by John Oller
The British abandoned the invasion and returned to New York. They had suffered more than two hundred casualties, including former royal governor Campbell, who had returned to participate in the operation only to be mortally wounded aboard Peter Parker’s flagship man-of-war, the HMS Bristol. American losses were only ten killed, including “a mulatto boy,” and thirty-four wounded. It was the most decisive victory of the war by either side to that early point.
Though a lackadaisical preparer, Moultrie had proved to be an inspirational battle commander. Even General Lee, who came over to offer encouragement during the fighting, admitted his presence was unnecessary because Moultrie’s men, though mostly raw troops, were “cool to the last degree.” The Continental Congress passed a resolution thanking Moultrie, promoted him to brigadier general, and absorbed his 2nd Regiment into the Continental Army for the remainder of the war.c
Francis Marion, who was manning artillery at Fort Sullivan, also distinguished himself that day. He did not, as Weems claimed, request to fire and then personally launch the final parting cannonball that ripped through the hull of the Bristol; that honor went to Captain Richard Shubrick. But Marion did perform a critical role during the heat of battle. As the Americans were running short of cannon ammunition, Moultrie sent Marion and a small party to remove the powder from the American schooner Defense, which was lying at a nearby creek. They returned with enough to allow the patriots to resume firing until a larger supply was brought in from the city. Marion’s teenaged nephew Gabriel was with him at Fort Sullivan that day and may have accompanied him on the mission.
Until the Battle of Fort Sullivan, South Carolinians had not been unified in their desire to break from the mother country. But the course of human events began overtaking the more reluctant revolutionaries. Unbeknownst to Charlestonians, on June 28, the same day as the climactic battle, Thomas Jefferson delivered the first draft of a declaration of independence to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. A few weeks later word reached Charleston that in a document adopted on July 4 and signed by four South Carolina representatives, Congress declared that the thirteen colonies were free from all allegiance to the British Crown and that all political connection between them and Great Britain was “totally dissolved.”
Euphoric from having staved off the most powerful military force on earth and now officially independent from the mother country, Charlestonians went back to their life of parties and concerts and balls. The British were now gone and would remain absent from South Carolina for quite some time. But they would be back.
a The British hardly came to this argument with clean hands. It was they who chiefly introduced slavery to South Carolina from their Caribbean colonies. Great Britain did not abolish the slave trade until 1807 or slavery itself until 1833.
b In artillery terms pounder refers to the weight of the balls fired, not the weight of the cannon. Most movable field pieces in the southern theater were three- or six-pounders, whereas battery artillery might be twelve- or eighteen-pounders or more.
c Fort Sullivan was soon renamed Fort Moultrie in his honor and was an active US Army post until the end of World War II. June 28 is still celebrated as Carolina Day each year, and the palmetto tree would give the state its nickname as well as a symbol for its official flag, added to the crescent image on the blue Moultrie flag.
5
Commander of the 2nd Regiment
Francis Marion was no longer a farmer; he was now a professional soldier, experienced in multiple phases of the military: infantry, cavalry, artillery, coastal engineering, and amphibious operations, not to mention the Indian-style warfare he had seen on the frontier. In November 1776 he became the lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Regiment on the Continental line when Isaac Motte, who held that commission previously, was promoted to colonel. Along with other officers, Marion took an oath to “renounce, refuse, and abjure any allegiance and obedience” to the king of England and “to the utmost of my power, support, maintain and defend the said United States against the said King George the Third.” No less than the signers of the Declaration of Independence, he was wagering his very life on the success of the Revolution.
Maintaining the commitment of the men he commanded was another matter. With the departure of the British, the suppression of the Tories, and the squashing of another Cherokee uprising in the backcountry in the summer of 1776, South Carolina was relatively quiet; almost all the fighting was taking place in the North. Boredom set in among the soldiers garrisoned at Charleston with Marion, leading to problems with recruitment and discipline. Men were frequently slovenly and drunk, and they misbehaved by stealing from each other, pillaging nearby plantations, exceeding leaves of absence, and even “runnin with one another intirely naked” about town.
