On the morning of Sunday, August 25, Brereton landed and took control of the Combahee Ferry on the river’s south bank. (It was near what is today a boat landing beneath a bridge on U.S. 17 that opened in 2008, named after a future rebel—Harriet Tubman.) His men camped at two plantations on both sides of the river.
That night, Gist arrived nearby on the north bank and learned from his scouts about the British presence. He planned two actions once all his troops caught up with each other. First, he intended to attack the British at the ferry at daybreak on August 27. Second, he would establish an artillery position about twelve miles down the river at Tar Bluff on Chehaw Neck, the triangular piece of land, paddies, and swamp near the junction of the Combahee and Chehaw rivers, about four or five miles from St. Helena Sound and the ocean. The position would allow his men to “annoy their [British] shipping on their return.” In other words, he would attack them at Combahee Ferry, driving them back down the river, and then surprise them with another attack from the artillery position.20
On the 26th, before Gist could send his men down Chehaw Neck, Laurens arrived, wanting to fight. He “solicited the direction and command at that post,” Gist later told Greene. Laurens left that evening, a “warm and disagreeable” one. Laurens commanded fifty men, who hauled a howitzer and a few pieces of lighter artillery.21
Six miles from Tar Bluff, Laurens stopped for dinner at the plantation of Whig captain William Stock. “That night was spent in all the enjoyment of hospitality and female society,” an early Whig historian learned from contemporaries. Laurens suggested that the women climb a scaffolding where they could witness from afar the attack on the British the next day.22
Around 3 A.M. on the 27th, Laurens left for Tar Bluff. His men weren’t the only ones on the move in the early hours. At Combahee Ferry, Brereton had his own intelligence. He learned not only of Gist’s imminent attack, but that the rebels were “collecting in force and throwing up works on the heights of [the] Combahee” downriver.23
At 2 A.M., the British had returned to their boats and “dropped silently down the river with the tide.” It wasn’t until 4 A.M. that Gist realized there was no one to attack. But Gist also realized that Laurens now might be headed into an ambush. He immediately sent reinforcements. They were too late. The surviving accounts as to how the fighting began are confusing.24
A Whig officer, some of whose colleagues from the Delaware regiment were with Laurens, said Laurens set up his howitzer and began firing on the British. The firing “stopped them in the river,” forcing them to land three hundred men to take out Laurens’s guns. But Brereton said he attacked because the rebels were pressing the British “on all quarters.” He sent two galleys close to shore “to feel for the enemy and draw off their attention,” while he landed sixty men.25
However, the history of Brereton’s regiment says the British landed first and hid in tall grass waiting for Laurens to arrive. The rebels “approached unsuspicious of danger.” This agrees with early Whig histories. Brereton’s men, said one, “lay in ambuscade, in a place covered with fennel and high grass, and were undiscovered until they rose to fire on the unsuspecting Laurens.”26
What all the sources agree on is this: Rather than retreat, Laurens charged the larger British force. The fight lasted twenty-seven minutes. Laurens and a corporal died immediately. Nineteen men were wounded. Six were missing, presumably taken prisoner. The British captured the howitzer, and suffered one man killed, seven wounded.27
Gist and one hundred fifty reinforcements were just two miles away. “I arrived with the cavalry just in time to cover the retreat of the infantry,” he told Greene. Some British retreated to the woods, and Gist ordered his men to attack them. But the going was tough, and “their efforts were rendered ineffectual by a small work of logs and brush in which the enemy threw themselves.” The cavalry couldn’t ride effectively in the brush, and Gist’s infantry was “much dispirited and fatigued.” He called off the attack.28
Brereton thought Gist’s cavalry “behaved exceedingly well,” but when they were twenty yards away, “our people then fired with success.” Soon, the British returned to their boats and sailed off, continuing to collect “without interruption what rice and corn the country would afford.” They returned to Charlestown with cattle, three hundred barrels of rice, and some slaves. Brereton would serve in the army until 1792, rising to lieutenant colonel and serving as lieutenant governor of Jamaica’s capital. Throughout his life, he suffered from a wound he received during the war.29
