CHAPTER XXXV.
FANNING AND HIS BRUTALITIES— CAPTURE OF GOVERNOR BURKE.
A. D. 1781.
When Lord Cornwallis left Wilmington, on his way to Virginia, there were no British troops left in North Carolina except about four hundred regulars and some Tory recruits, which constituted the garrison of Wilmington. Major James H. Craig was in command there, having captured the place in the preceding January.
2. He had been trained to arms, and when General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga, was his Adjutant-General. He was skillful as a soldier, but utterly unscrupulous as to the means he used to carry out his objects. Seeing the British driven from almost all the State, he determined to ruin a people he could not subdue, and began to stir up a warfare of neighborhoods.
3. He found in David Fanning, of Chatham county, a powerful aid in his inhuman scheme. Fanning was a man of low birth, ignorant and unscrupulous. He was a good partisan guerrilla leader, being brave, enterprising and swift to execute. Associating with himself a small band of Tories, whose sole objects were plunder and revenge, he was for a time the terror of Chatham and Orange counties. Well mounted and well armed, and continually on the alert, these marauders made havoc of the Whig settlements, murdering, burning and destroying, unrestrained by any authority and with no sense of humanity. They did not spare even their own neighbors, many of whom they shot down or hanged at their own doors.
4. Many stories are told of Fanning's exploits, of his audacity, his cruelty, his arrogance, and his wonderful successes and hairbreadth escapes. Such a state of affairs existed at one time in the counties ravaged by his band that even the pitiless Colonel Tarleton deplored its continuance. Fanning was born in Johnston county about the year 1754, and was the vilest and bloodiest wretch ever seen in our limits, most richly deserving the punishment of the gallows. He continued his criminal courses as long as he lived, and was pardoned for a capital felony committed on the Island of Cape Breton not long before his departure from this world.
5. Fanning began his military operations by surprising a courtmartial in Chatham. His prisoners were disposed of by parole or sent to Wilmington. This was in July, 1781. His attack upon the house of Colonel Philip Alston, a few days later, was a more serious matter, for he encountered stubborn resistance and some loss before compelling the surrender of a force almost as large as his own, and protected by the walls of a large house. Four of the Whigs were killed, and those who remained alive were spared from butchery by Fanning only at the earnest appeals of Mrs. Alston.
6. Fanning's movements called for resistance, and Colonel Thomas Wade collected a force of more than three hundred men at McFall's Mill, in Cumberland county. These were speedily attacked and utterly driven from that portion of the country. It was afterwards learned by the victors that Colonel Dudley's Chatham regiment of cavalry was disbanded, and Fanning immediately pushed on to Hillsboro. On the morning of September 12th, his force entered the town, and succeeded in capturing Governor Burke and several other prominent persons. *
*David Fanning gives the account of this affair as follows: "We received several shots from different houses; however, we lost none and suffered no damage, except one man wounded. We killed fifteen of the rebels and wounded twenty, and took upwards of two hundred prisoners; amongst them was the Governor, his council, and part of the continental colonels, several captains and subalterns, and seventy-one Continental soldiers out of a church. We proceeded to the gaol and released thirty Loyalists and British soldiers."
7. The bold marauders who had thus seized the Governor and capital of the State, at once started with their prisoners for Wilmington; but tidings of this exploit had reached a body of men who hastened to Lindley's Mill, on Cane Creek, to receive them. The Whigs, nominally commanded by General John Butler, were really directed by Major Robert Mebane in their brave and bloody reception of the Tories.
8. The Tory Colonel, Hector McNeil, leading the attack, was slain, and his followers driven back in confusion. It seemed that Governor Burke would be rescued and the whole Tory column captured when Fanning, ever fertile in expedients, discovered a ford in Cane Creek, and having crossed with a portion of his command, attacked the Whigs in the rear. This soon ended the battle, which was a bloody one to both sides.
9. About the same time with the capture of Hillsboro, a most gallant and successful attack was made upon the Tory stronghold at Elizabethtown, in Bladen county. There sixty Whigs, in the favoring darkness of night, fell upon and drove out a largely superior force commanded by Colonel John Slingsby. He and many of his men were slain, and Major Craig was thus confined in his fortifications in Wilmington.
10. When Fanning captured Governor Burke at Hillsboro, the Chief- Magistracy of the State devolved upon Colonel Alexander Martin, of Guilford. This latter gentleman had seen some service in the field as an officer of the Continentals. Governor Burke was treated, from the hour of his capture, with extraordinary harshness. He was compelled to march all the way to Wilmington, and, after some delay, was sent thence by ship to Charleston.
11. General Leslie, who commanded the British army in South Carolina, placed the captive Governor upon an island near Charleston, where the deadly malaria was supplemented by danger of assassination from certain Tories, who were loud in their threats of executing such a purpose. Burke made repeated applications for a change of quarters, or for exchange as a prisoner, but was told that he was kept as a hostage to be executed in case of the capture and punishment of David Fanning.
12. After months of torture from such treatment, Governor Burke, feeling that he was justified in disregarding his parole, effected his escape and returned to North Carolina. He resumed his office for the short interval between his return and the meeting of the Legislature. To his great discomfiture, he was defeated at the next election for Governor by Alexander Mafitin. The members of the General Assembly could not forgive this breach of his parole, and he regarded their act as evidence of public condemnation. His sensitive spirit brooded over this. His domestic relations were not such as to soothe and sustain his wounded mind, and the life that opened with such brilliant promise soon closed in gloom. Governor Burke died and was buried on his farm near Hillsboro. No stone has ever marked the spot. He left one child, a daughter, who died unmarried.
13. General Griffith Rutherford had been a prisoner in the battle of Camden. Upon his exchange, he at once renewed his efforts to deliver North Carolina from her foes. He soon collected a body of Mecklenburg and Rowan militia and marched for Wilmington.
14. On nearing the city he received news of Lord Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, on October 19, 1781. He pushed on his lines, and arriving in Wilmington he found that Major Craig had taken ship and was flying from the land he had so scourged by his presence.
15. The number of men enlisted from North Carolina in the Continental army during the Revolutionary war was: in 1775, 2,000; 1776, 4,134; 1777, 1,281; 1778, 1,287; 1779, 4,930; 1780, 3,000; 1781, 3,545; 1782, 1,105; 1783, 697. The State furnished, in Continental troops and militia, 22,910 men.