by John Oller
3Some were white, some were black: Otho Holland Williams, “A Narrative of the Campaign of 1780,” Appendix B to William Johnson, Sketches of the Life and Correspondence of Nathanael Greene (Charleston, SC, 1822), 1:488.
3Catawba Indian or two: John W. Gordon, South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 108; Aiken, 6.
3A few . . . teens: Williams, “Narrative,” 488.
3“wretchedness . . . so burlesque”: Ibid.
3physique of a thirteen-year-old boy: Karen MacNutt, “Images of Francis Marion,” address at 8th Francis Marion/Swamp Fox Symposium, Manning, SC, October 16, 2010, DVD.
3knock knees . . . black eyes: James, 26.
4he fractured it . . . light drinker: Weems, 72–73; Rankin, 44–45.
4Oscar . . . Buddy: Boddie, Traditions, 3, 13, 78–79; Yeadon 1, no. 1 (March 1845): 219; Joseph Johnson, Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South (Charleston, SC, 1851), 280–281; James, 31, 100. Johnson describes him as a “foster brother,” giving rise to the name “Budde.”
4“was so lame . . . ventured out”: William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, So Far as It Related to the States of North and South Carolina, and Georgia (New York, 1802), 2:222.
4Cox’s Mill . . . Johann Kalb: Williams, “Narrative,” 485–486; Buchanan, 126, 128–129; Warren Dixon, “Cox’s Mill Encampment at Buffalo Ford on Deep River–July 1780,” www.co.randolph.nc.us/hlpc/downloads/RaymondCoxMill.pdf.
5de Kalb sent them out: de Kalb to Richard Caswell, July 10, 1780, Johann de Kalb Papers, 1780 July 10–1844 May 24, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.
5Hollingsworth’s Farm . . . to witness Gates’s arrival: “Journal of Kirkwood,” 10; Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, 404.
5Gates was of the school . . . important role cavalry: Buchanan, 144–145, 150; Lumpkin, 59, 70; Jim Piecuch, ed., Cavalry of the American Revolution (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2012), xi; Williams, “Narrative,” 506.
5July 27 . . . Gates allowed Marion: Gates’s After Orders, July 26, 1780, in “Orders Issued by Major Genl. Gates While Commanding the Southern Army, July 26th to August 31st 1780,” ed. Thomas Addis Emmet, Magazine of American History 5, no. 4 (October 1880): 311.
5“show the utmost . . . every kindness”: Gates’s Orders, July 26, 1780, in ibid., 310.
5bodyguards: Charles Bracelen Flood, Rise, and Fight Again: Perilous Times Along the Road to Independence (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1976), 285.
5By happy coincidence . . . asked Gates to send them: James, 25; Rankin, 55, 57.
5Marion offered himself: Rankin, 57–58. Some sources claim that the Williamsburg militia asked for Marion by name. Simms, 69; Boddie, Traditions, 81. At some point a few weeks later a group of militia officers, including Hugh Giles and Peter and Hugh Horry, met and agreed that Marion should lead the area militia. Gilbert Johnstone to Susanna Barefield Johnstone, March 8, 1790, Johnstone Papers, Rogers Library, Francis Marion University, http://bccmws.coastal.edu/scbattlefields/doc/letter-gilbert-johnstone-susanna-barfield-johnston.
6August 15 . . . Rugeley’s Mills: Weems, 104; Salley, “Horry’s Notes,” 122.
6orders to watch . . . destroy any boats: Williams, “Narrative,” 488; FM to PH, August 17, 1780 (James, 108); Peter Horry, “Journal,” ed. A. S. Salley, SCHGM 39, no. 3 (July 1938): 127.
6people of Williamsburg . . . voted to take up arms: Boddie, Traditions, 47, 72–73; Cecil B. Hartley, Heroes and Patriots of the South, Comprising Lives of General Francis Marion, General William Moultrie, General Andrew Pickens, and Governor John Rutledge (Philadelphia, 1860), 124–125; James, 25.
