by John Oller
Fast-moving steeds were also integral to the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run and retreat. As an officer in Tarleton’s Legion (and someone who ought to have known) explained,
The crackers and militia in those parts of America are all mounted on horse-back, which renders it totally impossible to force them to an engagement with infantry only. When they choose to fight, they dismount, and fasten their horses to the fences and rails; but if not very confident in the superiority of their numbers, they remain on horseback, give their fire, and retreat, which renders it useless to attack them without cavalry: for though you repulse them, and drive them from the field, you never can improve the advantage, or do them any material detriment.
Rawdon put it more succinctly, lamenting to Clinton that because Marion’s and Sumter’s militia were all mounted, “we have never been able to force them to a decisive action.”
Marion needed horses for another reason. His men were chronically low on ammunition, often having no more than three or four rounds apiece available for battle. When out of musket balls and heavy buckshot (often loaded together as “buck and ball”) they used bird shot. Swan or goose shot was effective at close range to disperse the enemy but not lethal beyond twenty or thirty yards. Marion’s lack of firepower was a problem Greene was able to remedy only sporadically; the partisans’ best chance of obtaining ammunition was to take it from a defeated foe, as Marion had done at Black Mingo and Tearcoat Swamp. Due to the shortage of powder and ball, Marion converted as many infantry as he could to cavalry soldiers, arming them with sabers hammered by local blacksmiths from mill saws. And cavalrymen, by definition, had to have horses.
In time Greene would admit to Peter Horry, Marion’s cavalry leader, that stripping the militia of horses to give to the Continental Army would be “like robbing Peter to pay Paul.” But that realization would not come before the horses issue nearly ruptured the generally good working relationship between Greene and Marion.
In the meantime, as he organized his brigade on Snow’s Island in January 1781, Marion was considering what the new southern commander could do for him. He would find that when it was within Greene’s power to help, he readily did so. On January 14 Marion acknowledged receipt of the ammunition Greene had recently sent. He also reported his fear that without some reinforcements from the regular army he would be unable to stem the growing British/Tory threat in the Waccamaw Neck region above Georgetown. As Marion explained, he was exposed in that region because he had so many men out on detachments collecting supplies and gathering intelligence for the army, as Greene had requested. He was also concerned the Tories in the Drowning Creek area on the North Carolina border were planning to join forces with the British around Waccamaw Neck and gain control of the area’s plentiful provisions. Greene immediately got the point and sent a hundred regulars and a hundred Virginia militia to disperse the Tories on Drowning Creek.
At the same time in early January, Greene granted Marion’s fondest wish: he decided to send him an entire unit of Continentals. It was the mixed cavalry and infantry legion, some 250 strong, of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee, one of the Continental Army’s most accomplished young officers. Nicknamed Light-Horse Harry after his daring cavalry strikes against the British in the northern theater, the flamboyant, twenty-five-year-old Lee was the Americans’ answer to Banastre Tarleton. After graduating from Princeton in 1773 (then the College of New Jersey), he forsook studying law at Middle Temple in London, which Tarleton had attended, to become a cavalry captain in his native Virginia. He was promoted to a dragoon major in Washington’s Continental Army and became lifelong friends with the man he would later eulogize as “First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Washington would be similarly idolized by Lee’s son, future Confederate general Robert E. Lee, who married into the family of Washington’s wife, Martha Custis.
Sent south by Washington in late 1780 to join Greene, Lieutenant Colonel Lee arrived at Greene’s camp in early January and was promptly forwarded to link up with Marion at Snow’s Island and conduct joint offensive operations. Marion was heartened by this development, although he made clear to Greene that he expected to hold rank above Lee, not on the basis of his brigadier generalship in the militia but because he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army back in 1776, well before Lee’s promotion to that position. Greene chose not to weigh in on that issue, leaving it to the two men to work it out between them.
