by Jack Kelly
The British had attacked Charleston twice before 1780. In 1776, Colonel William Moultrie, with some help from General Charles Lee, had prevented a British fleet from entering Charleston Harbor. Three years later, the enemy, having captured Savannah, made another attempt on Charleston. Lincoln was able to fend off this raid, in spite of civilian leaders’ impulse to capitulate.
In September of 1779, French admiral Charles d’Estaing arrived at the port with a powerful fleet, six thousand soldiers, and a plan to cooperate with Lincoln to retake Savannah. The joint operation collapsed during a brutal hand-to-hand melee in the trench before the town. The allies lost one of their bloodiest fights since Bunker Hill. A discouraged Lincoln returned to Charleston.
* * *
By the end of 1779, Henry Clinton had decided to shift even more of the focus of the war to the South. He hoped to spark a loyalist uprising, the perpetual British panacea for curing the rebellion. In the South he would not face the bulk of Washington’s annoying Continental Army. He would also be closer to Britain’s valuable West Indies territories should the French launch an attack there. In preparation, he had withdrawn the men who had been idling in Rhode Island since Clinton had captured Newport in 1776. Then he embarked 8,700 soldiers and sailed away, leaving New York under the command of General von Knyphausen.
After a rough passage, Clinton and his men landed just south of Charleston. The city lay on a peninsula between two rivers, the Ashley to the west and the Cooper to the east. Fort Moultrie, whose guns had thwarted Clinton’s first attack back in 1776, still protected the mouth of the harbor.
The city’s location offered opportunities for a spirited defense. Lincoln had sufficient time to complete its fortifications as Clinton crept forward, his men’s minds haunted by tales of wolves, venomous snakes, and sixteen-foot “Crocodiles.” It was not until March 29 that British troops crossed the Ashley and began to fortify the neck that joined the city to the mainland, preparing for a slow strangulation.
The amiable, round-faced Lincoln had no use for military affectation—he wore his gray hair unpowdered and lived the frugal, pious life of a New England Puritan. In spite of his rank, he wielded a shovel on the earthworks to set an example. The state had pressed six hundred slaves into the effort, but white citizens remained reluctant to perform manual labor. Nor would they listen to proposals to enlist blacks into the army in exchange for freedom. Moreover, the coastal planters’ chronic conflict with poorer inland residents prompted the backlanders to ignore state requests for aid and militia service.
Lincoln’s defenses included a stone “citadel” housing sixty-six cannon, a water-filled canal across the neck, and a fleet of three frigates and numerous gunboats to protect the harbor. He drew more troops into the city until 2,600 Continentals and more than 2,500 militiamen manned the works. Then it dawned on him that he had made a mistake.
On April 10, Clinton sealed the neck, trained his guns on the American fortifications and demanded that Lincoln surrender. Two days earlier, British ships had run past Fort Moultrie virtually unscathed to enter the harbor. Lincoln could feel the noose tightening.
His hope was that, like Washington at Brooklyn Heights, he could still escape. His small fleet kept British ships from the Cooper River. If he ferried his men and supplies across, he could preserve a formidable army in the South at the price of relinquishing the city.
Lincoln knew that he was in over his head. He had written to Washington about his “insufficiency and want of experience,” asking to be relieved.5 What was he to do? His honor would not allow him to surrender. Any hope of reinforcements arriving in time was a pipe dream. On April 13, 1780, the British guns opened up. Bombs rained on the houses and fortifications. Fires raged through the town. British sappers kept digging, preparing gun emplacements ever closer to American lines.
The time for escape was now. When Lincoln called a war council, he unwisely included representatives from the civilian government. They would not hear of a retreat. They told him that if he tried to abandon the city they would burn his boats, throw open the town gates, and aid the British in destroying his army.
The chance to break out faded as the British established themselves east of the Cooper River. By May 8, Clinton had fourteen thousand men working on the siege. His guns kept pounding the American defenses. Lincoln saw that all hope had evaporated. He asked for a cease-fire to discuss terms. A blessed spell of quiet settled on the town, but Lincoln was in no position to bargain. Unconditional surrender was Clinton’s only offer. The American commander could not accept.
