The Swamp Fox

by John Oller

  But the deal failed to materialize. Greene wrote Marion on October 30 to say that taking unarmed men to offer in exchange for prisoners was inappropriate. Greene released the Tory prisoners on parole. He was forced to take that position, having just written to Gould in Charleston to complain that the British were taking unarmed Americans. Sinkler remained in jail, contracted typhus fever as a result of the unsanitary conditions, and died soon thereafter.

  DESPITE WHAT MOST history textbooks claim, Yorktown did not end the American Revolutionary War. Initially Greene hoped the victorious French fleet in the Chesapeake, under Comte de Grasse, would come south to Charleston to blockade the city from the sea, enabling Greene to attack by land and finish the British off in a siege similar to the one that trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown. Indeed, Henry Lee, who witnessed Cornwallis’s surrender, went to Virginia at Greene’s direction to lobby Lee’s mentor, George Washington, for the French navy’s help in reducing Charleston. Lee also requested and Washington promised that Greene’s field army would be reinforced by Continental troops freed up as a result of the capitulation of the British at Yorktown. When the British evacuated Wilmington, their last stronghold in North Carolina, on November 14, it also augured well for the American cause.

  But the assistance Greene was hoping for failed to materialize. The French, in strategic alliance with Spain, sailed instead for the West Indies, where the British fleet soundly defeated de Grasse in his attempt to capture Jamaica. Washington did send some Continentals, but they ended up being too few and too late to make any real difference in South Carolina. The most valuable of them were the Pennsylvania regulars under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, whom Greene sent to help liberate Georgia.

  Greene did receive more substantial reinforcements in the form of three or four hundred “over mountain” men from what is now eastern Tennessee. They were under the command of militia colonels John Sevier and Isaac Shelby, heroes of King’s Mountain. Greene assigned these buckskin-clad, tomahawk-wielding riflemen to help Marion patrol the areas outside Charleston. Arriving in Marion’s camp at Cantey’s Plantation by November 2, the mountaineers were expected to stay until the spring or the reduction of Charleston. But they left to go home to their native hills three weeks later, sticking around only long enough to steal some clothing and take part in one significant engagement. They preferred the mountains to the swamps and were bored by the long waits under hard living conditions the militia had to suffer between actions.

  The final liberation of South Carolina was largely in the hands of Greene and Marion. Pickens had recovered from his wound at Eutaw Springs but was soon occupied on the western frontier keeping Indians and local loyalists under control. Sumter was back in charge of his brigades, and at Greene’s request he established a post at Orangeburg, a hundred miles inland, to check the Tories there and prevent supplies from being sent to Charleston. His men were kept busy for a time defending backcountry raids by “Bloody Bill” Cunningham and other diehard Tory marauders bent on revenge. But Sumter, who regarded his remaining militia as “the worst men” in his brigade and his state troops as not of the quality he had expected, did not personally lead them in action. He did write to Marion, asking him to confer with him on a secret plan for expediting the war’s end. But Greene, who no longer viewed Sumter as vital to the cause, had already told Marion he was free to coordinate with Sumter or not as he deemed appropriate. Needless to say, Marion ignored the Gamecock.

  By now Greene had enough confidence in Marion to grant him discretion on how and where to deploy his troops. “As you are at liberty to act as you may think advisable, I have no particular instructions to give you, and only wish you to avoid a surprise,” Greene wrote him on November 15. That same day, while at Peyre’s Plantation, Marion sent Maham with 180 of his horsemen and 200 of Shelby’s and Sevier’s riflemen on a mission to stop British plundering along the Santee below Eutaw Springs. In a daring early morning raid on November 17 Maham and his riders slipped behind the main enemy lines at Wantoot and attacked the British post at Fairlawn Plantation seven miles south of Monck’s Corner. The eleven-thousand-acre colonial barony, owned by the Colleton family, well-known Tories, featured a large mansion the British had converted into a hospital.a When Maham had the mountaineers dismount and move closer to fire their rifles upon the house, the inhabitants, given the choice of surrendering or having the mansion stormed by frontiersmen with scalping knives, surrendered without a struggle. An outnumbered British garrison of fifty manning a small fort half a mile away in sight of the house watched without intervening.