They were an unlikely pair. Barely half Marion’s age, Lee was an educated Virginia gentleman, articulate both orally and in writing, whereas Marion, who had scant formal learning, said little and was at best adequate with the pen. In comparison with the threadbare clothing worn by Marion and his brethren, Lee dressed elegantly and made sure his Legion was in full uniform. (They wore short green coats, similar to Tarleton’s.) Lee was an egotist and self-promoter; Marion was modest and self-effacing. And yet, maybe because they were such opposites, they somehow hit it off.
Or perhaps it was because, in the areas that counted most, they were in fact quite similar: both were physically slight, relying more on speed, agility, and bold maneuvers for success; both were strong believers in discipline; and both were solicitous of the lives and safety of their men, gaining their loyalty by not needlessly exposing them to danger. Then, too, Marion was at heart a Continental officer who had morphed into a partisan militia commander out of necessity. He wanted to work with Continental professionals such as Greene and Lee. Lee wisely did not challenge Marion’s claim of seniority, although he frequently offered his advice on strategy and tactics, and Marion always considered it and often accepted it. They would work together cooperatively in one of the most successful collaborations of regulars and militia during the war.
Henry Lee was a highly opinionated man who lashed out at anyone who criticized or crossed him. He would use his memoirs both to tout his own accomplishments and to settle scores with his bitter enemies, among them Thomas Jefferson. But he had only good things to say about Francis Marion. Lee’s memoirs contain what probably is still the best and most frequently quoted assessment of Marion’s character:
He was reserved and silent, entering into conversation only when necessary, and then with modesty and good sense. He possessed a strong mind, improved by its own reflections and observations, not by books or travel. His dress was like his address—plain, regarding comfort and decency only. In his meals he was abstemious, eating generally of one dish, and drinking water mostly. He was sedulous and constant in his attention to the duties of his station, to which every other consideration yielded. Even the charms of the fair, like the luxuries of the table and the allurements of wealth, seemed to be lost upon him. The procurement of subsistence for his men, and the contrivance of annoyance for his enemy, engrossed his entire mind. He was virtuous all over; never, even in manner, much less in reality, did he trench upon right. Beloved by his friends, and respected by his enemies, he exhibited a luminous example of the beneficial effects to be produced by an individual who, with only small means at his command, possesses a virtuous heart, a strong head, and a mind directed to the common good.
Almost comically, Lee had a hard time finding Marion at first, stumbling around the Snow’s Island vicinity until Marion’s scouts guided him in. It seems that Marion, who tended to move his camp around every few days, could hide not only from his enemies but from his friends as well. In Lee’s search for Marion it did not help that his men’s dapper green jackets so resembled those of Tarleton’s Legion that the Snow’s Island–area Whigs refused to give him information as to Marion’s location.
As soon as Lee arrived on January 22 they began planning their first operation, an attack on British-held Georgetown. Taking Georgetown had been a particular objective—indeed, almost an obsession—of Marion’s for some time. Perhaps he was motivated by a desire to liberate his childhood home, where his sister still lived. But the reasons for his preoccupation with Georgetown were at least as strategic as
sentimental. Georgetown was the main place where salt, that prized commodity, was manufactured along the coast. In addition, Georgetown commanded the rich rice-producing area to its north. And Georgetown was a transportation hub linking the areas below and above the Santee River.
The best explanation, however, comes from loyalist provincial commander Robert Gray, who observed that Georgetown supplied the Tories in the Little Pee Dee area with arms and ammunition, which they used to harass Marion’s brigade. Because of Tory influence in that region, Marion was unable to draw volunteers from it and had to limit his recruiting mostly to the people of Williamsburg. Until Ganey and Barefield were disposed of, capturing Georgetown offered the best chance for Marion to neutralize them.
