Charleston. The combined American forces then started closing in on Coates. Upon learning of their advance, Coates pulled up stakes at Monck’s Corner and took his men five miles northeast to Biggin Church, a sturdy brick edifice with walls three feet thick. Marion knew it well; it had been his family’s place of worship.b Coates moved all the supplies from the post at Monck’s Corner to Biggin and hunkered down inside the church to await the patriot attack.

  From Biggin, Coates’s only practical avenue of retreat toward Charleston was down the east side of the Cooper River. Going that way he would need to cross Wadboo Bridge, which straddled a creek a mile and a half south of the church. To head off that possibility, Maham was dispatched to the bridge with orders to destroy it. But the hero of Fort Watson proved to be better at building things up than tearing them down; preoccupied with burning two schooners he found at the crossing, he either neglected to break up the bridge or left it sufficiently undamaged so that Coates’s men were able to repair it overnight. Maham’s lapse would soon cost the patriots.

  By the night of July 16, after some inconclusive skirmishing that day with Fraser’s dragoons, the Americans had gathered their collective force and camped near Biggin Church. Around 4 a.m. they were awakened by a glowing light coming from the church—Coates had set the building aflame and was retreating toward Charleston down the east side of the Cooper. Sumter roused his men from sleep and immediately sent them after the elusive Coates, who had a significant head start. Lee and Hampton led the chase with their cavalry, followed by Marion’s mounted militia, Lee’s infantry (entrusted to Marion), and Sumter’s mounted infantry. Maham’s dragoons rode with Lee, while Peter Horry appears to have ridden separately. One of the patriot horsemen was Peter Gaillard, the ex-Tory who had joined his neighbor Marion’s brigade after the engagement at Black Mingo.

  When the American cavalry reached Wadboo Bridge on July 17, they discovered, to their consternation, that Coates had gotten across and demolished it behind him to impede their pursuit. They had to cross at a ford farther upstream, further slowing their progress. Soon they realized that at a fork in the road, Coates had split his force, sending Fraser’s dragoons to the right while Coates, with the 19th Foot, swung left (east). Hampton’s cavalry could not overtake Fraser’s horsemen, who crossed the river at either Bonneau’s or Strawberry Ferry and secured the boats on the other side. Lee continued his pursuit of Coates’s infantry, who crossed over Quinby Creek, an eastern branch of the Cooper, at Quinby Bridge eighteen miles south of Biggin Church.

  At daybreak on July 17 Coates and the 19th Foot linked up with Fraser’s cavalry at the vacant plantation of patriot colonel Thomas Shubrick. At Quinby Bridge, a half mile away, the British posted a howitzer on the southern, or west, bank of the creek to guard the crossing. Coates also had his men pry up the planks on the bridge, which he intended to destroy once his rear guard, trailing with the unit’s heavy baggage, made it across. But Lee and Hampton, along with some of Marion’s militia horsemen, caught up with the slow-moving rear guard about three hundred yards north of the bridge and captured all hundred of the startled foot soldiers, together with their belongings.

  While most of the 19th were still eating breakfast at the plantation, the first wave of Lee’s green-uniformed cavalry swept across Quinby Bridge and drove off the artillerists manning the howitzer. But in charging across they so dislodged the loose planks that many fell into the creek, creating a gap in the middle of the bridge. A second group of dragoons jumped the dangerous chasm, but their action threw off more planks and further widened the gap. When Maham tried to negotiate the precarious span, his horse was shot out from under him. But Captain James McCauley, one of Marion’s militia horsemen, was not to be deterred. McCauley had spearheaded a bold charge against Watson’s redcoats at Wyboo Swamp, and here again he pressed forward, leading a group of horsemen safely to the other side of the creek.

  Most of Lee’s force was left stranded on the eastern, north bank of the creek. Lee later came under criticism for not ordering all of his men to make the crossing, but he maintained that the horses were too afraid to leap over the growing breach. And although Quinby Creek was only twenty-some yards wide, Lee explained that its muddy bottom was too soft for his men to gain a foothold to repair the bridge or to ford the stream. Nor could they find a firm enough spot on the soggy bank from which to swim their horses across.

  On the other side of the creek it was chaos, with the opposing forces jammed in on a narrow causeway. Many of the green recruits of the 19th Foot threw down their weapons and fled, only to return when they saw how few Americans had made it across. In the meantime Coates and a group of his men, their backs against a wagon, drew their sabers and fought off the Americans in deadly hand-to-hand combat. After checking the patriot advance, the redcoats repaired to Shubrick’s, taking the howitzer with them. At the plantation they took shelter in the two-story mansion on elevated ground as well as in a range of surrounding outbuildings (barns and slave quarters) protected by rail fences. Fraser’s cavalry left for Charleston to seek reinforcements.

  By now Marion had come up with the rest of his men. He and Lee assessed the enemy position and quickly concluded it was too strong to permit a direct assault. With Coates’s soldiers fortified inside the various structures, the patriot cavalry was of little use, and an infantry attack would require an advance across an open field, exposing the rebels to enemy fire. The American infantry lacked bayonets and was without artillery, whereas Coates had a howitzer. Lee and Marion decided to wait for Sumter, who came up around 3 p.m. Unfortunately he was without the six-pounder that he had at Biggin Church, having left it behind with a subordinate commander so he could speed his chase of Coates.