  What happened next was and still is the subject of controversy. The British accused Maham’s men of burning the hospital and “dragging away a number of dying people to expire in swamps,” an act of “barbarity hitherto unknown in civilized nations.” Marion’s initial report to Greene said that Maham had burned the hospital because it was the only way to destroy the many arms and provisions housed there. Shelby later claimed it was the British who had burned the hospital after the Americans left.b

  Within a matter of days the British abandoned their garrison at Fairlawn and evacuated their larger post at Wantoot. By the end of November the British had pulled their main body in even closer to Charleston, below Goose Creek, fifteen miles from the city. They were now camped where Marion’s grandfather, Benjamin, had first settled nearly a century earlier.

  These positive developments convinced Greene it was time to leave the High Hills with the main army and drive the enemy decisively back to Charleston. On December 1 Greene’s advance party arrived outside Dorchester, which the British had recently reinvested. Mistaking the advance guard for Greene’s entire army, the British hastily withdrew from the fort and brick church at Dorchester. They burned their supplies, dumped their cannons in the Ashley River, and abandoned the post, this time permanently. They pulled back to the Quarter House, a well-known tavern six miles north of Charleston, and withdrew the force at Goose Creek Bridge to there as well. The Americans now were in possession of all of South Carolina except Charleston and its upper peninsula, or “neck,” and the adjacent islands. Greene’s next step was to place the city under siege. Meanwhile, in Georgia, all but Savannah was back in patriot hands.

  As the year 1781 drew to a close the British were in a “melancholy state” in the South, as Clinton put it, with “the whole country . . . against us except some helpless militia with a number of officers, women, children, Negroes, etc.” who needed to be fed and cared for in Charleston. And the expense of supporting the thousands of refugees who were daily driven into the British lines had become “almost intolerable.”

  Yet the Americans had serious problems of their own. Greene had no coats or blankets for his men going into the winter, and half of them were without shoes. Many were suffering from malaria. None of his soldiers had received a shilling of pay since coming south. He was practically out of ammunition, and what little he had he gave to Marion, figuring he could make better use of it. The British still had thousands of soldiers in Charleston and several armed galleys protecting the river approaches to the city, and although they had suspended offensive operations, they could forage the surrounding areas with impunity provided they marched out in force.

  Greene lived in constant fear that General Leslie, the Charleston commandant, would be massively reinforced in preparation for a renewed incursion into the interior; as a result, he ran the nearly fifty-year-old Marion ragged. At the slightest rumor that the British were coming out of the city in increased numbers to attack him, Greene urgently ordered Marion hither and yon, forcing him to race fifty or more miles to the presumed enemy destination, only to discover it was a false alarm and he needed to return, just as quickly, to whence he came. Occasionally Greene would countermand his orders before they even reached Marion.

  Although the threat of a renewed British offensive was perhaps more imagined than real, Greene still had some reason to fear one. Despite a growing peace movement in Parli
ament, neither King George nor Lord Germain was willing to give up the fight for the colonies. Given the British resolve and American material shortages, Marion told Greene that Charleston “will not be ours so soon” and predicted it would be another year before the Americans could retake it. Greene, who had formed a growing bond with the militia leader, commiserated with him. “If we are not supported and supplied with the means to defend the country,” he wrote to Marion, then it was neither of their fault. “But be not discouraged,” Greene concluded, “I look forward for better days.”

  a Although the Colletons were loyalists, that had not stopped some of Tarleton’s men from sexually assaulting some young Tory women, including Lady Colleton, at the Fairlawn mansion on April 14, 1780, after Tarleton’s rout of the patriot force at Biggin Bridge. Patrick Ferguson, the British commander later killed at King’s Mountain, had wanted the offenders immediately shot, but they were sent to Charleston for trial and afterward whipped.

