Part 19 (1/2)

After the British got possession of the town the arms taken from the Americans, amounting to 5,000 stand, were lodged in a laboratory near a large quant.i.ty of cartridges and loose powder. By incautiously snapping the muskets and pistols the powder ignited and blew up the house, and the burning fragments, which were scattered in all directions, set fire to the workhouse, jail, and old barracks, and consumed them. The British guard stationed at the place, consisting of fifty men, was destroyed, and about as many other persons lost their lives on the disastrous occasion.

Clinton carried on the siege in a cautious but steady and skilful manner. Lincoln was loaded with undeserved blame by many of his countrymen, for he conducted the defense as became a brave and intelligent officer. The error lay in attempting to defend the town, but, in the circ.u.mstances in which Lincoln was placed, he was almost unavoidably drawn into that course. It was the desire of the State that the capital should be defended, and Congress, as well as North and South Carolina, had encouraged him to expect that his army would be increased to 9,000 men--a force which might have successfully resisted all the efforts of the royal army. But neither Congress nor the Carolinas were able to fulfill the promises which they had made, for the militia were extremely backward in taking the field, and the expected number of Continentals could not be furnished. Lincoln, therefore, was left to defend the place with only about one-third of the force which he had been encouraged to expect. At any time before the middle of April he might have evacuated the town, but the civil authority then opposed his retreat, which soon afterward became difficult, and ultimately impracticable.

At General Lincoln's request Congress pa.s.sed a resolve directing the Commander-in-Chief to cause an inquiry to be made concerning the loss of Charleston and the conduct of General Lincoln while commanding in the southern department. Was.h.i.+ngton, who knew Lincoln's merit well, determined to give Congress time for reflection before adopting any measure which had the least appearance of censure. The following extract from his letter to the President of Congress (10th July, 1780) points out clearly the impropriety of the hasty proceedings which had been proposed in regard to this able and deserving officer:

”At this time,” Was.h.i.+ngton writes, ”I do not think that the circ.u.mstances of the campaign would admit, at any rate, an inquiry to be gone into respecting the loss of Charleston, but, if it were otherwise, I do not see that it could be made so as to be completely satisfactory either to General Lincoln or to the public, unless some gentlemen could be present who have been acting in that quarter. This, it seems, would be necessary on the occasion, and the more so as I have not a single doc.u.ment or paper in my possession concerning the department, and a copy of the instructions and orders which they may have been pleased to give General Lincoln from time to time and of their correspondence. And besides the reasons against the inquiry at this time, General Lincoln being a prisoner of war, his situation, it appears to me, must preclude one till he is exchanged, supposing every other obstacle were out of the question. If Congress think proper, they will be pleased to transmit to me such papers as they may have which concern the matters of inquiry, that there may be no delay in proceeding in the business when other circ.u.mstances will permit.”

The fall of Charleston was matter of much exultation to the British and spread a deep gloom over the aspect of American affairs. The southern army was lost, and, although small, it could not soon be replaced. In the southern parts of the Union there had always been a considerable number of persons friendly to the claims of Britain. The success of her arms roused all their lurking partialities, gave decision to the conduct of the wavering, encouraged the timid, drew over to the British cause all those who are ever ready to take part with the strongest, and discouraged and intimidated the friends of Congress.

Clinton was perfectly aware of the important advantage which he had gained, and resolved to keep up and deepen the impression on the public mind by the rapidity of his movements and the appearance of his troops in different parts of the country. For that purpose he sent a strong detachment under Cornwallis over the Santee toward the frontier of North Carolina. He dispatched an inferior force into the center of the province, and sent a third up the Savannah to Augusta. These detachments were instructed to disperse any small parties that still remained in arms, and to show the people that the British troops were complete masters of South Carolina and Georgia.

