But there was a final military issue for North Carolina to deal with. A man named David Fanning—feared by Whigs, seen as a protector by Tories—was still at large.
Fanning’s early life is nearly as vague as Rutherford’s. He was born in Virginia, about forty-five miles southwest of Richmond. Depending on the source, it was sometime between 1754 and 1757, the consensus being 1755. His family was “obscure,” said a nineteenth-century historian. His father drowned either before he was born, or while his mother was pregnant. His mother died when he was nine, possibly after moving to backcountry North Carolina. He was then indentured or apprenticed to a foster family, from whom he learned carpentry and loom-making, and built a reputation for breaking wild horses.25
Fanning’s youth was made more difficult because of any of several diseases then called “scald head.” It resulted in hair loss, scaling, and pustules that smelled so badly that one account says Fanning didn’t eat at a table or sleep in a bed. For the rest of his life, he wore a silk cap under his hat, and “his most intimate friends never saw his head naked.”26
A Whig historian who interviewed people who met Fanning said, “his powers were developed under the influence of poverty, disease, and neglect, without early instruction or example, and without any moral or religious training.” He was “an outcast from genteel society, he never received any favors, or had any kind attentions paid him except from pity on account of his forlorn condition.”27
Around sixteen or seventeen, Fanning ran away from his foster parents, who he later said were abusive, and settled in South Carolina. He became moderately prosperous, acquired property, farmed it, and traded with Indians. He built a cabin on former Cherokee land, in what is now Laurens County.28
He later said his commitment to Britain began in 1775, when, returning from a trading trip, he was robbed by a gang of Whigs. In May, a militia company he served in split into Whig and Loyalist factions. If he had any doubts about staying loyal, they ended when rebels seized a Tory militia colonel, “burnt his feet, tarred and feathered him, and cut off his hair.”29
Over the next three years, Fanning took part in numerous raids and skirmishes—and he was captured, escaped, or released fourteen times. With each raid, each skirmish, each capture, each escape, his notoriety grew. By 1779, with a $300 price on his head and years spent eluding pursuers, “I looked so much like a rack of nothing but skin and bones, and my wounds had never been dressed, and my clothes all bloody. My misery and situation was beyond explanation, and no friend in the world that I could depend upon.”30
When South Carolina’s Whig governor offered him a conditional pardon, Fanning accepted and agreed to sit out the rest of the war. But in May 1780, the British captured Charlestown, and Fanning began recruiting militia and raiding Whigs, eventually moving his base to Chatham County, North Carolina, about 125 miles upcountry from Wilmington. He was the kind of Loyalist partisan Craig encouraged, popular with his men and disruptive to rebels. In July 1781, Craig commissioned him as a militia colonel.
Over the next year, Fanning and his men, whose numbers varied from a handful to more than one thousand, fought thirty-six skirmishes and battles. “Fanning inflicted more injury on the country, and was more dreaded at the time than any other man,” said the Whig historian.31
He raided Pittsboro, captured rebel judges and lawyers, and turned them over to Craig. In a letter to the Whig governor, the prisoners said they were being treated with “the greatest civility,” unlike the treatment Fanning told them Loyalists had received. “Some [Loyalists] had been unlawfully drafted, others had been whipped and ill-treated without trial, others had their houses burned and all their property plundered, and barbarous and cruel murders had been committed in their neighborhoods.” Fanning captured a rebel colonel in his own house. He attacked Campbelton and took more prisoners. He also won a victory over rebels at McFall’s Mill.32
Then, on September 13, Fanning and other Loyalist militia raided the rebel capital, Hillsboro. They killed fifteen rebels and wounded twenty, released thirty Loyalists, and captured two hundred prisoners—including Governor Thomas Burke. On the road to Wilmington, where they intended to give their prisoners to Craig, the rebels counterattacked. “I received a shot in my left arm which broke the bone in several pieces,” Fanning said. “The loss of blood was so great that I was taken off my horse and led to a secret place in the woods.” The rebels retreated after a four-hour battle, but both sides had heavy casualties. Craig got his prisoners.33
Craig praised Fanning, “who, for spirit and activity,” was the best of the Tory militia leaders. In late October, with Rutherford focused on Wilmington and the coast, Craig ordered a now-recovered Fanning to the backcountry “to lay waste the countries from whence his[Rutherford’s] men come.” Craig added that he trusted Fanning’s “good sense, which, though plain, is not deficient in point of thought.”34
After Craig evacuated Wilmington on November 18, Whigs increased their activities against the remaining Tories—harassed them, plundered them. Fanning retaliated as best he could with his diminishing force, raiding and destroying the homes of rebel leaders.