Marion was so intent on the mission succeeding this time that he skirted international law. He sent an officer to Georgetown under a flag of truce, supposedly to return some captured private correspondence and to discuss the terms of a prisoner exchange, when the real reason was to ascertain the strength of the enemy defenses. He and Lee then developed a creative but complicated plan of attack that Greene approved. It was an amphibious operation designed to approach the city from both land and sea. Lee’s ninety-man infantry, guided by several of Marion’s men with local knowledge, would float undetected on flat-bottomed boats down the Pee Dee to Georgetown and wait in the marshes south of the city. Lee’s cavalry and Marion’s militia would give the boats a day’s head start before heading toward Georgetown on horse. Once they arrived, the two forces were to storm the town from different directions and converge inside to capture the garrison, which was manned by about three hundred British and Tories. Some of them were stationed inside a strong redoubt with cannon, but most of the defenders were in barracks, including a brick church.
Early on the morning of January 23 the flatboats, recently commandeered by John Postell from neighboring rivers, set off through the icy waters on their winding, ninety-mile journey. Marion sent Postell a short message that day ordering him immediately to join him at Kingstree with all the men who had been patrolling the countryside. In the month since being commissioned a brigadier general, Marion’s written orders had become increasingly peremptory, and this one was no exception. “You must proceed by forced marches until you come up to me, for no time is to be lost,” Marion wrote to Postell. “Leave your post as secretly as possible, without letting anyone know where you are going, or of your intention to leave it.”
On January 24 the water-borne party reached Winyah Bay, which lay below the unguarded back of the town, and concealed themselves on a marshy island. That same day Marion and Lee’s combined mounted contingent, numbering around 250, met Postell at Kingstree and galloped off down the road to Georgetown. They arrived in the early morning hours of January 25—later than expected—because the recent rains had turned the roads to mud. (Lee also blamed the blunders of guides for the delay.)
In the meantime Lee’s infantry, after waiting all day, left their hiding place in Winyah Bay sometime past midnight and paddled ashore under cover of a poorly illuminated new moon. They landed on friendly ground, at the coastal rice plantation where Marion’s sister lived. Upon reaching the undefended edge of town, with no word from the cavalry, they began to fear discovery from the approaching daylight and decided to attack around 4 a.m. They hoped to catch the men in barracks fleeing to the confines of the redoubt. But the Americans wasted the element of surprise on smaller objectives. They managed to capture the garrison’s commander in bed in his quarters as well as two other officers, one of whom was found sleeping in a tavern where he had spent the night drinking. All three were immediately paroled. But rather than come out and fight, the rest of the alerted garrison stayed put, barricading themselves inside their housing or the sturdy fort.
By the time Lee and Marion arrived near dawn, conditions were not conducive to an assault. Once the sun came up they could be sniped at by enemy sharpshooters, and without artillery they could not breach the fort. They decided to withdraw and retreated to Murray’s Ferry on the Santee. As Lee would later write, “Marion and Lee were singularly tender of the lives of their soldiers; and preferred moderate success, with little loss, to the most brilliant enterprise, with the destruction of many of their troops.”
In a letter to Greene afterward Lee took credit for the operation, reporting that “I” completely surprised the garrison at Georgetown, with no mention of Marion. In his memoirs he would recall that the plan, although “conceived with ingenuity,” was too complicated to succeed. In his own report to Greene, Marion explained that despite “the little success” he and Lee achieved, the attack had suffered from lack of artillery. Characteristically, he praised his co-commanding officer, writing that “Col. Lee’s enterprising genius promises much.” Britain’s Balfour, for one, was impressed with both of them, calling them “two very enterprising officers” in a letter to Clinton.
Although the attack on Georgetown failed to accomplish its main objective, it nonetheless terrorized the British such that they were forced to continue devoting resources to protecting that town that Cornwallis might have used offensively elsewhere. The operation also proved that the militia and regulars could work together: Marion’s men saw the virtue of discipline as exhibited by Lee’s troops, and the Continentals were impressed with what the militia could accomplish based on their superior knowledge of the territory. The groundwork was laid for future mutual operations between the Swamp Fox and Light-Horse Harry.