Gist, knowing that Laurens’s death had significance beyond his rank, sent Greene the news that day. “I shall refresh the troops at Captain Stock’s till the afternoon of tomorrow, when the corpse of Col. Laurens shall be interred with every mark of distinction due to his rank and merit.” Laurens’s father later moved the body to a family plot on a hill overlooking the Cooper River near Monck’s Corner. The property, now part of a monastery, is open to the public, as is the small cemetery, which is surrounded by trees that shroud the river view.30
Charlestown’s Loyalist refugees were distraught by Laurens’s death. Many knew the family, but more important, they felt Laurens had treated them fairly. “He constantly condemned every oppressive measure adopted against the Loyalists, and always contended that a steady and disinterested adherence to political tenets, though in opposition to his own, ought to render their possessor an object of esteem rather than of persecution,” said the Royal Gazette. His only error, the paper continued, was in disavowing the king. “Setting aside this single deviation from the path of rectitude, we know no one trait of his history which can tarnish his reputation as a man of honor, or affect his character as a gentleman. His generosity of temper and liberality of opinion, were as extensive as his abilities. Happy would it be for the distressed families of those persons who are to leave this garrison with his Majesty’s troops that another Laurens could be found!”31
Laurens’s death shook the Whig leadership in an even more personal way.
Greene quickly wrote Washington. “Your Excellency has lost a valuable aide de camp; the Army, a brave officer; and the public, a worthy and patriotic citizen.” Washington replied that he considered Laurens’s death “a very heavy misfortune, not only as it affects the public at large, but particularly so to his family, and all his private friends and connections, to whom his amiable and useful character had rendered him peculiarly dear.”32
Soon after the war, Washington presented a more complex portrait of Laurens. “It is my firm belief [that] his merits and worth richly entitle him to the whole picture: No man possessed more of the amor patriae [love of country]. In a word, he had not a fault that I ever could discover, unless intrepidity bordering upon rashness could come under that denomination; and to this he was excited by the purest motives.”33
To Greene, Laurens had no one to blame but himself. “Poor Laurens is fallen in a paltry little skirmish,” Greene told one of his generals. “You knew his temper, and I predicted his fate. I wish his fall had been as glorious as his fate is much to be lamented. The love of military glory made him seek it upon occasions unworthy [to] his rank.”34
Hamilton got the news about his “dear” friend in October. “How strangely are human affairs conducted that so many excellent qualities could not ensure a more happy fate?” he wrote Greene. “The world will feel the loss of a man who has left few like him behind, and America of a citizen whose heart realized that patriotism of which others only talk. I feel the loss of a friend I truly and most tenderly loved, and one of a very small number.”35
His words didn’t fully reflect his feelings. “After the death of John Laurens, Hamilton shut off some compartment of his emotions and never reopened it,” said Ron Chernow, Hamilton’s twenty-first-century biographer.36
Lafayette, back home in France, learned about Laurens from Washington himself. “Poor Laurens is no more,” Washington said. “He fell in a trifling skirmish in South Carolina, attempting to prevent the enemy from p
lundering the country of rice.”37
It fell to blunt John Adams to deliver the news to John’s father, Henry, in London recovering from his imprisonment: “I know not how to mention the melancholy intelligence . . . which affects you so tenderly. I feel for you, more than I can or ought to express. Our country has lost its most promising character in a manner, however, that was worthy of her cause. I can say nothing more to you, but that you have much greater reason to say in this case, ‘I would not exchange my son for any living son in the world.’”38
“I write with weeping eyes,” Henry told his sister-in-law. “My dear son . . . dutiful son, affectionate friend, sensible honest counselor, would have fled across the globe to conduct and serve his father; I was striving to go to him. He loved his country, he bled and died for it. . . . I thought I should have stood the shock with some degree of fortitude, but alas, however strong the man, the father feels and yields. . . . Thank God that I had such a son, who dared to die for his country.”39