Such conduct riled Marion, and he was quick to impose harsh discipline. Punishment could mean fifty to a hundred lashes on a bare back, orders to do double duty, or a couple of days’ confinement with only bread and water, although often the penalties were remitted in whole or in part. Between 1775 and 1777 more than one out of four men in Marion’s 2nd South Carolina Regiment received court-martial-ordered whippings. (One repeat offender, who was court-martialed six times, endured a total of 749 lashings.) Marion went so far as to threaten that any woman found bringing in or selling liquor contrary to orders would be “whipped and drummed out of the regiment.”
Repellant as such measures may sound today, they were not considered cruel or unusual at the time. In 1776 Congress in fact raised the legal limit on military flogging from thirty-nine to one hundred lashes; the British army, where miscreants were brutally disciplined, was much harder on its soldiers.
Marion’s military mindset was British—hardly surprising as he had been trained as an officer in the British regular service. He was a stickler for appearance and hygiene, insisting that the men comb their hair and wash their faces and hands and that they dress “clean and neat.” He explained that because “long hairs gather much filth,” every soldier should have his hair cut short or, if not, then braided or tied. (He even created the position of regimental barber to dress the men’s heads and shave them daily.) If they appeared for parade with unkempt beards or hair, they would be shaved or dressed on the spot. At times, he lamented, his men appeared “more like wild savages than soldiers.” He also decried the “filthy custom” of soldiers “doing their Occasions in and near the fort,” which “made a disagreeable smell in garrison.” Violators “guilty of such vile practices” were to be brought to court-martial.
Decorum was also important to him. On the first anniversary of the victory over the British at Fort Sullivan (since rechristened Fort Moultrie), the ladies of Charleston threw a “genteel dinner” for the men, to which the officers contributed a hogshead (sixty-three gallons) of wine and forty-two barrels of beer. Marion expressed hope that the men would “behave with sobriety and decency” and promised that anyone seen drunk or disorderly in the streets would be put quietly to bed in their barracks.
Nor were officers immune from his careful oversight. On one occasion he felt “obliged to take notice of the great neglect of most of the officers not attending their duty more punctually.” Another time, lamenting the drunkenness of many soldiers, he criticized his officers for being “not sufficiently attentive to their men.”
At times Marion must have seemed a martinet. But his rationale was simple: “Whenever any part of duty is neglected or done in a slovenly manner, though ever so minute, it [tends] to destroy discipline entirely.” He thought a little education might help: when several soldiers petitioned him to allow one of their colleagues to teach them to “read, Wright & arithmitick,” Marion readily granted the request. The chosen instructor was a chronically court-martialed sergeant who once had been sentenced to receive two hundred lashes for threatened desertion before Marion intervened to pardon him.
Given the absence of any serious military threat and the monotony of garrison life, it became increasingly difficult to recruit and keep
common soldiers in the Continental regiments in Charleston. South Carolina’s General Assembly, which had replaced the Council of Safety, offered bounties and land to volunteers and even resorted to drafting vagrants and petty criminals into service. Still it was not enough. By December 1778 Marion’s 2nd Regiment was at less than half strength.
Shortly before the December muster roll Marion had become the commander of the 2nd Regiment (designated “lieutenant colonel commandant”) when Isaac Motte resigned as colonel to serve on South Carolina’s Privy Council (the governor’s cabinet). In the ordinary course Marion should have become a full colonel, but to maintain equivalency in the exchange of prisoners with British lieutenant colonels, who were the commanders of their regiments, he remained a lieutenant colonel, with his next promised promotion to be brigadier general.
Marion’s life was changing in other ways around this time as well. By the end of 1778 three of his four brothers had died, all of them since the Battle of Fort Sullivan. Isaac, the lone surviving brother, would live only another three years. Always close to his family, Francis assumed the role of guardian and provider for the children of various siblings even while he was out waging war against the British. He put two of his nephews through the University of Pennsylvania; one of them would become a US representative from South Carolina.