“I continued acting in the interior parts of North Carolina,” he said. Loyalists there “had been induced to brave every danger and difficulty during the late war rather than render any service to the rebels; had their properties real and personal taken to support their enemies; the fatherless and widows stripped; and every manner of support taken from them, their houses and lands and all personal property taken, and no resting place could be found for them. . . . Stripped of their property, driven from their homes, deprived of their wives and children, robbed of a free and mild government, betrayed and deserted by their friends, what can repay them for the misery?”35
Both sides escalated their terrorism, executing enemies, settling old scores. Even in January 1782, when Fanning tried to negotiate a truce that protected Loyalists, the killing continued. When Whigs killed one of Fanning’s captains, they “cut him to pieces with their swords.” Fanning, in turn, captured two rebels and “hung them, by way of retaliation, both on a limb of one tree.” A rebel who had been “distressing the Loyalists”: Fanning burned his home and two others. A rebel who was “very assiduous in assisting the rebels”: “I killed him,” Fanning said. A rebel who failed to moderate his behavior toward Loyalists—“I shot him.” After a Whig militia colonel said he’d never agree to a truce, Fanning killed him at his plantation in front of his sister and young daughter as he was trying to escape, and, according to one account, kicked and beat the women. It “put an end to his committing any more ill deeds,” Fanning said.36
By April, three hundred Whig militia were hunting for Fanning, and Fanning ended his fight. He planned to marry the sixteen-year-old sister of one of his officers on April 23 at a ceremony where two other officers would be married. But a rebel killed one officer on the wedding day. As the rebel tried to escape, Fanning shot him dead. The wedding proceeded. Then Fanning disappeared. He resurfaced on June 17 in Charlestown, and his bride joined him two days later.37
Fanning planned to start a new life in East Florida, because North Carolina’s postwar pardon of Loyalists specifically excluded him and two others. But the peace treaty gave Florida to Spain, so Fanning and his family went to New Brunswick, Canada, where they arrived in October 1784. There, he farmed; ran a gristmill and sawmill; and, to support his claims for war compensation, wrote an autobiography. He served in the provincial assembly until 1801, when he was expelled after accusations of raping a judge’s teenaged daughter. He was convicted, but either because of his popularity or weak evidence, the governor nullified the verdict. Fanning himself believed the jury was biased because of his personality, war record, reputation of brutality, and political ambitions. Guilty or not, Fanning moved to Digby, Nova Scotia, where he spent the rest of his life farming, fishing, and shipbuilding.38
9. Georgia: “Making Bricks Without Straw”
AFTER YORKTOWN, WASHINGTON SENT G
REENE TWO THOUSAND experienced Continental army troops from Maryland and Pennsylvania. But by the time the troops arrived in early January 1782, illness and enlistment expirations left Greene “little stronger than we were before.”1
Greene soon found that he had another problem: The generals who led the reinforcements despised each other. The three-month march south exacerbated an “old grudge” between Major General Arthur St. Clair and Brigadier General Anthony Wayne. An officer observed “much warmth” between the two—and he wasn’t referring to cordiality.2
Greene’s solution met several needs. He made St. Clair his second-in-command (fitting his senior rank), with mostly administrative duties. He then moved Wayne, the more aggressive general, away from St. Clair’s direct command and into a problem spot: Georgia, a state of about fifty-thousand people, half of whom were slaves.
