by John Oller
Marion was willing to forgive those who, although disloyal, had remained passive; many men who had sworn allegiance to the British had done so out of fear for their or their families’ safety or to prevent their homes from being destroyed. Marion readily welcomed such men back to the patriot fold if they were willing to rejoin it and gave them passes to return to their estates. He even undertook to have John Brockinton removed from the confiscation and banishment list when he discovered that Brockinton, enlisting as a “six months man” after the deadline set by Rutledge, had joined Marion’s brigade under Peter Horry a couple of days after Marion left for the legislature. (Others were less forgiving; although Brockinton’s banishment was repealed, the confiscation remained.) Conversely, Marion would later testify against the petition of one James Gordon of Georgetown because he had acted “in conjunction to keep the Little Pee Dee men in arms against us” and had never entered the patriot service. (Gordon was nonetheless switched from the confiscation to the amercement list.)
Marion also served on a committee to devise ways of raising two new Continental regiments in South Carolina to meet the quota set by Congress. The plan the committee came up with, which the Assembly passed, was to give each man who enlisted a bounty for each year of service of “one sound negro” between the ages of ten and forty to be taken from the confiscated estates. At first blush Marion’s support of this idea seems inconsistent with his opposition to Sumter’s Law, but there was a significant difference. Sumter had allowed indiscriminate plunder for private gain from Whigs and Tories alike; this new program was to be regulated and administered by the state and was targeted at those deemed most guilty of disloyalty. Marion, who favored the rule of law over anarchy, appreciated the distinction. He and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were selected to lead the two Continental regiments raised under this plan, but the units were never organized. Many enlisted men later complained that they never received their promised slaves.
Another proposal concerning slaves came from Nathanael Greene, who used Colonel John Laurens, recently elected to the House, as a local sponsor. Observing that “the natural strength of this country in point of numbers, appears to me to consist much more in the blacks, than the whites,” Greene urged the Assembly to arm more than two thousand slaves to fight the British, with the promise of freedom for faithful service at war’s end. “That they would make good soldiers I have not the least doubt,” he wrote to John Rutledge. Greene recognized that his idea would be “opposed by common prejudices” but said it sprang from his “desire to secure this unfortunate country from a repetition of the calamity under which it has groaned for these two years past.” Partly he was motivated by his fear that if the Americans did not arm masses of slaves, the British would.
Although the plan attracted some initial support, “people returned to their senses,” as John Rutledge’s brother, Edward, put it, and the House voted it down by one hundred to twelve or fifteen. “The Northern people,” another House member observed, “regard the condition in which we hold our slaves in a light different from us. I am much deceived indeed, if they do not secretly wish for a general Emancipation.” Because the measure died before coming up for a vote in the Senate, Marion did not have to take a position on it. And despite rumors that the British would place three thousand slaves in arms, the number ended up being only seven hundred, including two dragoon units operating around Savannah.
From the moment he arrived in Jacksonboro, Marion began receiving urgent messages from Peter Horry telling him he was needed back in the field. Horry was sick, and the militia was deserting him in great numbers ever since Marion’s departure. Plus, the tensions between Horry and Maham had reached a boiling point. A face-to-face meeting between Marion and the two of them in early January had failed to settle the dispute over rank, and despite Marion’s orders to Maham to place himself under Horry’s command, Maham refused.
Horry had not helped matters when, after Marion told him he could call on Maham for reinforcements but for no other purpose, Horry promptly instructed Maham to relieve a guard. Maham considered that militia work, beneath his unit, which he referred to as a Legion, the same as Henry Lee’s outfit. Maham pointedly told Horry that “I . . . shall not obey any order that you may be pleased to send.” Horry then complained to Marion that Maham was issuing passes to many ladies to go to town without Horry’s permission and that Maham “interferes with my command so much that I can scarcely act.”