Another shift in circumstances occurred in December 1778, this one with more profound implications for Marion’s future: the British came back to the South.
THE FALL OF SAVANNAH—the first leg in Britain’s revised southern strategy—occurred on December 29, 1778, with hardly a shot fired. After General Robert Howe surrendered the city, loyalists overran much of Georgia. Major General Benjamin Lincoln, the new commander of the Continental Southern Department (having replaced Howe, who had replaced Charles Lee), moved out of Charleston and into Georgia in an effort to wrest back control of as much of that state as possible. But Lincoln’s foray left Charleston dangerously exposed, and in April 1779 the British general Augustine Prévost (a Huguenot) decided to capitalize on that opportunity.
Although he had entered Georgia from Florida with no specific intention to attack the city, Prévost found himself, almost by accident, on the outskirts of Charleston by May 11. He brazenly issued a demand for its surrender. General Moultrie, who had been out on the venture with Lincoln, leaving Marion in charge of Charleston, hurried back to the city just before Prévost’s arrival and was prepared to fight to the last.
But the civilian leadership—Governor John Rutledge and his Privy Council—had other ideas. Either because they suffered a loss of nerve or were peeved at what they considered a lack of northern support, they offered to capitulate. They told the British they could take possession of Charleston, provided that South Carolina be allowed to remain neutral for the duration of the war, its ultimate fate to be determined by treaty afterward. Prévost rejected the offer and prepared to lay siege or attack. But he was forced to retreat to Georgia when he learned that Lincoln was coming to the city’s relief with a far superior force. On his way back, Prévost enraged Lowcountry Whigs by killing unarmed prisoners and burning and pillaging homes, including Rutledge’s.
For the second time Charleston had managed to avoid what had looked to be all but certain capture. But the near success of Prévost’s brief incursion highlighted the complacency prevailing in South Carolina since the victory at Fort Sullivan and the town’s vulnerability to British attack. To Henry Clinton, who had failed so miserably in the assault three years earlier, Charleston now appeared to be there for the taking.
Recognizing that danger, John Laurens, the idealistic twenty-four-year-old son of Henry Laurens and an aide-de-camp to General Washington, proposed that South Carolina arm three thousand slaves to help defend itself. Those who faithfully served to the end of the war would be freed upon compensation to their masters. Laurens even offered personally to lead these African Americans in battle. But although Congress approved the plan, it was “blown up with contemptuous huzzas” by the South Carolina legislature. Christopher Gadsden, as radical a revolutionary as there was, told fellow patriot Sam Adams that South Carolina was “much disgusted” that Congress would suggest such a “dangerous and impolitic step.” To a population constantly in fear of slave insurrections, the image of thousands of black men with weapons in their hands was too frightening to contemplate.
Instead, to help protect Charleston, General Lincoln decided to try to retake Savannah, the enemy’s principal base of operations in the South. He was spurred to that plan when Admiral d’Estaing agreed to bring his French fleet from the West Indies, where he had defeated the British in August 1779, to assist the Americans in a joint attack upon Savannah. Erratic and restless, d’Estaing made it clear he would not stay long because he wanted to be back in the Caribbean by late October for another round against the British.
In Charleston, Lincoln ordered Lieutenant Colonel Marion, with the two-hundred-some men of his regiment, to stand ready to march at a moment’s notice. Marion and Major Peter Horry were part of Lincoln’s army of three thousand, along with a distinguished officer group that included Moultrie, John Laurens, Andrew Williamson, Isaac Huger, and Casimir Pulaski, a colorful Polish nobleman considered the father of the American cavalry. Just outside of Savannah the American forces united with d’Estaing’s brightly uniformed French army of four thousand. In addition to French regulars (including Pierre L’Enfant, who one day would design Washington, DC) and various other European volunteers, d’Estaing’s army was accompanied by a unit of five hundred free blacks from Haiti dressed in blue and green. One of them was Henry Christophe, the future “King of Haiti” and leader of the Haitian revolution against France.