6Around August 17: Rankin, 59; Bass, Swamp Fox, 40–41.
6“He was rather . . . for a partisan”: James, 26.
6the only color: Simms, 78; Boddie, Traditions, 89.
6leather helmet . . . Liberty: James, 26. James inaccurately adds the words, “or death.”
6Marion was a stranger . . . two hundred rank-and-file: James, 25–26.
6no legal authority . . . free to come and go: Bass, Swamp Fox, 41; McCrady, 73–74, 77; William T. Graves, “The South Carolina Backcountry Whig Militia: 1775–1781, an Overview,” SCAR 2, no. 5 (May 2005): 9; William Thomas Sherman, Calendar and Record of the Revolutionary War in the South, 1780–1781, 9th ed. (Seattle: Gun Jones, 2014), 25, battleofcamden.org/sherman9.pdf; Thomas L. Powers, “Marion and his Commanders,” address at 7th Francis Marion/Swamp Fox Symposium, Manning, SC, October 17, 2009, DVD.
7Major John James: Simms, 75–76; Boddie, Traditions, 141; William Willis Boddie, History of Williamsburg: Something About the People of Williamsburg County, South Carolina, from the First Settlement by Europeans About 1705 until 1923 (Columbia, SC: The State Company, 1923), 49–50, 123–124; Daniel W. Barefoot, Touring South Carolina’s Revolutionary War Sites (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 1999), 19.
7Horry brothers: James, 25–26; Simms, 112–113; Boddie, Traditions, 124–125.
7John James (“of the Lake”) . . . John James Jr.: James, 25, 43, 46n5; Rankin, 52, 77–78; Bass, Swamp Fox, 34; N. Louise Bailey, ed., Biographical Dictionary of the South Carolina House of Representatives, vol. 4, 1791–1815 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984), 308–309; George Howe, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina (Columbia, SC, 1870), 1:413, 490; “Family: James/McCalla,” www.singletonfamily.org/familygroup.php?familyID=F4697&tree=1.
7Under a parole: Ben Rubin, “The Rhetoric of Revenge: Atrocity and Identity in the Revolutionary Carolinas,” Journal of Backcountry Studies 5, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 10, www.partnershipsjournal.org/index.php/jbc/article/viewFile/102/84; Patrick O’Kelley, Unwaried Patience and Fortitude: Francis Marion’s Orderly Book (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity, 2007), 672n903; Code of Conduct for the Members of the United States Armed Forces, Article III.
7Henry Mouzon: Boddie, Traditions, 36–37, 81; Parker, 440. Although Boddie and many others have credited Mouzon with the definitive 1775 map of the Carolinas, it was Mouzon’s cousin, also named Henry Mouzon Jr., who was the prominent surveyor and civil engineer. Wylma A. Wates, “Henry Mouzon,” in “Henry Mouzon, Jr., or Henry Mouzon, Jr.—Which One Made the Map?” North Carolina Map Blog, William P. Cumming Map Society, July 23, 2013, blog.ncmaps.org/index.php/mouzon.
8Hugh Giles: O’Kelley, Unwaried Patience, 695n1305; Saberton, CP2:214n11; Giles to Horatio Gates, August 12, 1780 (CP2:351); Clay Spivey, “Giles Family of SC, Col. Hugh Giles of Revolutionary War,” Genealogy.com, February 7, 2011, genforum.genealogy.com/giles/messages/3407.html.
8William McCottry: O’Kelley, Unwaried Patience, 694n1297; Bass, Swamp Fox, 34; Boddie, History of Williamsburg, 128–129; N. Louise Bailey and Elizabeth Ivey Coopers, eds., Biographical Dictionary of the South Carolina House of Representatives, vol. 3, 1775–1790 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1981), 453–454.
8Witherspoons: Boddie, History of Williamsburg, 125–126; Steven D. Smith, “Archaeological Perspectives on Partisan Communities: Francis Marion at Snow’s Island in History, Landscape, and Memory” (PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 2010), 117–120, ProQuest, search.proquest.com/docview/823439460.