  b Maham, without addressing the hospital burning, put the attack in a far different light. In a letter to Greene, who had launched an inquiry into the matter, Maham described the hospital as primarily a military complex. He added that of the ninety-one prisoners he had captured, he took seventy-six who were fit for duty, placed them on horseback, and carried them off, even though they were capable of walking. He said he had ordered twelve who were too sick to be taken away as prisoners to be carried to the British fort half a mile away. He paroled two medical orderlies and a lieutenant and sent them to Charleston with their personal belongings. How the matter was resolved is not known.

  23

  “As Soon as They Can Spare Me”

  Although the American grasp on South Carolina was not entirely firm, Governor John Rutledge decided conditions were favorable enough for reestablishing the legislature, which had not met for almost two years. In late November 1781 he called for elections to be held in mid-December and asked Marion and other militia brigadier generals to appoint the election managers and supervise the voting in their militia districts. Marion, who feared the disruptions of war would prevent much of a turnout, was not thrilled with the idea. “I am sorry to see this business so soon entered on, as I am clear the elections cannot be full,” he confided to Greene. Yet he would do what Rutledge asked of him.

  After it became apparent that the British were not in fact reinforcing Charleston, Greene and Rutledge decided to convene the new General Assembly at Jacksonboro, a small, rustic village just thirty-six miles west of the city. Greene’s army, camped near Parker’s Ferry, was close enough to Jacksonboro to protect against loyalist raiders who might try to disrupt the gathering. Greene also wanted to demonstrate to the world the Americans’ control of territory and confidence in their military prospects. But despite Greene’s show of bravado, he told Marion five days before the Assembly was scheduled to convene that it was up to Marion to cover the area around Jacksonboro due to Greene’s lack of ammunition and provisions.

  Aside from Whig politicians, most of those elected to the legislature were military officers, former exiles, or exchanged prisoners of war. William Moultrie and Andrew Pickens took seats in the House of Representatives, and Thomas Sumter went to the Senate, where he was joined by Marion, chosen again by the voters of St. John’s Berkeley Parish. Marion’s own brigade supplied several Assembly members, including Hugh and Peter Horry, Hezekiah Maham, Major John James, Captain William McCottry (the fabled rifleman), and James Postell, whose brother John would enter the Senate in 1783 after his release from prison. So many military men were elected that some had to remain in the field, lest there be no one to defend the country.

  As Marion had predicted, turnout was low. Many Whigs still in Charleston could not come out to vote in their parishes, and loyalists were ineligible to vote. The war also changed the composition of the Assembly, as many of the Charleston legislators were unable to reach Jacksonboro. As a result, the backcountry enjoyed a degree of representation it previously had been denied.

  On January 11, from his plantation camp at Wambaw Creek by the Santee, Marion set out on an eighty-five-mile journey to Jacksonboro to take his legislative seat. Before leaving he placed Peter Horry at the head of his brigade until he could return from the Senate. He gave Horry strict orders to prevent anyone from entering or leaving Charleston without a pass from one or the other of them. It was an important directive, as most of the enemy’s intelligence came from persons, especially women, going to or from town. Marion also ordered Maham’s corps to Henry Laurens’s Mepkin Plantation twenty-five miles north of Charleston (a comfortable distance from Horry’s rival unit).

  When he arrived in Jacksonboro a couple of days later Marion discovered that nothing was happening, as few of the new legislators had managed to make it there. After finally reaching a quorum, the Senate met on January 18 in Peter DuBose’s tavern, where a partition was taken down to turn two rooms into one. The thirteen senators repaired to the larger Masonic Lodge, where the House had reached a quorum the day before, for a joint opening session with seventy-four members of the lower body (out of the nearly two hundred elected).

