The contemporary map shows the patriot defenses north of the city, the British siege lines, and warships of the Royal Navy that controlled the harbor waters.
One hundred and thirteen Americans were killed and 203 captured at Waxhaws. Of the captured, 150 were so badly wounded they were left on the battlefield. Throughout the Carolinas, the word of the massacre—which is what Americans called Waxhaws—passed from settlement to settlement. It did not inspire much trust in British benevolence among those who were being urged to surrender.
Tarleton’s slaughter of Col. Abraham Buford’s command at the Waxhaws gave the patriots a rallying cry—“Tarleton’s quarter”—remembered to this day.
After helping to smash the American army at Camden with another devastating cavalry charge, Tarleton was ordered to pursue Thomas Sumter and his partisans. Pushing his men and horses at his usual pace in spite of the tropical heat of August, he caught up with Sumter’s men at Fishing Creek. Sabering a few carelessly posted sentries, the British Legion swept down on the Carolinians as they lay about their camp, their arms stacked, half of them sleeping or cooking. Sumter leaped on a bareback horse and imitated Buford, fleeing for his life. Virtually the entire American force of more than 400 men was killed or captured. When the news was published in England, Tarleton became a national hero. In his official dispatches, Cornwallis called him “one of the most promising officers I ever knew.”
But Sumter immediately began gathering a new force and Francis Marion and his raiders repeatedly emerged from the lowland swamps to harass communications with Charleston and punish any loyalist who declared for the king. Tarleton did not understand this stubborn resistance and liked it even less. A nauseating bout with yellow fever deepened his saturnine mood. Pursuing Marion along the Santee and Black Rivers, Tarleton ruthlessly burned the farmhouses of “violent rebels,” as he called them. “The country is now convinced of the error of the insurrection,” he wrote to Cornwallis. But Tarleton failed to catch “the damned old fox,” Marion.
The British Legion had scarcely returned from this exhausting march when they were ordered out once more in pursuit of Sumter. On November 9, 1780, with a new band of partisans, Sumter fought part of the British 63d Regiment, backed by a troop of Legion dragoons, at Fishdam Ford on the Broad River and mauled them badly. “I wish you would get three Legions, and divide yourself in three parts,” Cornwallis wrote Tarleton. “We can do no good without you.”
Once more the Legion marched for the back country. As usual, Tarleton’s pace was almost supernaturally swift. On November 20, 1780, he caught Sumter and his men as they were preparing to ford the Tyger River. But this time Tarleton’s fondness for headlong pursuit got him into serious trouble. He had left most of his infantry far behind him and pushed ahead with less than 200 cavalry and 90 infantry, riding two to a horse. Sumter had close to a thousand men and he attacked, backwoods style, filtering through the trees to pick off foot soldiers and horsemen. Tarleton ordered a bayonet charge. The infantry was so badly shot up, Tarleton had to charge with the cavalry to extricate them, exposing his dragoon to deadly rifle fire from other militiamen entrenched in a log tobacco house known as Blackstocks. The battle ended in a bloody draw. Sumter was badly wounded and his men abandoned the field to the green-coated dragoons, slipping across the Tyger in the darkness. Without their charismatic leader, Sumter’s militia went home.