  Lee and Marion advised Sumter against attacking Coates and urged that they at least wait for the artillery to arrive. But at 4:30 p.m. Sumter, impatient for battle, ordered the infantry forward. He sent a South Carolina militia unit of forty-five men under his longtime, dutiful colonel Thomas Taylor to occupy a fence a short distance from the plantation house. Marion was directed across the open field, under heavy fire, to occupy a fence on the other side of the mansion, within fifty yards of it. Meanwhile Sumter moved his own brigade cautiously up the middle, where they took protection behind some of the slave quarters, out of shooting range. The patriot cavalry was kept in reserve; as it turned out, neither Lee’s nor Hampton’s men would see further action that day.

  Taylor’s militia came under a barrage of gunshot at the fence and, running low on ammunition, faced a spirited British bayonet charge. Marion, seeing Taylor’s men in peril, took his brigade to their rescue. During their oblique movement to cover Taylor’s retreat, a n
umber of Marion’s men were cut down by British fire. Yet Marion’s militia checked and drove off the British bayonet attack, at the sight of which Taylor’s men let out a lusty cheer. Marion’s musket and riflemen fired from the slight protection of the rail fence, lying low on the ground except to reload. Although the British shot at them from the house stoop, through doors and windows, and from around corners, Marion’s men kept firing until they exhausted their ammunition. After a forty-minute battle Sumter called off the attack. Marion withdrew some three miles with the remainder of Sumter’s combined force, and Coates soon retreated, unmolested, to Charleston.

  Both Taylor and Marion suffered heavy casualties in the fight at Shubrick’s, with more than fifty killed and wounded, the bulk of them Marion’s. One of his fallen soldiers was Francis Goddard, son of the widow Jenkins and half-brother to the Jenkins boys from Snow’s Island. When news of Goddard’s death arrived, his brother James considered it “like a dagger to my heart; and having heard that Sumter would go into battle, whether or not, live or die, I thought then, I could never forgive him. I was also informed that Marion was opposed to risk his men under circumstances so forbidding; and, from what I have heard of his character, I am disposed to believe it.”

  Taylor loudly complained to Sumter that he had sent him on a forlorn mission without sufficient backup, and he vowed never to serve under the Gamecock again. No postbattle comments from Marion to Sumter are recorded, but Marion implied, in writing to Greene, that Sumter had ordered him to assault an impregnable enemy position without a field piece or adequate ammunition while Sumter himself remained distant from the action. In his own letters to Greene, Sumter said nothing about Lee’s and Marion’s objections to making the attack and even suggested it was Marion who had acted recklessly in coming to Taylor’s aid. But Greene, likely having received details of the battle from Lee, wrote Marion to praise “the gallantry and good conduct of your men,” adding, “I only lament that men who spilt their blood in such noble exertions to serve their country could not have met with more deserved success.”

  Most revealing of Marion’s true feelings, he and Lee left during the night of the battle, rode fifteen miles, and pitched camp without informing Sumter of their whereabouts. All but a hundred of Marion’s men left him, angry that they had been endangered while Sumter’s men stayed under cover. Whether he said it or not, Marion considered himself finished with Sumter.

  Just why Greene had placed Marion under Sumter’s yoke is hard to fathom. Sumter had repeatedly failed to do what Greene wanted, whereas Marion had been of great assistance to him. Marion had not lost a significant engagement, while Sumter had been routed in several; Marion had proved himself the superior tactician. It may have come down to the notion that someone had to be in charge, and because Sumter was the more senior militia officer of the two, Greene considered that he had little choice.

  Although Greene later told Lafayette that the Dog Days expedition was “far short of what it might have been,” he acknowledged it had been “clever” and had achieved some advantages. The British evacuated their posts at Dorchester and Monck’s Corner, although they would return in force to both areas in a few weeks. During the campaign the Americans captured some 140 prisoners, 200 horses, and wagonloads of baggage and ammunition. Among the valuables netted from Coates’s rear guard was a pay chest containing 720 guineas (gold coins worth about a pound sterling each), which Sumter distributed to his own and some of Lee’s men, one guinea apiece, as a reward for their bravery. Marion’s men received none of it, which undoubtedly fueled their resentment of Sumter.

  But Thomas Sumter’s plundering days were coming to an end—along with his military career. His ten-month enlistees, not satisfied with their guineas, were demanding the bounties of slaves and other pay he had promised them. A week after the battle at Shubrick’s, Sumter sent a detachment to Georgetown to seize the slaves, horses, indigo, salt, and medical supplies of the Tories living there. The British retaliated on August 1 by bombarding Georgetown from a warship anchored nearby, then sending sailors ashore to torch the town. Marion, sickened at the thought of so many homeless in a city he loved, hurried aid to alleviate their suffering.