Like North Carolina before Rutherford’s return, the British maintained a strong presence in Georgia, supporting Loyalist militia and encouraging Indian raids against the rebels. The British had held Savannah, Georgia’s only city and first settlement, since shortly after Christmas 1778. It was a low-country port, built on a bluff along the Savannah River about sixteen miles inland from the ocean. Unlike most American cities, Savannah was planned: no random alleys or streets carved from cow paths, but symmetrical blocks that framed six squares (today, twenty-four).
In their three years of occupation, the British fortified the city and manned it with 1,300 regular troops, 500 Tory militia, 150 armed African Americans, and assorted armed galleys and brigs plying the river.
The man responsible for the fortifications, for all of Georgia, was Lieutenant Colonel Alured Clarke, 37. He came from a well-to-do family: His father was a lawyer and judge; his namesake uncle was a high-ranking Church of England cleric. George III described Clarke as a man with “much temper and prudence.” Unlike Craig in North Carolina, Clarke was “a professional soldier whose modest talents and courteous manner had enabled him to discharge the civil duties of a colonial administrator without either distinguishing or disgracing himself,” a biographer said.3
He served in Germany and Ireland before his promotion to captain. In 1770, he married the notorious daughter of a member of Parliament. Elizabeth Catherine Hunter—Kitty—had eloped in 1762 with a married earl. The earl reconciled with his wife the next year, several months after Hunter gave birth to his son, who the earl supported financially. Clarke and Hunter never had children.
In 1776, now-Lieutenant Colonel Clarke arrived with his regiment in New York. He was stationed first in Canada, then in the South. He arrived in Savannah as the Georgia commander in May 1780, and found the same civil war that affected its neighboring colony.4
“The rage between Whig and Tory ran so high that what was called a ‘Georgia parole’ and to be shot down were synonymous,” a Whig general remembered.
Greene periodically tried to persuade Whig officials in Georgia that mercy was a wise military strategy. “It is always dangerous to push people to a state of desperation, and the satisfaction of revenge has but a momentary existence, and is commonly succeeded by pity and remorse,” he wrote the governor. “The practice of plundering, which I am told has been too much indulged with you, is very destructive to the morals and manners of a people.”5 His plea for generosity went unheeded.
In August 1781, with Cornwallis in Virginia, and Greene continuing his war of attrition against the bulk of the southern British army in South Carolina, the Georgia Whig legislature reenergized its resistance.
It created the Georgia Legion, intended as an elite force of two hundred cavalry and two hundred infantry, equipped with arms and supplies bought with promissory notes and proceeds from the sale of confiscated Tory plantations. In reality, British deserters and ex-Loyalists formed much of the legion—“dangerous and untrustworthy,” said one historian.6
An experienced leader, Lieutenant Colonel James Jackson, 24, led the legion. “He wooed danger,” a friend said. “He was steady, persevering, and immovable in the prosecution of his measures . . . He suffered perhaps the impetuosity of his temper to hurry him into extremes, too often and unnecessarily . . . He was impatient under contradictions, and apparently intolerant to his opponents.”7
Born in England, Jackson had arrived in Georgia recently—1772—apparently to study law under a wealthy friend of his father’s. The friend was a politically active Whig, and Jackson volunteered for the militia. By early 1776, Jackson was a captain, and participated in a raid on British ships in the Savannah River. He later saw action near the East Florida border and in late 1778, as a major, helped defend Savannah, fleeing when the British took the city. The next year, he fought in the unsuccessful attempt to retake Savannah.8
Jackson was a fighter in and out of the army. He fought at least twenty-three duels, the most notorious being the result of a political feud: He dueled and killed the Whig lieutenant governor in 1780. Before dying, the victim severely wounded Jackson in the knees. He recovered to fight in South Carolina and Georgia battles through spring 1781, when the Whigs retook Augusta, Georgia. In October, the general of the state militia ordered Jackson and his legion to move closer to Savannah and begin raiding British outposts.