The next day, hostilities resumed. A tremendous cannonade erupted from both sides, two hundred guns firing at once. “It appeared as if the stars were tumbling down,” an observer reported.6 The apocalyptic fury pointlessly destroyed houses and killed more citizens and soldiers.
Now the residents of Charleston, anxious to save their town from utter ruin, petitioned Lincoln to surrender. On May 11, an American soldier ran up a white flag. Clinton would not let the defeated army march out of the city with the honors of war, their flags flying and the troops released on parole, as was the custom. More than 5,500 ragged and humiliated American troops headed for British prisons, where inhuman conditions killed almost half of them. Their sad departure from the city was known derisively as the “Lincolnade.”7
The loss at Charleston staggered patriots in all the colonies. An entire army captured: irreplaceable troops, four hundred cannon, thousands of muskets, valuable stores of gunpowder, three frigates. Across the Atlantic, joyful Britons greeted the news as an indicator that “a speedy and happy termination of the American war” was imminent.8
* * *
While celebrating his victory, General Clinton received word that a force of about 350 Virginia Continental soldiers under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford had come south to reinforce Lincoln. Forty miles from the city, they learned of Charleston’s fate and turned back north. Although the rebels had a hundred-mile lead, Clinton sent Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton to chase them down. The twenty-six-year-old Tarleton had cemented his reputation as a daring cavalry leader by capturing American general Charles Lee during the 1776 debacle in New Jersey. A natural warrior, Tarleton was praised for his “velocity.” Now he set out with his mounted 130-man British Legion, composed mostly of loyalists. Forty regular army dragoons rode with him. They galloped north at a punishing pace, commandeering fresh horses as their animals dropped under them. They caught up with Buford at a settlement called Waxhaws on the North Carolina border.
Claiming he had more men than he did, the young cavalryman sent Buford a surrender demand under a white flag. Buford refused. The British horsemen and infantry swept toward Buford’s men on open ground. The American commander decided to stop them with a single volley of musketry. His men held their fire until the stampeding attackers were only ten yards away. The muskets exploded in unison. The shock of fire met the shock of hurtling horseflesh. The momentum of the cavalry prevailed. In an instant, the dragoons were in the midst of the rebels, slashing with razor-sharp sabers.
Without time to reload, the Americans were helpless. Blades cut into men’s arms, tore their necks, sliced open their faces. Blood gushed. Buford tied a white handkerchief to his sword and ordered his men to ground their muskets. Tarleton’s troopers hacked those who stood and ran down those who fled.
“I have cut 170 Off’rs and Men to pieces,” Tarleton bragged afterward.9 As at the bloody battle at Paoli, it was not firearms but the more intimate edge weapons that decided the matter at Waxhaws. Patriots loudly proclaimed it a massacre.
They had a point. More than a quarter of Buford’s men were killed “on the spot.” Another 150 were wounded too badly to walk away. Buford himself escaped with about ninety others. Tarleton said his men acted with “vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” A British officer later wrote that “the virtue of humanity was totally forgott
en.”10
Like the murder of Jane McCrea, the Waxhaws Massacre became a centerpiece of American propaganda. The British scored a tactical victory but enraged their enemies. For the rest of the war, the image of “Bloody Tarleton” fueled the patriot fighting spirit, and “Tarleton’s quarter,” meaning no quarter, remained the bitter catchphrase that excited American vengeance.
But the immediate outcome disheartened patriots: British control of South Carolina was now complete.
* * *
Washington had to respond to the Charleston catastrophe. In addition to Buford’s small contingent, he had already sent a corps of his best Continentals marching south. In Virginia they learned of the fall of Charleston. Leading these crack Delaware and Maryland troops was Baron Johann de Kalb. The son of Bavarian peasants, the fifty-nine-year-old de Kalb was, like Steuben, a soldier of fortune and a dissembler. Not really a baron, he was something better: a hardened and expert warrior. Having come over with Lafayette in 1777, the tall, graying, broad-shouldered de Kalb had become one of the Americans’ most valuable foreign officers.