8John Ervin: Bass, Swamp Fox, 34–35, 48; Smith, “Archaeological Perspectives,” 95–96; Sam J. Ervin Jr., “Entries in Colonel John Ervin’s Bible,” SCHM 79, no. 3 (July 1978): 219–222; O’Kelley, Unwaried Patience, 699n1405; Boddie, History of Williamsburg, 119.
8Thomas Waties: H. D. Bull, “The Waties Family of South Carolina,” SCHGM 45, no. 1 (January 1944): 17–18; James, 5.
8Postell brothers: James, 52; O’Kelley, Unwaried Patience, 696n1323; William Dosite Postell, “Notes on the Postell Family,” SCHM 54, no. 1 (January 1953): 48–53.
8a mixture of Huguenot plantation owners: Henry Savage, River of the Carolinas: The Santee (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 230; George C. Rogers Jr., The History of Georgetown Co
unty, South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), 134–135.
8James . . . was astute in recommending: Boddie, History of Williamsburg, 98.
8compared to Robin Hood: Simms, 108–109, 114; Smith, introduction to Boddie, Traditions, xi.
9Marion dispatched Peter Horry: FM to PH, August 17, 1780 (James, 108).
9received the shattering news: Rankin, 61.
9routed by Cornwallis . . . to thicken soup . . . dehydrated: Williams, “Narrative,” 486–487, 494–496; Buchanan, 161–170; James K. Swisher, The Revolutionary War in the Southern Back Country (2008; repr., Gretna, LA: Pelican, 2012), 161–166; Gates to President of the Continental Congress, August 20, 1780, in Royal Gazette (New York), September 20, 1780.
10de Kalb . . . died . . . Gates . . . reached safety: Buchanan, 169–172; Swisher, Southern Back Country, 167. For a more sympathetic view of Gates’s conduct, see Wayne Lynch, “Winner or Runner? Gates at Camden,” Journal of the American Revolution, April 8, 2014, www.allthingsliberty.com/2014/04/winner-or-runner-gates-at-camden.
10Sumter’s company . . . the four winds: Swisher, Southern Back Country, 191–194; Bass, Gamecock, 82–85.
10series of skirmishes . . . largely dissipated: Walter Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (2001; repr., New York: Perennial, 2003), 101–107, 111–113; Lumpkin, 87; John S. Pancake, This Destructive War: The British Campaign in the Carolinas, 1780–1782 (1985; repr., Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 111; Jim Piecuch, Three Peoples, One King: Loyalists, Indians, and Slaves in the Revolutionary South, 1775–1782 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), 193–194; Saberton, CP2:5.
10kept the news to himself: Rankin, 64.
CHAPTER 1: A MOST UNCIVIL WAR
11More battles, engagements, and skirmishes: Gordon, Battlefield History, 1.
11at more than two hundred: Buchanan, 105.
11a third of all that took place: Gordon, Battlefield History, xvi.
11No other colony had as many inches: McCrady, 734–736.
11forty-five ended up seeing: Parker, viii.
11Nearly 20 percent: Gordon, Battlefield History, 1.
12“southern strategy . . . Americanize”: McCrady, 711–715; Christine R. Swager, The Valiant Died: The Battle of Eutaw Springs, September 8, 1781 (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007), 6, 8, 10; Ira D. Gruber, “Britain’s Southern Strategy,” in The Revolutionary War in the South: Power, Conflict, and Leadership, ed. W. Robert Higgins (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 217–225; Pancake, This Destructive War, 9, 20, 56.
12Charleston had grown complacent: Walter J. Fraser Jr., Patriots, Pistols, and Petticoats: “Poor Sinful Charles Town” During the American Revolution (1976; repr., Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993), 20–24.
