Gen. Nathanael Greene (1742-86) served with distinction in two roles: as quartermaster general of the army after others had failed in the post, and as the strategist of the decisive Southern Campaign.
It was the worst American defeat of the war. The Continental Congress responded by sending south Gen. Horatio Gates, commander of the army that had beaten the British at Saratoga. Gates brought with him about 1,200 Maryland and Delaware Continentals and called on the militia of North Carolina and Virginia to support him. On August 16, 1780, outside the village of Camden, S.C., the Americans encountered an army commanded by Charles, Earl Cornwallis, the most aggressive British general in America. Cornwallis ordered a bayonet charge. The poorly armed, inexperienced militia panicked and fled. The Continentals fought desperately for a time but were soon surrounded and overwhelmed.
Both North and South Carolina now seemed prostrate. There was no patriot army in either state strong enough to resist the thousands of British regulars. Georgia had been conquered by a combined British naval and land force in late 1778 and early 1779. There were rumors that America’s allies, France and Spain, were tired of the war and ready to call a peace conference. Many persons thought that the Carolinas and Georgia would be abandoned at this conference. In the Continental Congress, some already considered them lost. “It is agreed on all hands the whole state of So. Carolina hath submitted to the British Government as well as Georgia,” a Rhode Island delegate wrote. “I shall not be surprised to hear N. Carolina hath followed their example.”
Thomas Sumter (1732-1832), a daring and energetic partisan leader, joined the patriot side after Tarleton’s dragoons burned his Santee home. His militia harassed and sometimes defeated the British in the savage civil war that gripped the South Carolina backcountry in 1780-81.
British spokesmen eagerly promoted this idea. They were more numerous in the Carolinas than most 20th-century Americans realize. The majority of them were American born—men and women whom the rebel Americans called tories and today are usually known as loyalists. Part of the reason for this defection was geographical. The people of the back country had long feuded with the wealthier lowlanders, who controlled the politics of the two States. The lowlanders had led the Carolinas into the war with the mother country, and many back-country people sided with the British in the hope of humbling the haughty planters. Some of these counter-revolutionists sincerely believed their rights would be better protected under the king. Another large group thought the British were going to win the war and sided with them in the hope of getting rich on the rebels’ confiscated estates. A third, more passive group simply lacked the courage to oppose their aggressive loyalist neighbors.
The British set up forts, garrisoned by regulars and loyalists, in various districts of South Carolina and told the people if they swore an oath of allegiance to the king and promised to lay down their weapons, they would be protected and forgiven for any and all previous acts of rebellion. Thousands of men accepted this offer and dropped out of the war.
But some South Carolinians refused to submit to royal authority. Many of them were Presbyterians, who feared that their freedom to worship would be taken away from them or that they would be deprived of the right to vote, as Presbyterians were in England. Others were animated by a fundamental suspicion of British intentions toward America. They believed there was a British plot to force Americans to pay unjust taxes to enable England’s aristocratic politicians and their followers to live in luxury.
Joseph McJunkin was one of the men who had refused to surrender. He had risen from private to major in the militia regiment from the Union district of South Carolina. After the fall of Charleston, he and his friends hid gunpowder and ammunition in hollow logs and thickets. But in June 1780, they were badly beaten by a battalion of loyalist neighbors and fled across the Broad River. They were joined by men from the Spartan, Laurens, and Newberry districts. At the Presbyterian Meeting House on Bullocks Creek, they debated whether to accept British protection. McJunkin and a few other men rose and vowed they would fight on. Finally someone asked those who wanted to fight to throw up their hats and clap their hands. “Every hat went up and the air resounded with clapping and shouts of defiance,” McJunkin recalled.