Soon after pa.s.sing the Santee, Cornwallis was informed that Colonel Buford was lying, with 400 men, in perfect security, near the border of North Carolina. He immediately dispatched Colonel Tarleton, with his cavalry, named the Legion, to surprise that party. After performing a march of 104 miles in fifty-four hours, Tarleton, at the head of 700 men, overtook Buford on his march, at the Waxhaws, and ordered him to surrender, offering him the same terms which had been granted to the garrison of Charleston. On Buford's refusal, Tarleton instantly charged the party, who were dispirited and unprepared for such an onset. Most of them threw down their arms and made no resistance, but a few continued firing, and an indiscriminate slaughter ensued of those who had submitted as well as of those who had resisted. Many begged for quarter, but no quarter was given. Tarleton's quarter became proverbial throughout the Union and certainly rendered some subsequent conflicts more fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y than they would otherwise have been. Buford and a few hors.e.m.e.n forced their way through the enemy and escaped; some of the infantry, also, who were somewhat in advance, saved themselves by flight, but the regiment was almost annihilated. Tarleton stated that 113 were killed on the spot, 150 left on parole, so badly wounded that they could not be removed, and 53 brought away as prisoners. So feeble was the resistance made by the Americans that the British had only 12 men killed and 5 wounded. The slaughter on this occasion excited much indignation in America. The British endeavored to justify their conduct by a.s.serting that the Americans resumed their arms after having pretended to submit, but such of the American officers as escaped from the carnage denied the allegation. For this exploit, Tarleton was highly praised by Cornwallis.

After the defeat of Buford there were no parties in South Carolina or Georgia capable of resisting the royal detachments. The force of Congress in those provinces seemed annihilated and the spirit of opposition among the inhabitants was greatly subdued. Many, thinking it vain to contend against a power which they were unable to withstand, took the oath of allegiance to the King or gave their parole not to bear arms against him.

In order to secure the entire submission of that part of the country, military detachments were stationed at the most commanding points, and measures were pursued for settling the civil administration and for consolidating the conquest of the provinces. So fully was Clinton convinced of the subjugation of the country and of the sincere submission of the inhabitants, or of their inability to resist, that, on the 3d of June (1780), he issued a proclamation, in which, after stating that all persons should take an active part in settling and securing his majesty's government and in delivering the country from that anarchy which for some time had prevailed, he discharged from their parole the militia who were prisoners, except those only who had been taken in Charleston and Fort Moultrie, and restored them to all the rights and duties of inhabitants; he also declared that such as should neglect to return to their allegiance should be treated as enemies and rebels.

This proclamation was unjust and impolitic. Proceeding on the supposition that the people of those provinces were subdued rebels, restored by an act of clemency to the privileges and duties of citizens, and forgetting that for upward of four years they had been exercising an independent authority, and that the issue of the war only could stamp on them the character of patriots or rebels. It might easily have been foreseen that the proclamation was to awaken the resentment and alienate the affections of those to whom it was addressed. Many of the Colonists had submitted in the fond hope of being released, under the shelter of the British government, from that hara.s.sing service to which they had lately been exposed, and of being allowed to attend to their own affairs in a state of peaceful tranquility; but the proclamation dissipated this delusion and opened their eyes to their real situation. Neutrality and peace were what they desired, but neutrality and peace were denied them.

If they did not range themselves under the standards of Congress, they must, as British subjects, appear as militia in the royal service. The people sighed for peace, but, on finding that they must fight on one side or the other, they preferred the banners of their country and thought they had as good a right to violate the allegiance and parole which Clinton had imposed on them as he had to change their state from that of prisoners to that of British subjects without their consent.

They imagined that the proclamation released them from all antecedent obligations. Not a few, without any pretense of reasoning on the subject, deliberately resolved to act a deceitful part and to make professions of submission and allegiance to the British government so long as they found it convenient, but with the resolution of joining the standards of their country on the first opportunity. Such duplicity and falsehood ought always to be reprobated, but the unsparing rapacity with which the inhabitants were plundered made many of them imagine that no means of deception and vengeance were unjustifiable.