13“The conquest . . . complete”: Robert Gray, “Colonel Robert Gray’s Observations on the War in Carolina,” SCHGM 11, no. 3 (July 1910): 140.
13thousands . . . swore oaths: Piecuch, Three Peoples, 179; Robert Stansbury Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1987), 96.
13Some voluntarily trekked . . . their conquerors: Gray, “Observations,” 140–141.
13Patriot militia . . . returned to their farms: Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, 53–55; Simms, 73; Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists, 95–96.
13“there are few men . . . or in arms with us”: Clinton to Germain, June 4, 1780, in Pancake, This Destructive War, 72.
13Clinton had issued a proclamation . . . smoke out rebel agitators: Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists, 97–98; Robert L. Tonsetic, 1781: The Decisive Year of the Revolutionary War (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2011), 29; Piecuch, Three Peoples, 178, 182–183.
14ended up backfiring: James, 23–24, 29–30; Boddie, Traditions, 73–74.
14nine out of every ten: Francis Rawdon to Cornwallis, July 7, 1780 (CP1:193).
15“The whole country . . . beasts of prey”: NG to Samuel Huntington, December 28, 1780 (NGP7:9).
15switched sides . . . three times or even more: Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, 125; Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists, 306.
15Old grudges . . . Regulators . . . Moderators: Pancake, This Destructive War, 21, 94–95; Kristen E. Jacobsen, “Conduct of the Partisan War in the Revolutionary War South” (master’s thesis, University of Rhode Island, 1999), 15–17, 40, www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a416929.pdf; Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, 13–20, 24–25; Sherman, Calendar, 15.
15Religious and ethnic resentments: Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, 9–10, 30; Daniel J. Tortora, “The Alarm of War: Religion and the American Revolution in South Carolina, 1774–1783,” SCAR 5, no. 2 (2nd ed. 2008): 43–55; Sherman, Calendar, 15–16.
16Poor backcountry farmers . . . state assembly: Gordon, Battlefield History, 18–19; Buchanan, 20, 90–98; McCrady, 708–710; Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, xiii, 28–29.
16animosities left over . . . scalping: John Alden, The South in the Revolution, 1763 to 1789 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957), 198–201; Graves, “South Carolina Backcountry Whig Militia,” 7–8; Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats, 29–33; Piecuch, Three Peoples, 44–57, 94–96; Jacobsen, “Conduct of the Partisan War,” 34, 40–41; Pancake, This Destructive War, 73–76.
16cycle of retribution . . . highway robbers: Pancake, This Destructive War, 81–85; Jacobsen, “Conduct of the Partisan War,” 55–59; McCrady, 139. Historians continue to debate which side was “worse.” For the view that the British were mostly to blame, see Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats. Jim Piecuch’s Three Peoples argues that the Whigs were far more brutal than the British or Tories. Lambert concludes that both sides engaged in a “reign of terror” and that most atrocities were committed by those in control at the time. He also points out that Whig atrocities were more highly publicized, and Tory atrocities likely underreported because the only significant press in South Carolina was Charleston’s Royal Gazette, a loyalist publication. Lambert, South Carolina Loyalists, 200–203, 210.
16Indian uprisings . . . slave insurrections: Buchanan, 91; Jacobsen, “Conduct of the Partisan War,” 19; Fraser, Patriots, 10; Piecuch, Three Peoples, 18, 70, 128.
16Fearful of antagonizing . . . slaves fled . . . chose not to arm: Piecuch, Three Peoples, 42–43, 82–84, 159–161, 171, 175, 186, 204, 208–209, 219–222, 227, 332–333; Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New York: The New Press, 2004), 185–189, 319–320n30; M. Foster Farley, “The South Carolina Negro in the American Revolution, 1775–1783,” SCHM 79, no. 2 (April 1978), 75, 82–84, 86.
17“Of all the men . . . forbade it in his absence”: Weems, 141.
17“abominable”: FM to Gates, October 4, 1780 (CSR14:666).