15. At Last, the Evacuation
LESLIE AND GREENE HAD BEGUN NEGOTIATIONS FOR A GENERAL prisoner exchange in February 1782, but Greene was restricted by his civilian government’s guidance. North Carolina, for example, insisted on treating Loyalists as traitors, ineligible for exchanges. Greene tried to reason with the governor: “It is much better to effect the relief of our good citizens by considering the Tories prisoners of war than trying them for treason, and leave our best friends in captivity and distress.”1
All this frustrated Leslie. “I can’t get General Greene to make any exchange of prisoners nor do anything. He is a downright lawyer.” When Leslie asked for a prisoner accounting, Greene refused, saying the British broke the exchange agreement, “but he won’t explain how.”2
Nine months later, in August 1782, Leslie threatened Greene that if a general prisoner exchange wasn’t forthcoming, he would ship the rebel POWs “to distant parts of the continent or elsewhere.” Greene immediately agreed to a general exchange—of regular Continental and British army troops. Then, he complained that he held more British prisoners than the British held Whigs, and he wouldn’t exchange a regular for a militiaman.3
Possibly at Leslie’s instigation, Greene now heard from his POWs. They were living on a prison ship in Charlestown harbor, penniless, with worn-out clothes, although donations had allowed them to “cover our nakedness.” They pleaded, “Grant us some relief.”4
The prisoners would have to wait longer. Negotiations dragged on. Finally, on October 22, the generals appointed special representatives to iron out the remaining details. Later that month, they reached a deal, and Washington was able to report that “Greene had effected a universal exchange of all prisoners” in the South. All officers were paroled. Greene sent 1,152 men to Leslie. We don’t know how many Whigs were returned.5
Leslie told Charlestown on August 7, 1782, that the British would evacuate. “A convoy will be ordered, and every possible assistance given” to Loyalists who wished to leave. He encouraged those who wished to stay to “make their peace” with the state government.6
So he could plan the convoys, Leslie created a registration system. Within a week, 4,230 whites and 7,163 blacks, both freemen and slaves, signed the list to leave. And those numbers, a coordinating committee of Loyalists said, were “far from complete due to the short notice allowed.”7
Leslie worried about the logistics. “The great number of loyal inhabitants who will probably desire to remove their property from this place, which will, I fear, much exceed what the limited quantity of our shipping may enable us to transport,” he wrote Carleton. A month later: “Our progress has been very much restrained by the small number of ships in this harbor.”8
Carleton ordered Leslie to prevent plundering. Further, he told Leslie to treat the rebels “with lenity and generosity.” Leslie assured Carleton that he would not only “enforce the strictest obedience to the directions you give,” but that he himself had a “natural inclination and a just abhorrence for acts of violence and unnecessary distress.” But keeping the lid on angry Loyalists who felt abandoned, or frustrated soldiers in retreat, was difficult. Desertion was common, despite Leslie “having made some necessary examples on the gibbet.”9
Greene’s spies gave him a dire picture of Charlestown. “The mobs and riots which prevail in town give me no small pain for its safety. It is said that General Leslie exerts himself all he can to preserve order, but he is so badly supported that his orders are but indifferently executed,” Greene reported. A Whig legislator and merchant heard from acquaintances within Charlestown that “the town is in the greatest confusion. The removal of household furniture, merchandise, pulling down the wooden houses that had been built by people going away, and the lamentations of the poor, going away almost destitute of every comfort of life, altogether composed a most melancholy scene.”10
As for Leslie himself, “I long for our departure,” he wrote Carleton, “for no person can be more unpleasantly situated than myself. I would not undertake the same business again . . . for any earthly consideration.”11
Prisoners, food, ships, desertion, civil order. Leslie also needed to resolve another issue: what to do with the blacks.