Hitherto the French fleets and troops had not afforded much direct a.s.sistance to the Americans, but they had impeded and embarra.s.sed the operations of the British Commander-in-Chief. He had intended to sail against Charleston so early as the month of September, 1779, but the unexpected appearance of Count D'Estaing on the southern coast had detained him at New York till the latter part of December. It was his intention, after the reduction of Charleston, vigorously to employ the whole of his force in the subjugation of the adjacent provinces, but information, received about the time of the surrender of the town, that Monsieur de Ternay, with a fleet and troops from France, was expected on the American coast, deranged his plan and induced him to return to New York with the greater part of his army, leaving Cornwallis at the head of 4,000 men to prosecute the southern conquests. Clinton sailed from Charleston on the 5th of June.

After the reduction of Charleston and the entire defeat of all the American detachments in those parts, an unusual calm ensued for six weeks. Imagining that South Carolina and Georgia were reannexed to the British empire in sentiment as well as in appearance, Cornwallis now meditated an attack on North Carolina. Impatient, however, as he was of repose, he could not carry his purpose into immediate execution. The great heat, the want of magazines, and the impossibility of subsisting his army in the field before harvest, compelled him to pause. But the interval was not lost. He distributed his troops in such a manner in South Carolina and the upper parts of Georgia as seemed most favorable to the enlistment of young men who could be prevailed on to join the royal standard; he ordered companies of royal militia to be formed; and he maintained a correspondence with such of the inhabitants of North Carolina as were friendly to the British cause. He informed them of the necessity he was under of postponing the expedition into their country, and advised them to attend to their harvest and to remain quiet till the royal army advanced to support them. Eager, however, to manifest their zeal and entertaining sanguine hopes of success, certain Tories disregarded his salutary advice and broke out into premature insurrections, which were vigorously resisted and generally suppressed by the patriots, who were the more numerous and determined party. But one band of Tories, amounting to 800 men, under a Colonel Bryan, marched down the Yadkin to a British post at the Cheraws and afterward reached Camden.

The people of North Carolina were likely to prove much more intractable than those of South Carolina and Georgia. They were chiefly descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers--stern Presbyterians and ardent lovers of liberty. When Tryon was their governor, they had resisted his tyranny under the name of Regulators, and at Mecklenburg had published a declaration of independence more than a year before Congress took the same att.i.tude of defiance. Such were the North Carolinians; and their State was destined to be the scene of many battles in which the power of Britain was bravely resisted.

Having made the necessary dispositions Cornwallis entrusted the command on the frontier to Lord Rawdon and returned to Charleston in order to organize the civil government of the province and to establish such regulations as circ.u.mstances required. But Cornwallis showed himself more a soldier than a politician, and more a tyrant than either. Instead of endeavoring to regain, by kindness and conciliation, the good will of a people whose affections were alienated from the cause in which he was engaged, Cornwallis attempted to drive them into allegiance by harshness and severity. Indeed, many of the British officers viewed the Americans merely in the light of rebels and traitors, whose lives it was indulgence to spare; treated them not only with injustice, but with insolence and insult more intolerable than injustice itself; and exercised a rigor which greatly increases the miseries without promoting the legitimate purposes of war.

By the capitulation of Charleston, the citizens were prisoners on parole, but successive proclamations were published, each abridging the privileges of prisoners more than that which had gone before. A board of police was established for the administration of justice, and before that board British subjects were allowed to sue for debts, but prisoners were denied that privilege; they were liable to prosecution for debts, but had no security for what was owing them, except the honor of their debtors, and that, in many instances, was found a feeble guarantee. If they complained they were threatened with close confinement; numbers were imprisoned in the town and others consigned to dungeons at a distance from their families. In short, every method, except that of kindness and conciliation, was resorted to in order to compel the people to become British subjects. A few, who had always been well affected to the royal cause, cheerfully returned to their allegiance, and many followed the same course from convenience. To abandon their families and estates and encounter all the privations of fugitives required a degree of patriotism and fort.i.tude which few possessed.

In that melancholy posture of American affairs, many of the ladies of Charleston displayed a remarkable degree of zeal and intrepidity in the cause of their country. They gloried in the appellation of rebel ladies, and declined invitations to public entertainments given by the British officers, but crowded to prison s.h.i.+ps and other places of confinement to solace their suffering countrymen. While they kept back from the concerts and a.s.semblies of the victors they were forward in showing sympathy and kindness toward American officers whenever they met them.