  Although Governor John Rutledge generally favored harsh treatment of Tories, he had begun to see that looting them was counterproductive. Having recently returned (at Greene’s urging) to South Carolina from Philadelphia and with the patriot military back in control of most of the state, he was anxious to restore civil government. And plundering, he concluded, only served to exacerbate the tensions and unrest that hampered that goal. As a result, on August 5 he issued a proclamation strictly forbidding plundering for any purpose and requiring anyone holding stolen property to return it to the owners. It effectively nullified Sumter’s Law.

  Sumter took it personally. He resigned his commission in August and disbanded his brigade. Greene, who had not been consulted, was outraged that Sumter would so abruptly leave the patriots in the lurch. Lee offered his view that Sumter had become “universally odious.” Greene persuaded Sumter to return to duty in the fall, but the defeat at Shubrick’s turned out to be his last battle. He would resign a few months later, this time permanently, after serving a session in the new legislature.

  Little more than twelve months earlier Francis Marion had scraped together a dozen followers to enlist in a seemingly hopeless cause. Now he was the supreme field commander of the entire South Carolina militia. And unlike Sumter, he would never willingly end his career on a losing note. But the war in the South was far from over, and winning it would remain, for Marion and the rest, a difficult and deadly proposition.

  a Two years after the war ended, Snipes killed a man in a duel and was convicted of manslaughter, only to be pardoned by then governor William Moultrie.

  b The church was founded in 1706, and the original structure, built around 1712, was destroyed by fire in 1755 and then restored.

  20

  “The Most Galling Fire”

  The hanging of Isaac Hayne showed that the British were not going away quietly.

  Although many men on both sides were hanged during the Revolution, none, with the exception of Nathan Hale, would achieve the level of martyrdom of Isaac Hayne. A popular and influential Lowcountry planter and patriot militia officer, the thirty-five-year-old Hayne traveled from his plantation to Charleston in the summer of 1780 after its fall to the British to obtain a doctor and medical supplies for his gravely ill wife and children. The British would not allow him to return home unless he swore an oath of allegiance, which he did on the understanding that he would not have to take up arms against his countrymen. But with the American military successes in early 1781, the British pressured Hayne to enlist in the loyalist militia. At the same time, the patriot militia were courting him to rejoin their cause. Marion was told that if Hayne were to take the field for the Americans, another two hundred men would follow him. In the spring of 1781 Marion issued a commission by which Hayne became a lieutenant colonel in the South Carolina militia, and Hayne, after some hesitation, accepted.

  In early July, Hayne led a party to suburban Charleston that captured the former patriot militia leader Andrew Williamson, the “Benedict Arnold of the South,” who had taken British protection a year earlier. Fearing that the Americans would execute Williamson as a traitor, Balfour, from Charleston, dispatched Thomas Fraser and ninety of his cavalry to rescue him. Two days later Fraser’s dragoons surprised Hayne’s party at their camp, killed a dozen or so Whigs, retook and released Williamson, and took Hayne himself prisoner.a After a summary trial that he believed was just a preliminary inquiry and in which he was unrepresented by counsel and was unable to call any witnesses, Hayne was found guilty and condemned to death. Charles Fraser, the police chief of Charleston and brother of the man who had captured him, informed him of his sentence.

  Despite pleas for Hayne’s life by the ladies of Charleston and even some prominent loyalists, Balfour refused to remit the sentence. (Rawdon, in his last of
ficial act before sailing for England, concurred with the decision.) Hayne had argued that with the countryside now under Whig control, the British could not provide him the protection that had been a quid pro quo for his oath of allegiance. Consequently he considered himself no longer bound by his prior agreement. But if that argument were to prevail, it would open the floodgates to others looking for an excuse to break their paroles. The British needed to make an example of Hayne. And so on August 4, after being allowed a farewell session with his family, he was paraded through the streets of Charleston, past sobbing citizens, trailed by friends and well-wishers, and went to the gallows. A close acquaintance told Hayne he hoped he would show the world the proper way for an American in such circumstances to die, to which Hayne responded, “I will endeavor to do so.” Then, according to a contemporary’s account,

  He ascended the cart with a firm step and serene aspect. He enquired of the executioner, who was making an attempt to get the cap over his eyes, what he wanted? Upon being informed of his design, the colonel replied, “I will save you that trouble,” and he pulled it over himself. He was afterwards asked whether he wished to say anything, to which he answered, “I will only take leave of my friends, and be ready.” He then affectionately shook hands with three gentlemen—recommended his children to their care—and gave the signal for the cart to move.

  Hayne’s execution set off a storm of protest and cries for vengeance by southern patriots. The action was even condemned in Parliament, where a motion to censure Rawdon was voted down only after vigorous debate. Greene’s officers petitioned him to retaliate in kind. Greene understood the popular reaction but also did not wish to prolong the cycle of violence he had witnessed ever since his arrival in the South. He cautioned Marion against hanging any Tory militia, assuring him that he intended to retaliate, instead, against any British officers equivalent to Hayne who fell into American hands. But other than temporarily suspending prisoner exchanges, Greene ended up doing nothing. When Balfour threatened retribution against American officers if Greene shed the blood of any captured British soldiers of rank—and especially after George Washington told him that sacrificing an innocent person for the guilt of another was considered inhumane—Greene let the matter drop.