Hearing of Lincoln’s fate, de Kalb encamped his men in North Carolina. His regiments of Continentals were now the only obstacle preventing the British from charging all the way to Virginia. He formed a base at Hillsdale, near present-day Raleigh, and waited.
Congress turned to Horatio Gates, the “Victor of Saratoga,” to redeem patriot hopes. The former British officer had served as head of the War Board and had commanded in New England during the previous two years of relative quiet. He yearned for action.
Gates was still popular among New England congressmen, but his alleged plotting against Washington during the Valley Forge winter had left him out of favor with the commander’s allies. His friend Charles Lee, who had come a cropper at Monmouth Courthouse, warned him, “Take care lest your Northern laurels turn to Southern willows.”11
Gates arrived in de Kalb’s camp on July 26, 1780. The force Gates called his “grand army” was far from grand: 1,400 Continentals, six field guns, and a tiny remnant of cavalry. Gates had to depend on a North Carolina militia brigade already in the field and the hope that other militiamen would turn out. He admitted to “an army without strength—a military chest without money.”12 Food was scarce—the countryside had little to offer, and Tory farmers refused to supply rebels.
Administration and logistics were Horatio Gates’s strong suit. He might have spent time consolidating and rebuilding his army and prying supplies from Virginia and North Carolina authorities. But he knew that British general Cornwallis, whom Clinton had left in South Carolina with a substantial force of redcoats, presented a grave danger to the southern states. Intelligence reports suggested that if Gates rushed his men south within two weeks, he could manhandle the advance corps of the British at Camden, South Carolina, and capture a tempting supply depot as well. The time seemed right to strike.
Gates was an optimist. He had always believed in the ability of militia to carry the fight. “There is every Reason to Hope,” he told his men, “that this Campaign will decide the War.”13 The day after he arrived, he announced that the army would march toward the enemy—tomorrow.
His officers expressed “blank amazement.” Not only were they to be on the march at three in the morning, but they would be taking a route that de Kalb had already ruled out. It was the most direct path to Camden, but it passed through barren territory thinly populated by loyalists. De Kalb’s plan had been to circle west through an area of patriot farms, where they might scrape together provisions. A few officers protested the new route, but Gates was decided.
Off they went through sandy pine barrens. Nothing to eat—Gates’s promises that food would catch up with them were empty. Already foot-weary after their six-hundred-mile trek from New Jersey, the Continentals soldiered on, punished by the South Carolina heat, electrified by mosquitoes, sand flies, and ticks. They marched another 150 miles, “living on green apples and peaches, which rendered our situation truly miserable.”14
Gates’s men overtook and merged with the force of North Carolina militiamen on August 7. Twelve miles from Camden, Gates received reports of about two thousand British troops standing guard north of the city. In spite of his superior numbers, he ruled out a frontal assault. From long experience, he knew that the outcome of any battle is uncertain. No general could control all the unforeseen factors that dictated victory or defeat. He preferred a chess match, a war of maneuvers in which calculation and stratagem could shift the odds in his favor.
He continued his march, seeking a strong defensive position. He finally encamped, after seventeen hungry days on the road, at a place called Rugeley’s Mills. The British fell back toward their main camp just north of Camden. Encouraged by the enemy’s timidity, Gates remained confident. Seven hundred Virginia militiamen under General Edward Stevens arrived to swell his grand army. Because Rugeley’s Mills did not offer the solid defensive position Gates wanted, he decided to move to a more favorable spot along Sanders Creek, seven miles closer to Camden. He ordered his officers to have their men on the road at ten o’clock that night. Again they were dumbfounded. A march through the dark was a challenge for the most disciplined troops. Raw militiamen could easily fall into confusion and lose all cohesion. Gates asked no advice and would listen to no dissent.