  It was a dramatic scene, where the original revolutionary leaders were seen alongside a new group of heroes who had saved South Carolina in its darkest hour. There was Rutledge, the governor who had kept the faith, welcoming the Assembly and spectators with a stirring keynote speech, and Christopher Gadsden, the firebrand who had helped start it all. Also visible were living reminders of the devastating war: scarred and wounded soldiers, “emaciated victims of the prison ships,” and “mutilated victims of Tory vengeance.” According to one account,

  The hearts of the spectators throbbed as they saw them pass into the hall and take their seats on the long vacant benches. But especially on one short, slender man, of grave aspect, whose compressed lips told of indomitable will, as his light and wiry frame told of endurance and irrepressible energy, the eyes of all were fixed, as each pointed him out to the other, whispering in earnest admiration, “That is Marion.”

  Meeting even on Saturdays and Sundays, the Assembly debated and passed laws to repeal paper currency as legal tender, to reorganize the militia, and to raise and pay for Continental troops. Recognizing that many state troops had served for ten months in reliance on promised bounties of slaves, they ratified the terms of Sumter’s Law. They elected a new governor, John Mathews, a lawyer and Continental Congress member, to succeed the term-limited Rutledge. (Gadsden was initially chosen but declined to serve, citing his age and health.) In appreciation of Nathanael Greene’s service, the legislators bought him a Lowcountry rice plantation taken from the Tories.

  But the issue that occupied the hearts and minds of the Assembly members as well as most of their time was the so-called Confiscation Act. The British had seized patriot properties and had exiled rebels earlier in the war; this legislation gave hearty expression to the notion that what goes around comes around. The act provided for the confiscation of the estates and personal property of various persons who, by their positions or conduct, had materially or actively aided the enemy.a Their property was to be sold at public auction (although it was specified that in any sales of slaves, parents were not to be separated from their children, and slaves would be sold only as families). Persons whose estates were confiscated were to be banished from South Carolina upon pain of death without benefit of clergy if they should return. Those deemed guilty of lesser crimes were subjected to fines (amercement) amounting to 12 percent of the value of their estate.

  The statements of individual legislators were not recorded, so Marion’s precise views on the Confiscation Act are unknown. One story, originating with Weems, holds that when asked to give a toast at a dinner hosted by the new governor Mathews, Marion stood up and said, “Well, gentlemen, here’s damnation to the Confiscation Act.” That may well have reflected his general frame of mind, but there is no evidence he vocally opposed the act. Writing to Peter Horry, without commenting on the merits of the legislation, Marion n
oted that it would help raise needed revenue.

  Voicing opposition would have been futile anyway, as the Confiscation Act garnered broad support from the Assembly. No doubt revenge was part of the motivation; the list of persons subject to confiscation included noted Tories Elias Ball, John Brockinton, and the Cunningham brothers. But necessity was also a major factor. The government was out of money; the ravages of war had impoverished the Whig citizenry. The legislators thought it appropriate that those who had been traitors to the patriot cause should be made to suffer along with those who had been true to it.

  The bigger issue for consideration—over which there was endless debate and negotiation—was which individuals would have their estates confiscated. On that subject Marion aligned himself with the more dovish or conciliatory elements in the legislature (most of whom were from the Lowcountry, which had not witnessed the level of brutality seen in the backcountry). The original bill included more than 900 names of persons subject to confiscation, but was reduced to 238 in the final law plus 47 who were amerced. The list was further reduced over time, as 125 individuals were either moved from the “confiscation” to the “amercement” list or were dropped from the act altogether based on a showing of extenuating circumstances (or support from powerful friends).

  Marion was on the Senate committee that reviewed the hundreds of petitions filed by loyalists seeking relief from confiscation. He became an ally of Christopher Gadsden, who, despite his radical leanings, was a peacemaker on this subject. Gadsden told Marion they needed to patiently seek ways to have the severities of the Confiscation Act “at least mitigated where there is room.” Knowing Marion agreed with him, Gadsden wrote him to say that “he that forgets and forgives most . . . is the best citizen.”