Clarke, in Savannah, countered by sending forty-five British regulars to the Augusta area in support of a plot by twenty legionnaires to bayonet Jackson while he slept. The plot was foiled, and three ringleaders were hanged. The assassination attempt didn’t deter Jackson. On November 2, his legion fought British troops about fifteen miles southwest of Savannah. Jackson surprised a Tory and British detachment, which was willing to surrender. But one trigger-happy legionnaire shot a British officer. Seeing what had happened, the Tories counterattacked, and Jackson was forced to retreat. He was more successful in skirmishes that afternoon. By day’s end, the Whigs reported that while they suffered thirteen casualties, the Tories and British had about fifty. “The slaughter of the enemy was great,” Jackson said.9
The British account was nearly the opposite. “A few days ago there was an engagement, which we call bush-fighting, between a party of royalists and Americans,” said an official. “Twelve or 14 of the royalists fell and about 50 of the rebels, which will prove some check to their bold incursions. Colonel Clarke immediately went out to pursue them, but they had fled too fast to be overtaken.”10
While Jackson skirmished near Savannah, the main body of state troops intercepted a force of Indians and Tory raiders headed toward Augusta on December 3. The Whigs routed them, killing twelve Tories and twenty Indians. To the British, this was no raiding party. Instead, the rebels “plundered and murdered several traders and Cherokee Indians, not even sparing women and children who were on their way to Savannah.”11
By mid-December, the British heard reports that the rebels were being reinforced by a “formidable force” of regular army troops led not just by Wayne, but also by Greene, St. Clair, and Lafayette. “We are at this moment in the utmost danger and distress,” the royal governor said. “God knows what will become of us.”12
Clarke ordered his troops to pull back from outlying areas toward Savannah, practicing a scorched-earth policy in their wake. Among the retrenchments was a two-hundred-man garrison in the strategic town of New Ebenezer, on the Savannah River, 25 miles north of Savannah. Founded by a religious sect, New Ebenezer was the site of a rebel arms and supply depot until November 1778. Two months later, Loyalist militia turned the town into a major base, headquarters for 2,300 men. Whig forces regained control in October 1779, but they eventually left. In May 1781, the British moved back in.13
Now, with New Ebenezer abandoned again, Jackson made it his headquarters. (In the summer of 1782, the Whig legislature would meet there.) There, he waited for the reinforcements.
The “formidable force” the British feared didn’t include Lafayette, who was sailing home to France. Nor did it include Greene or St. Clair, whose priorities were to contain Leslie in Charlestown. Instead, the “formidable force” was one hund
red Continentals, three hundred South Carolina militia, and a handful of artillerymen.14 Only the commander’s reputation—well known by the British—was formidable.
Anthony Wayne’s nickname, “Mad Anthony,” was a misnomer: He was neither insane nor angry. In fact, he had been given the nickname just the previous spring. One of his men, known as Jemy the Rover or the “commodore,” was a sometimes-spy for Wayne. Jemy either pretended he was deranged or actually was; no one was sure. Either way, Wayne apparently had a soft spot for Jemy. In spring 1781, the army detained Jemy for disorderly conduct. On his way to the guardhouse, he demanded to know who ordered his arrest. “The general,” he was told. Several hours later, Jemy was released, and he asked the sergeant who had helped guard him whether Wayne was angry—“mad”—or playing a joke on him. The sergeant replied that Wayne was displeased, and if Jemy repeated his conduct, he would be whipped. “Then Anthony is mad,” Jemy said. “Farewell to you. Clear the coast for the commodore, mad Anthony’s friend.” The nickname stuck.15
Wayne was an aggressive fighter, but methodical in his preparations and training of troops. “An officer,” he said, “never ought to hazard a battle, where a defeat would render his situation much worse than a retreat without it (unless numbers and circumstances rendered success almost certain).”16
He demanded discipline from his troops, even when it came to appearance. “I have an insuperable prejudice in favor of an elegant uniform and soldierly appearance,” he told Washington. “I would rather risk my life and reputation at the head of the same men in an attack, clothed and appointed as I could wish, merely with bayonets and a single charge of ammunition, than to take them as they appear in common with 60 rounds of cartridges,” because good uniforms promote “laudable pride . . . which in a soldier is a substitute for almost every other virtue.”17
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