Before they left, an aide informed Gates that a count of his effective rank and file stood at three thousand, not the six thousand that, with the influx of militiamen, he had assumed were under his command. The general stated simply, “These are enough for our purpose.”15
Under a sky of silver-rimmed clouds, the men headed off. Fingers of moonlight illuminated the carpet of pine needles under their feet. At two in the morning, the troops had only a mile to go before they reached the ridge where they could dig in. Suddenly, a startled shout broke the lukewarm stillness. A rifle crack. A rumble of horses’ hooves. Men’s hearts bounded.
They had collided with the enemy in the dark. Danger crackled around them. British cavalrymen thundered ahead. Gates’s outnumbered horsemen gave way. American riflemen opened up. The five-minute fire-fight ended almost as suddenly as it had begun. Both groups of startled soldiers fell back.
Told that he faced a substantial force commanded by Cornwallis himself, Gates’s “astonishment could not be concealed.” One of the most experienced of all American commanders was suddenly rattled.
Gates could only guess what had happened. Cornwallis, hearing of the Americans’ approach, had galloped north from Charleston to join his men. Figuring he would substitute surprise for numbers, he had put his force on the road that night at the exact moment Gates’s troops were stepping out. He planned to assault the American camp at dawn. The extraordinary coincidence brought the cavalry of the two ignorant armies together in the dark at a spot where neither commander had planned to fight.
Gates’s men hunkered down six hundred yards from the enemy. Calling a quick council of war, Gates at last asked his officers for advice. None wanted to risk his honor by advocating a retreat. Militia general Stevens suggested they fight—it was too late for anything else. In retreat the army would be vulnerable, especially to Tarleton’s dragoons. No one objected. Gates affirmed the decision. They would fight.
In spite of their numbing fatigue, few of the Americans slept. Sporadic gunfire punctuated the unholy hours. Before light, the men moved into position on the rolling ground under a cathedral of longleaf pines. The Continentals formed on the right under de Kalb. The North Carolina men stood in the center behind eight cannon. The Virginia militia, exhausted after their punishing forced march, held the left. Swamps protected both flanks. Two Maryland Continental regiments waited behind the lines as reserves.
As light leaked into a nervous sky, Cornwallis ordered his men ahead in columns, regulars on the right, Tory militia to the left. The arrangement of the armies put two of the best regiments of redcoats dire
ctly opposite the Virginians, many of whom had never seen an enemy soldier before that morning. General Stevens hurried back to Gates and excitedly suggested that his men could attack the British before they fully deployed into a line of battle. Gates said, “Let it be done.”16
The patriot artillery opened up. The guns’ detonations took the men’s breath away. The Virginians moved forward with timid steps. The well-drilled British regulars formed quickly. Their glistening bayonets floated toward the militiamen as if disembodied. From behind the imperious prongs of steel roared the confident chant: “Hus-SAH! Hus-SAH! Hus-SAH!”
The Virginians stood awestruck. “We have bayonets, too!”17 Stevens screamed at them. The redcoats halted, shouldered their muskets, and fired a crashing volley. Some militiamen fell. The rest panicked. Most dropped their weapons without ever firing. They turned toward the reassuring rear. They ran faster than they had ever run, officers as well as men. The panic, one observer remembered, was “like electricity”—it operated instantly and was “irresistible where it touched.”18
The terror spread to the battalions of North Carolina militiamen. The troops of every regiment but one turned and sprinted away. One soldier ran because “everyone I saw was about to do the same. It was instantaneous.”19 Men tripped, fell, got up, ran on. By this time, the battlefield had become an inferno: the cannon pulverized the silence; great clouds of smoke clogged the motionless air; visibility shrank to a few yards; ears were assaulted by screams, shots, the tramp of feet and hooves, incomprehensible shouting, wails of pain, whizzing balls, and the otherworldly braying of gutted horses.
Gates ranged behind the lines, trying to gain control of his troops. To no avail. He cantered away from the lethal melee and continued to marshal the stampeding soldiers behind the line. The men, caught up in a fever dream, ignored him. The chaos brought to mind the scene on the Monongahela a quarter of a century earlier, where a young Horatio Gates had felt a sickening thud tear his chest amid a similar disaster.