The black Southerners fell into several groups, and Leslie had concerns about them all:
Free men and women.
Slaves who had been promised freedom for serving as soldiers and laborers.
Slaves belonging to British officers. Most had been taken from rebel plantations, and the officers considered them property to be evacuated.
“Sequestered” slaves—those belonging to rebels and captured by British or Loyalist troops. Many were used to compensate Loyalists for loss of their own slaves to the rebels.
Slaves belonging to Loyalists.
Slaves who fled to the British assuming they would be free.12
Leaving any behind would result in, at a minimum, their re-enslavement. For those who worked closely with the British, the consequences could be worse. One collaborator who belonged to a Charlestown Loyalist had spied for Leslie. Later captured, the rebels decapitated him and impaled his head on a pole as a warning. Rebel governments reimbursed constables for whipping or branding slaves who had committed offenses. A slave caught committing arson might be burned to death.13
Leslie felt a responsibility for many of the blacks. “Those who have voluntarily come in under the faith of our protection cannot in justice be abandoned to the merciless resentment of their former masters,” he wrote Carleton.14
On the other hand, Carleton had ordered Leslie to respect rebel property—including slaves. So Leslie peppered his commander with questions:
“What will be done with the sequestered negroes?” he asked.
“There are many negroes who have been very useful, both at the siege of Savannah and here. Some have been guides, and from their loyalty have been promised their freedom. . . . Many of the [Loyalist] inhabitants will wish to go to Jamaica with their negroes.”15
“I wish your Excellency’s instructions had been fuller with regard to the sequestered negroes; their number, which is very considerable, renders this a subject of much importance, and I am not a little embarrassed how to dispose of them.”16
“If an officer takes a Negro belonging to the enemy in action, with his master’s horse, is that Negro looked on to be the property of the officer who took him or not?”17
Leslie faced a special problem with British officers who had taken black slaves as their own. “Every officer wishes to include his slave” in the evacuation. They pretend them spies, or guides, and, of course, obnoxious [to the rebels], or under promises of freedom from Gen. Prevost, Lord Cornwallis, Lord Rawdon, or some other officer of rank, or free by proclamation.” Most slaves wanted to stay with their new, more humane British masters because they were “exceedingly unwilling to return to hard labor and severe punishment from their former masters.” Given the large numbers involved, including wives and children, the cost of evacuating them “w
ill amount to a monstrous expense.”18
Carleton gave Leslie one piece of guidance: “Such as have been promised their freedom must have it.” Everything else had either been answered previously (ambiguously, Leslie thought) or it was “left to General Leslie’s decision.”19
Leslie decided to negotiate with John Mathews, 38, the Whig governor, Charlestown native, and a lawyer. They reached an agreement on October 10. Leslie would return to the Whigs all slaves, except those to whom the British had promised freedom and those who were “particularly obnoxious” to the rebels because of their collaboration with the British army. Leslie also promised to compensate the rebels for slaves who weren’t returned and allow rebel inspectors to search Charlestown for slaves who were being improperly evacuated. In return for these concessions, the Whigs pledged to allow Loyalists to sue in court to recover their confiscated property, as well as to honor debts to British merchants.20
Then, the agreement fell apart. While the British were in the process of returning 136 slaves whom inspectors had found in a Florida-bound ship, the rebels captured three British soldiers, and Leslie refused to continue the slave exchange. Mathews, suspicious that Leslie was trying to evacuate more slaves than he was entitled to, cancelled the entire agreement.
Leslie vented his frustration about the “insolent” rebels to Carleton. “All my good intentions of assisting the Loyalists in returning the enemy their Negroes have proved abortive from the behavior of Mr. Mathews, the rebel governor, and General Greene in insulting the outposts at the very time I was acting with the utmost moderation and forbearance.”21
After Yorktown Page 13