When the Americans arrived at the French camp in mid-September they discovered, to Lincoln’s consternation, that d’Estaing had already issued a demand for surrender to the British general Prévost, who had assumed command at Savannah. Omitting any mention of Lincoln’s approaching army, d’Estaing asked the British to yield to “the arms of the King of France.” Stalling for time, the wily Prévost requested twenty-four hours to consider the terms, which d’Estaing naively granted. Prévost used the postponement to bring in reinforcements and to continue strengthening his fortifications with the aid of hundreds of trench-digging slaves. By the time the combined French and patriot forces collected themselves, the British position was too secure for a direct assault. Marion reportedly was aghast at d’Estaing’s blunder.
Still fully expecting victory, the allied forces commenced siege operations. The defense works consisted of a series of small, square, sand-built strongholds (redoubts) manned by battery gunners, surrounded by ditches and a row of thorny tree branches with sharpened tops pointing toward the enemy (abatis) that were the functional equivalent of barbed wire. In lieu of a direct attack, on October 3 the allies began bombarding the British with artillery fire. But the British and Tory defenders held firm, and d’Estaing grew impatient. His troops lacked bread and could not stomach the readily available rice. The sailors aboard the ships anchored off Savannah were dying of scurvy. It was also late hurricane season, and d’Estaing, who had been driven by storm from Newport earlier in the war, was unwilling to risk another such disaster for his fleet. Although standard siege operations, given time, likely would have succeeded, d’Estaing told Lincoln he would either abandon the siege or storm the town. Lincoln had little choice but to agree, and in the early morning of October 9 the two leaders prepared to launch their attack. As they lay waiting in the heavy predawn fog they could hear the melancholy strain of a single bagpiper pacing the walls of the British ramparts.
What followed was a bloodbath. The battle would last just an hour, but it was the most costly single day of fighting by combined American and French forces in the entire war, and it produced the greatest loss of life on one side since Bunker Hill. D’Estaing had planned a surprise attack on the weakest part of the enemy line, an earthen fort called Spring Hill Redoubt, manned principally by South Caro
lina loyalists. D’Estaing’s plan was foiled by a deserter who informed Prévost of the point of attack, allowing him to prepare. The British gunners and grenadiers repulsed repeated assaults on Spring Hill by the allies—first by the French, who had claimed the honor of leading the vanguard, then by the Americans, including Marion’s 2nd South Carolina Continentals and the Charleston militia, both under the command of Brigadier General Isaac Huger and young Colonel John Laurens.
At the height of the battle Marion led his men forward across the abatis and into a ditch in front of the redoubt. There they were sprayed with shot by Carolina loyalist riflemen under Thomas Brown, a Tory who had been tarred and feathered by the Whigs earlier in the war. As Marion’s troops climbed forward, their standard bearer was wounded and fell. He passed the blue flag with the crescent symbol to Sergeant Jasper, the same man who had rescued the colors in the Battle of Fort Sullivan. But Jasper, too, was cut down and would die aboard a ship back to Charleston.
Under the heavy fire and after bitter, hand-to-hand fighting, the 2nd Regiment and the other colonials were forced to retreat. Of the 600 South Carolinians who charged uphill, 250 did not return. A British officer observed that “the ditch was choke full of their dead.” Colonel Laurens, barely half Marion’s age, drew his arms wide apart as if wanting to die with his men, but his time had not yet come. It had for Count Pulaski, who, in leading a literal last-ditch cavalry charge, was mortally wounded in the groin by cannon shot. He died at sea two days later.
The Franco-American forces suffered between one thousand and fifteen hundred killed or wounded during the entire siege, around 70 percent of them French. British casualties, by comparison, were light, with estimates between fifty and one hundred. Despite the lopsided defeat, Lincoln and Governor Rutledge pleaded with d’Estaing to continue the siege, but the Frenchman, himself wounded in the assault, had had enough. Blaming the Americans for the debacle, he sailed back to France, where later, as a royalist sympathizer, he would meet the guillotine in 1794.