Marion prevailed upon Greene to finally lay down the law to the “obstinate” Maham. Greene had just recently reaffirmed to Maham that, despite holding an “independent” command similar to Lee’s, he was to act as directed by Marion. Now Greene told Maham that Horry also had “a just and unquestionable right to outrank you.” At the same time, Greene emphasized to Maham that “rank is not what determines the character or consequence of an officer, it is actions.” Greene then wrote Horry to advise him not to gloat but to be magnanimous in his dealings with Maham. “I esteem you both as men of merit,” Greene told Horry, adding that “your triumph is great enough without upbraiding him of his folly.”
In response to Horry’s pleas for him to return, Marion said he was stuck in Jacksonboro until the Assembly finished its important business concerning the militia law, the raising of Continentals, and the Confiscation Act. He could not leave, he explained, because the Senate barely had a quorum most days. He had asked once for permission to leave and was told no because if he left, so would others. “As soon as they can spare me I will return,” he told Horry. “I assure you I am tired of legislating and wish myself with you.” Greene, too, was urging Marion to reassume command of his brigade as soon as possible, and Marion likewise told him that although he would like to return, if he left Jacksonboro it “would stop all business here.”
Marion was not exaggerating the quorum issue; indeed, the Senate had to adjourn twice in February for lack of sufficient numbers. But his protestations about being tired of legislating may have been overstated. With all the feuding going on between Horry and Maham, the difficulties of keeping the militia together, and the chronic lack of supplies and ammunition, Marion probably welcomed a break from his brigade. Regardless, no one was going to keep him in Jacksonboro if a true emergency required his presence in the field.
That became clear when, after the session on February 20, six days before the Senate finished its work, Marion abruptly left his legislative duties behind and rushed off toward Monck’s Corner. The British were suddenly back out in force again in that area. They had a bold new cavalry commander who was not afraid of the Swamp Fox. And he was looking for a fight.
a The categories of persons targeted included British subjects who owned property in the state but lived abroad (absentee landlords), those who had fought for the British or Tories (unless they had later surrendered themselves and returned to the patriot cause), those who signed congratulatory addresses to Clinton after the fall of Charleston or to Cornwallis after the Battle of Camden, those holding British commissions in the Royal Militia or civil occupation administration, and those who by especially pernicious conduct had proved themselves to be “inveterate enemies of the state.”
24
“To Prevent the Effusion of Blood”
The man spoiling for a fight with Francis Marion was a Massachusetts-born, future British physicist and inventor named Benjamin Thompson. He was as Tory as they came.
A New Hampshire schoolteacher who married into wealth, Thompson was arrested for loyalist sympathies early in the Revolution and fled to the British lines, leaving behind his wife and baby daughter, neither of whom he ever saw again. He served as a spy for the British general Gage in Boston (using invisible ink reports) and soon left for London, where he became a fellow of the Royal Society of scientists and an aide to Lord Germain. After Yorktown, despite Thompson’s near-total lack of military experience, Germain made him a lieutenant colonel in a loyalist provincial cavalry unit. He sailed for New York, but a storm diverted him to Charlest
on, where General Leslie placed him in charge of the entire British cavalry in December 1781. With two hundred cavalry and five hundred infantry at his disposal—a mix of British redcoats, Hessians, and loyalists—his immediate assignment was to forage in the provision-rich area outside Charleston.
It did not take Thompson long to learn that the patriot forces in the vicinity and the cavalry in particular were in a vulnerable state. Peter Horry, incapacitated by illness, was resting at his plantation on the north side of the Santee near Georgetown, Marion was at the Assembly in Jacksonboro, and Maham was sulking. Uninterested in a field command if he could not have his way, Maham rode to Jacksonboro and took his seat in the legislature on February 15.
Meanwhile Light-Horse Harry Lee, stung by continuing criticism of his behavior at Eutaw Springs and unhappy that Congress had passed him over for promotion to brigadier general in favor of men such as Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, had asked for Greene’s permission to leave the army. Greene, whose reports on Eutaw Springs had, in Lee’s view, also slighted him, tried to talk him out of it. “I have the highest opinion of you as an officer, and you know, I love you as a friend,” Greene assured him. But ultimately Greene did not stand in his way, and in mid-February Lee retired to his Virginia farm.