They exhorted their brothers, husbands, and sons to an unshrinking endurance in behalf of their country, and cheerfully became the inmates of their prison and the companions of their exile--voluntarily renouncing affluence and ease and encountering labor, penury, and privation.

For some time the rigorous measures of the British officers in South Carolina seemed successful and a deathlike stillness prevailed in the province. The clangor of arms ceased and no enemy to British authority appeared. The people of the lower parts of South Carolina were generally attached to the revolution, but many of their most active leaders were prisoners. The fall of Charleston and the subsequent events had sunk many into despondency, and all were overawed. This gloomy stillness continued about six weeks when the symptoms of a gathering storm began to show themselves. The oppression and insults to which the people were exposed highly exasperated them; they repented the apathy with which they had seen the siege of Charleston carried on, and felt that the fall of their capital, instead of introducing safety and rural tranquility, as they had fondly antic.i.p.ated, was only the forerunner of insolent exactions and oppressive services. Peaceful and undisturbed neutrality was what they desired and what they had expected; but when they found themselves compelled to fight, they chose to join the Provincial banners, and the most daring only waited an opportunity to show their hostility to their new masters.

Such an opportunity soon presented itself. In the end of March (1780) Was.h.i.+ngton dispatched the troops of Maryland and Delaware, with a regiment of artillery, under the Baron de Kalb, to reinforce the southern army. That detachment met with many obstructions in its progress southward. Such was the deranged state of the American finances that it could not be put in motion when the order was given. After setting out it marched through Jersey and Pennsylvania, embarked at the head of Elk river, was conveyed by water to Petersburgh in Virginia, and proceeded thence towards the place of its destination. But as no magazines had been provided, and as provisions could with difficulty be obtained, the march of the detachment through North Carolina was greatly r.e.t.a.r.ded. Instead of advancing rapidly, the troops were obliged to spread themselves over the country in small parties, in order to collect corn and to get it ground for their daily subsistence. In this way they proceeded slowly through the upper and more fertile parts of North Carolina to Hillsborough, and were preparing to march by Cross creek to Salisbury, where they expected to be joined by the militia of North Carolina.

The approach of this detachment, together with information that great exertions were making to raise troops in Virginia, encouraged the irritation which the rigorous measures of the British officers had occasioned in South Carolina; and numbers of the inhabitants of that State, who had fled from their homes and taken refuge in North Carolina and Virginia, informed of the growing discontents in their native State, and relying on the support of regular troops, a.s.sembled on the frontier of North Carolina.

About 200 of these refugees chose Colonel Sumter, an old Continental officer, called by his comrades the ”Gamec.o.c.k,” as their leader. On the advance of the British into the upper parts of South Carolina, this gentleman had fled into North Carolina, but had left his family behind.

Soon after his departure a British party arrived, turned his wife and family out of door, and burned his house and everything in it. This harsh and unfeeling treatment excited his bitterest resentment, which operated with the more virulence by being concealed under the fair veil of patriotism.

At the head of his little band, without money or magazines, and but ill provided with arms and ammunition, Sumter made an irruption into South Carolina. Iron implements of husbandry were forged by common blacksmiths into rude weapons of war; and pewter dishes, procured from private families and melted down, furnished part of their supply of b.a.l.l.s.

This little band skirmished with the royal militia and with small parties of regular troops, sometimes successfully, and always with the active courage of men fighting for the recovery of their property.

Sometimes they engaged when they had not more than three rounds of shot each, and occasionally some of them were obliged to keep at a distance till, by the fall of friends or foes, they could be furnished with arms and ammunition. When successful, the field of battle supplied them with materials for the next encounter.

This party soon increased to 600 men, and, encouraged by its daring exertions, a disposition manifested itself throughout South Carolina again to appeal to arms. Some companies of royal militia, embodied under the authority of Cornwallis, deserted to Sumter and ranged themselves under his standard.