CHAPTER 2: “A SPIRIT OF TOLERATION”
18Slaughtered . . . Edict of Nantes . . . to Catholic institutions: Arlette Jouanna, The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: The Mysteries of a Crime of State, trans. Joseph Bergin (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 1–9, 170–173, 231–233; “Address of Col. H. A. Du Pont . . . April 13, 1917,” Huguenot Society 23 (1917): 26–31; John Wesley Brinsfield, Religion and Politics in Colonial South Carolina (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1983), 13.
18Many Huguenots . . . Benjamin Marion . . . 350 acres: Du Pont, “Address,” 29–34; Thomas Gaillard, “Copious Extracts by the Committee on Publication from the History of Huguenots of South Carolina, and Their Descendants,” Huguenot Society 5 (1897): 7–18; Yeadon 1, no. 1 (March 1845): 213–215; no. 2 (April 1845): 270–271; Michael J. Heitzler, Historic Goose Creek, South Carolina, 1670–1980, ed. Richard N. Côté (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1983), 17–20. One source places Benjamin’s arrival between 1692 and 1694. J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin’s Through Berkeley (Columbia, SC: R. L. Bryan, 1985), 277.
19Benjamin Marion . . . made good . . . able to settle each: Heitzler, Historic Goose Creek, 18–
20; Yeadon 1, no. 1 (March 1845): 213–216; no. 2 (April 1845): 270–280; no. 3 (May 1845): 351–352; Thomas Gaillard, “Copious Extracts,” 26, 38 (entry no. 114).
19his inventory . . . “a parcel . . . English books”: Yeadon 1, no. 2 (April 1845): 270–272; no. 3 (May 1845): 351–354.
19Native Americans: Heitzler, Historic Goose Creek, 20; James, 6.
19slaves from Africa: Heitzler, Historic Goose Creek, 20–21.
19Cabto . . . Pappy Jenny: Yeadon 1, no. 3 (May 1845): 351–353.
19fifteen hundred slaves . . . eighty white families: Heitzler, Historic Goose Creek, 21.
19nearly 80 percent: Yeadon 1, no. 3 (May 1845): 352–354.
20Resented at first . . . assimilated: Simms, 233–234n8; Robert Wilson, “The Huguenot Influence in Colonial South Carolina,” Huguenot Society 4 (1897): 26, 28, 31; Thomas Gaillard, “Copious Extracts,” 19–25, 52, 56–58, 72, 74–76; Daniel Ravenel, “Historical Sketch of the Huguenot Congregations of South Carolina,” Huguenot Society 7 (1900): 12, 37–38, 46–48.
20“gentle race”: Simms, 9; Thomas Gaillard, “Copious Extracts,” 56–57.
20“spirit of toleration . . . ancestors”: Du Pont, “Address,” 35.
20eldest son, Gabriel . . . married Esther Cordes: Yeadon 1, no. 2 (April 1845): 273; Thomas Gaillard, “Copious Extracts,” 31 (entry no. 54), 38 (entry no. 114); John J. Simons III, “Descendants of Benjamin Marion,” Genealogy of the Simons Family of the South Carolina Low Country, Tripod.com, April 4, 1998, members.tripod.com/~the_huguenot/mar.htm; John Simons, “Marion Family,” Rootsweb.com, May 13, 2004, www.haygenealogy.com/hay/patriots/marion-descendants.html.
201732 . . . Goatfield Plantation: Boddie, Traditions, 1, 9; Yeadon 2, no. 6 (August 1845): 121–127; Samuel Gaillard Stoney, Plantations of the Carolina Low Country, ed. Albert Simons, 7th ed. (Charleston, SC: Carolina Art Association, 1977), 65; Harriette Kershaw Leiding, Historic Houses of South Carolina (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1921), 200. Marion’s actual date of birth is unknown, but 1732 is the commonly accepted year. The Goatfield plantation no longer exists, but its approximate location is identified by a historical marker in present-day Cordesville at the intersection of Doctor Evans Road and Hard Pinch Road.