When they settled back into camp Marion and Lee found waiting for them letters from Greene conveying the most thrilling news of the entire war for patriots in the South. On January 17, at a place called the Cowpens in northwestern South Carolina, Daniel Morgan, the “Old Waggoner,” had delivered a crushing blow to the man he called “Benny” Tarleton. With a combined Continental and backcountry militia force, Morgan pulled off that rarest of military maneuvers—a double envelopment, or simultaneous pincer attack on both enemy flanks. (Its most famous use had been at the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C., where Hannibal overwhelmed the Romans.)
Morgan deployed his one thousand men in three successive lines of defenders, each stronger than the last. He placed a row of militia sharpshooters up front, with instructions to fire two or three volleys before falling back. The idea was to lure the British into thinking that the militia was doing what they usually did—and what they had done at Camden: panic and flee at the first sight of approaching bayonets. The charging redcoats, believing they were commencing another rout, would then run into a second line, also militia, commanded by Andrew Pickens.a The two militia lines were backed up by a third line of Continental infantry, with William Washington’s cavalry in reserve.
The strategy—aided by a bit of luck—worked beyond measure: caught in a series of killing zones, Tarleton’s force of 1,050 suffered 85 percent losses: 100 dead, 229 wounded, and 600 captured and missing along with two field cannon, 800 muskets, and 100 dragoon horses. Only Tarleton and some of his mounted officers and dragoons managed to escape. In an hour of fighting Cornwallis had lost a quarter of his army and all of his light infantry. “The late affair has almost broke my heart,” he wrote to Rawdon afterward.
Among the poorest-performing British soldiers at Cowpens were the two hundred raw recruits for the 7th Regiment of Foot (Royal Fusiliers)—the ones Marion had so frightened in the engagement with McLeroth at Halfway Swamp a month earlier. Cornwallis had initially assigned them to protect Ninety-Six, then allowed Tarleton to take them with him to the Cowpens. But having panicked at Halfway Swamp, they had not yet learned how to fight. When faced with a counter-bayonet charge by the Continentals, the Fusiliers threw down their arms and begged for mercy. Remarkably, Morgan prevented his men from giving them “Tarleton’s Quarter.” The Americans were fortunate to have won, for Tarleton’s officers and men went into battle that day with orders to give no quarter as they did not expect any for themselves.
Greene was of course elated at the news from Cowpens. “After this nothing
will appear difficult,” he wrote to Marion. He spoke a little too soon, for an infuriated Cornwallis, determined to recover the six hundred prisoners taken at Cowpens, set off to destroy Morgan’s army before training his sights on Greene. But Morgan managed both to elude him and to reunite with Greene. The two American commanders then headed north toward Virginia for supplies and reinforcements, with Cornwallis, now joined by Leslie’s fifteen hundred men, in hot pursuit. Burning his wagon train to lighten his load—including, to his men’s chagrin, all of their rum—Cornwallis would chase Greene through North Carolina in hopes of forcing a decisive battle he was sure he would win. It would become a race to see whether Greene, whose army still was too weak to risk a head-on engagement, could reach the Dan River separating North Carolina and Virginia before Cornwallis caught up with him. If so, Greene could cross it to safety; if not, Cornwallis might well end the war in the South.
For Marion the Americans’ great victory at Cowpens was a mixed blessing. It resulted in Greene leaving South Carolina, which sent shudders through the Whig community around Snow’s Island and along the Santee, complicating Marion’s recruiting efforts. Adding to this unwelcome development, on January 31 Greene recalled Lee and his Legion from South Carolina to join him in his “race to the Dan.” Marion was once again on his own.
There was at least some good news. On January 29, while at Cordes’s Plantation on the Santee, Marion had sent another set of terse instructions to Captain John Postell:
You will cross Santee river with twenty-five men, and make a forced march to Wadboo Bridge, there burn all the British stores of every kind. . . . After effecting my purpose at Wadboo, it will not be out of your way to come by Monck’s Corner, and destroy any stores or wagons you may find there. . . . The destruction of all the British stores in the above-mentioned places is of the greatest consequence to us, and only requires boldness and expedition. Take care that your men do not get at liquor, or clog themselves with plunder so as to endanger their retreat.