Taking advantage of the disarray, Thompson struck at Horry’s position near Durant’s Plantation on Wambaw Creek forty miles northeast of Charleston. When Horry went home to recuperate, he had left Marion’s brigade and his own dragoons under the commands of Colonel Archibald McDonald and Major William Benison. A scout came to warn them that the British were approaching, but both McDonald and Benison, eating their afternoon dinners at separate camps, chose to disregard the report. McDonald did send Major John James to take command of the patriots at Wambaw Bridge. But when James arrived he was unable to prevent Horry’s surprised dragoons from being routed by Thompson’s cavalry, assisted by John Doyle’s mounted Volunteers of Ireland and Thomas Fraser’s South Carolina Royalists. Retreating across the bridge, many of Horry’s men fled into the nearby swamps. Benison, who had doubted the enemy presence, was among the forty Americans killed. With sunset nearing, Thompson withdrew to Drake’s Plantation eight miles away to reunite with his infantry.
Finding it easy to blame the dead, Horry reported afterward to Greene that the loss was due to Benison’s “neglect of duty.” Another likely factor was the makeup of the unit: most of Horry’s dragoons were “reformed” Tories (also known as “new-made Whigs”)—former loyalists who had recently enlisted with the patriots for six months to receive a pardon. It had not taken much to send them flying at the sight of their former allies.
The engagement at Wambaw Creek was on February 24. Marion, accompanied by Maham, had left Jacksonboro on the night of February 20 or the morning of February 21 based on reports that the enemy was planning a movement against Marion’s brigade. When they reached Maham’s camp at Mepkin Plantation thirty miles west of Wambaw, they received another report, this one false, that Thompson had returned to Charleston. Maham took the opportunity to visit his own plantation some twenty-five miles north with plans, he would later claim, of returning the next day. But within hours of Maham’s departure Marion learned of the defeat of his brigade at Wambaw Bridge. Taking Maham’s dragoons with him, he galloped off toward Wambaw that night and halted at the widow Tidyman’s Plantation, a few miles from the bridge. There, on the morning of February 25, Marion rested his horses and men, including the slender remains of Horry’s unit who had escaped the night before.
Less than an hour after arriving at Tidyman’s, while the horses were still feeding, Marion’s troops looked up to see the whole of Thompson’s cavalry emerge from the woods. They were a mere three hundred yards away across a clear field. Thompson had been searching for Maham’s dragoons and had found them, but instead of Maham in command, it was the small, unmistakable figure of the Swamp Fox himself.
Both sides were a bit startled to run into each other, but they quickly formed for battle. With the Santee at their backs, the patriots could only stand pat or charge; Marion ordered a charge. But Captain John Carraway Smith, leading Maham’s dragoons, botched the assignment. At the edge of a pond where it was necessary to maneuver left to reach the enemy, he instead panicked and veered right, causing his men to fall into confusion. Thompson countercharged and cut down a number of patriots, some of whom were killed before they could jump into the swamps or river. Others were shot or drowned in attempting to swim to the opposite shore.
Adding to the Americans’ humiliation, Thompson’s forces captured not only many horses and weapons but also Marion’s own tent and canteens full of liquor. After Marion rallied his troops in the woods, Thompson elected not to press his advantage; nonetheless, he was able to boast to Leslie that he had defeated a “chosen corps under the command of General Marion, in person.” The Tories in Charleston, elated with the news that Marion was beaten, spent three days celebrating. Loyalist newspapers even reported that Marion had drowned while trying to escape. That was wishful thinking on their part, but there was no disputing that Marion had, for the first time in his career, lost a battle in which he was the commanding officer.
