But while he was held in the highest esteem by his superior officers and had rendered extraordinary services to his country, Congress ignored him in dispensing its favors and continued to promote over his head men of smaller talents who had friends at court. Finally he determined to resign. Not even the influence of Washington, once his mind had been formed, was powerful enough to dissuade him from his purpose. Early in July, 1779, he presented a laudatory letter from Washington to Congress and offered his resignation. It was accepted, and the war-worn hero mounted his horse and rode homeward to the verdant valley of the Shenandoah. Greatly was his departure regretted in the army. In a letter to him dated “Haverstraw, Nov. 9, 1779,” General John Neville, then an officer in Woodford’s brigade, said: “Then, say they, for old Morgan a brigadier, and we would kick the world before us. I am not fond of flattery; but I assure you, on my word, that no man’s ever leaving the army was more regretted than yours, nor no man was ever wished for more to return.”
For fifteen months he remained with his family, a close student of passing events in the progress of the war. The attention of the British was now directed towards the South and Morgan was filled with apprehension by the preparations being made to bring it under British subjection. Leading three thousand fresh troops from New York, Cornwallis had arrived near Charleston to take command in that section. So rapid and effective were his operations that on the 12th day of May, 1780, when he was ready to assault the town by land and water, General Lincoln signed a capitulation of the city and surrendered his army. By the end of June, the British commander was able to report that he had put an end to all resistance in South Carolina and Georgia; and that in accordance with his plan of operations, he would after the September harvest reduce the province of North Carolina, continue his march to the Chesapeake, and from that base conquer the province of Virginia.
Disregarding the wishes of Washington, Congress on the 13th day of June unanimously named General Gates, instead of General Greene, to succeed Lincoln in command of the Southern Department. It proved to be one of the saddest blunders of the war.
In receiving this independent command, Gates was instructed to report directly to Congress and not to the commander-in-chief. He was authorized to appoint his own staff-officers; to address himself directly to Virginia and to the States north of it for supplies; and to engage his army in such manner for the defense of the South as his judgment alone should approve. Ambitious as Lucifer, and vain by nature, this mark of great distinction—bestowed in spite of the known opinion of Washington concerning its unwisdom—gave Gates unlimited confidence in his abilities. Miscalculating the fighting strength of his “grand army,” two thirds of which consisted of raw militia from the various provinces that had never been paraded together, he marched against the best disciplined troops in the world, led by Cornwallis, at Camden, and suffered a defeat which demoralized the entire South, deprived him of his command and terminated his military career. “Two thirds of the army ran like a torrent,” he wrote, forgetting to add that he ran with them and did not quit running until he arrived, ahead of the fleetest of the fugitives, at Hillsborough, North Carolina, two hundred miles away—making the distance in the splendid time of three and one half days!
MAJOR JOHN W. BOURLET.
Of Concord, N. H.
Many years in charge of the printing and publishing of the volumes of the Society.
Deceased, January 19, 1910.
At this juncture, Cornwallis was the most conspicuous figure in the British Army in America. Already “the pride and delight” of Lord George Germain, his successes vindicated the opinion which that minister entertained of his military talents, and he was now designed by the Cabinet to supersede Clinton as commander-in-chief—being considered “the one man on whom rested the hopes of the ministry for the successful termination of the war.” Proud of this favoritism on the part of the Cabinet and conscious of the hopes and expectations of the King, Cornwallis began preparations for his northward march. Success had elated him. He believed he would swing from victory unto victory until he had brought all of the people south of the Delaware again under the dominion of the crown.
He began the work of subjugation by inaugurating a reign of terror not excelled in point of barbarity in the annals of civilized warfare. After his victory at Camden, he erected a gibbet, and began the summary and indiscriminate execution of those among his prisoners who had formerly received their parole. He gave stringent orders to his subordinates to imprison all who refused to enter the British Army and thus became the instrument of their own subjection. The confiscation of property and the destruction of life assumed hideous forms. “South Carolina,” says Bancroft, “was writhing under the insolence of an army in which every soldier was licensed to pillage, and every officer outlawed peaceful citizens at will.” The gold and silver plate and other valuables divided amongst the victors at the fall of Charleston amounted in value to a million and a half dollars, the dividend of a major-general alone being four thousand guineas. Cold-blooded assassinations by men holding the King’s commission, often in the presence of the wives and children of the helpless victims, were frequent. No engagements by capitulation were respected. Woodsmen in their rude cabins were suddenly surrounded and put to death, not because they were in arms against the King, but because they were not in arms for him. The tomahawking in June, 1777, of poor Jane McRae by one of the two Indians in the British service who were escorting her under British protection from Fort Edward, New York, to her expectant betrothed in the British lines, and who quarreled over the reward promised for her safe arrival, found a fitting complement three years later in South Carolina when Colonel Tarleton, of His Majesty’s service, personally beat the wife of a general officer of the Continental army because of his activity in the cause of his country. Equalling this villainy, Lord Rawdon, one of Cornwallis’ commanders on the Santee, who had found great difficulty in forcing his Irish Regiment to fight against the American patriots, issued an order dated July 1, 1780, in which he said: “I will give the inhabitants ten guineas for any deserter belonging to the volunteers of Ireland and five guineas only if they bring him in alive.”
To the disgrace of the ministry of Lord North, these practices were not only known to but were approved by the Cabinet. Indeed, they met the “hearty and repeated applause” of those charged with the conduct of the war, Germain declaring in orders to Clinton that “no good faith or justice is to be expected from them and we ought in all our transactions with them to act upon that supposition.”
Such was the temper of the British and such was the condition of the people of South Carolina when Cornwallis moved forward.