Maham, livid that Marion had not waited for him before taking his Legion into battle, blamed Marion for the defeat. He told Greene that Marion had failed to order a charge, “which was the only thing that could possibly of saved our men.” Instead, according to Maham, Marion had ordered them to file off to the right, which confused them into thinking they were to retreat. But Marion, writing to Greene, asserted that Smith had failed to charge as ordered, causing the patriots to lose “a glorious opportunity . . . of cutting up the British cavalry.” That Smith resigned the next day would tend to support Marion’s version over that of the absent Maham, who clearly had an axe to grind.
Peter Horry attributed the debacle to Marion’s commitment to his legislative duties. “I repeatedly wrote him the necessity of his presence and urged as much as possible his return to his brigade and that I was fearful the enemy would take advantage of his absence,” Horry explained to Greene. Had Marion been with the brigade, Horry believed, “the enemy would not have returned in triumph.”
For his part, Greene shrugged off the setback, writing Marion to say that although he was sorry it would revive the enemy’s “drooping spirits,” there was “no guarding against so superior a force.” In fact, despite the embarrassment Marion’s brigade had suffered, the actions at Wambaw and Tidyman’s were of little military significance. They did clear the area for British foraging for the next month, but after an abortive, harebrained scheme to capture Nathanael Greene, Thompson soon sailed for New York, having undertaken no further offensive actions. Although he would go on to a celebrated postwar career in Europe as Count Rumford, his tenure as a soldier in America would be remembered in England as “uneventful.”
One consequence of the Thompson skirmishes was the final and painful resolution of the Horry/Maham dispute over rank. After the twin defeats and with Horry’s and Maham’s units each reduced to less than half strength, Marion suggested to Governor Mathews that the two cavalry regiments be combined into a single regiment. Mathews and Greene both agreed, leaving Marion to decide which of the two officers should command it. Marion made clear to Greene that he believed Maham to be the better cavalry commander (an opinion Greene shared), even if Horry was a better infantry officer. Marion also intimated that Maham was a more effective disciplinarian and organizer and commanded more loyalty from his officers and troops than did Horry, whose men were deserting for lack of pay and clothing.
To his credit, Marion made his judgment on the merits, despite his long friendship with Horry and often rocky relationship with Maham. But Marion recognized the delicacy of Horry’s feelings and predicted he would expect to receive the command. Marion therefore tried, without success, to get Greene or Mathews to issue him a clear directive to appoint Maham as the commander of the combined cavalry unit. Both of them were too canny to get directly
involved. As William Dobein James would write, “The preference appears to have been extorted from Marion.”
Horry accused Marion of treachery. He now knew “to whom I am indebted for being turned out of service and Maham continued,” he wrote to Marion on April 1. Marion admitted to Horry that he had proposed incorporating the two regiments, but denied, somewhat disingenuously, having said “which of the two officers was to be preferred.” As Marion explained, it had simply come down to the fact that Maham was the best cavalry officer and Horry the best infantry officer. Marion had accordingly recommended that Horry’s corps be dismounted and serve as infantry in Georgetown, with Horry remaining in command there.
The Georgetown assignment was an important one. The port had become the principal source of supplies for Greene’s army. Trade was again flowing there, and as commandant, Horry had authority to set prices for virtually all necessities and luxury items (although to prevent profiteering, Marion instructed him that “salt must not be more than four hard dollars per bushel”). But Horry was not placated. Confessing to hurt feelings, he would remain in Georgetown another three months in name only to assist with administrative matters. In July he considered himself no longer necessary to the service and rode off to his plantation for the rest of the war. Nathanael Greene told him that he had aided his country “in the hour of her greatest distress” and that his efforts had “contributed to her deliverance.”
As for Maham, he never did end up commanding any combined unit. On May 16, 1782, he was captured by a British raiding party at his plantation just as he was sitting down to supper with a doctor who was attending to his recent illness. Maham feared being tortured “in the most horrid manner,” but because he was sick, he was allowed to remain at home on parole. The British commander left the written parole on the dining table, neglecting to take a copy with him, and Maham thought this might create a loophole that would allow him to ignore the pledge. But Greene told him that because he had signed the document, he was bound to honor it. Maham remained out of action for the duration of the war.a