The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (107 page)
Read The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Online
Authors: Robert Middlekauff
Tags: #History, #Military, #United States, #Colonial Period (1600-1775), #Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
The "place" may have had an evil genius, but it also had a wellconstructed defense and a skillful commander, Lord Francis Rawdon, a bright and ambitious man who had served in America since 1775. Rawdon wanted at Greene as badly as Greene wanted at him, and when the Americans arrived in the vicinity was happy to oblige them. Greene set up on Hobkirk's Hill, a pine-covered ridge running east and west about a mile and a half north of Camden. Convinced that an assault on Camden would be foolhardy, he thought that he must "induce the enemy to sally." Rawdon required no persuasion, and at mid-morning on April 25 he surprised the American pickets to the southeast of the main position. Two Maryland regiments backed by North Carolina militia sat on that end of the ridge and to their right two regiments of Virginia Continentals. Otho Williams commanded the American left; Isaac Huger, the right. Rawdon came at them from the southeast with three regiments in line and three in reserve. The best he had, the 63rd, manned the far right of his attacking formation.
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Greene's troops scrambled into position and when the British came
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56 | Greene to Reed |
57 | Greene to Steuben |
on they were ready. Rawdon presented so narrow a front that Greene resolved to envelop it from both flanks. After giving Rawdon a taste of grape from his three six-pounders, he sent his two regiments from the center straight down the hill, Virginians on the right and Marylanders on the left. At the same time his regiments on either end swung down to assault the flanks. To William Washington's cavalry fell the assignment of circling behind the British to sweep up their rear.
The American attack took the British by surprise but failed nonetheless. Washington did not reach the rear until the battle had been decided, and then he wasted his time on rounding up commissaries and quartermasters and other noncombatants who had wandered out from Camden to watch the fun. Two other events proved more decisive than the cavalry's tardiness, however. The first saw Rawdon react to Greene's formation and extend his own by calling up into the line his support, an action that protected his flanks. The second involved the 1st Maryland Regiment, two companies of which broke under fire. The regimental commander, Colonel John Gunby, then ordered the remaining four companies baick while he tried to rally the two that had faltered. He succeeded in reforming his regiment, but his soldiers' run to the rear had unnerved the Virginians to their left. In battle there is nothing so difficult as stopping troops who have panicked. In this case, the task. became all but impossible when Colonel Ford of the 5th Maryland went down with a musket ball in him. Rawdon's infantry flowed to the hole in the American lines almost as if pulled by gravity, and though they did not succeed in destroying Greene's army they pushed it from the field.
At the end of the battle only the Virginia regiment on the right wing of the American line completely retained its integrity. The artillery was rescued just as it was about to be captured. Greene himself served as a matross for a few minutes, and Washington's cavalry, though late on the scene, fought a fierce rear-guard action. Rawdon pursued his enemy for a couple of miles, though not with much vigor, for he knew that pursuit often leads to the disorganization of the pursuers. In this affair Greene's withdrawal was ordered well enough to discourage persistent attempts to trap him. Neither side suffered heavy losses, but neither could afford to lose those who fell.
The rest of Greene's plan to clear the South Carolina interior of the enemy prospered after these days of frustration. Thomas Sumter had resisted Greene's urging that he join his force to the main army, deciding instead in favor of independent operations. But he pleased Greene by taking Orangeburg on the North Fork of the Edisto River
on May 10. This post and its small garrison provided an important link between Charleston and Camden. Lee and Marion picked off another the following day, Fort Motte on the Congaree River. Motte had not given in easily, and Lee and Marion had been forced to conduct a small-scale siege, running regular approaches, until they came close enough to burn their enemy out. Meanwhile Pickens had darted south to Augusta, which held out until June 5.
Before most of these attacks had even begun, Rawdon had decided to evacuate Camden. For a few days after Hobkirk's Hill he had hoped to trap Greene and actually came up against him on Sawney's Creek. The Americans held a position too difficult to attack with the force Rawdon commanded, and a few days later he decided to leave Camden. His impression was that the backcountry had risen against him-so he wrote Cornwallis on May 24, two weeks after his column heavily laden with sick and wounded began to clear Camden. He had begun to dread a general engagement by this time, believing that a heavy loss would force him from Charleston as well as the interior. The events of the next few days did nothing to change his mind, and the slow progress southward along the Santee deepened his discouragement. There, along the river his experiences repeated Cornwallis's in North Carolina, as sullen civilians carefully kept their distance from him and his army. "I had been five Days within the Santee before a single Man of the Country came near me," he remarked to Cornwallis. Food, as well as friends, was scarce, and only revolt seemed to be in harvest.
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Too late Rawdon ordered Colonel John Cruger to pull his command from Ninety-Six, too late because Greene's army surrounded the post before Rawdon's message arrived. Greene, with the assistance of Lee's Legion, lay siege to the place on May 22. Its defenses were formidable and Cruger, a Tory from New York, knew how to use them. He had some 500 men against Greene's 1000 regulars. But though outnumbered, he held on and threw back a fierce attack on June 18. Two days later Greene reluctantly ended the siege, for Rawdon with 2000 men, including three regiments fresh from England marching to Cruger's rescue, now threatened to overwhelm him. There was a brief chase, but Greene's head start and the summer heat combined to discourage Rawdon after he reached the Enoree River, thirty miles to the southeast.
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Greene did not know it, but he had won the war in the Carolinas. For much of July and throughout August he camped in the high hills
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58 | Stevens, ed., |
59 | Ward |
of the Santee. There his regulars rested and his militia traveled in and out -- mostly out. Greene occupied himself by trying to add to the size of his army and in writing letters to Congress painting in somber hues a picture of the failure of his support. Meanwhile Rawdon, his health shattered by the strenuous life he had been leading, had departed in July for England. His successor, Lt. Colonel Alexander Stewart, now held only two major posts in the southern states, Charleston and Savannah. Greene and Stewart fought one more major engagement before the year ended, the battle of Eutaw Springs, on September 8. Eutaw Springs was thirty miles northwest of Charleston. Greene found Stewart there after maneuvering cautiously so as to conceal his desire to engage. That desire arose as his army received reinforcements and supplies and as the British lost control of the state. If Stewart could be destroyed, Charleston might be retaken and the war in the South brought to a stop. That Greene was able to conceal the movements of his army, a force of some 2200 men, from Stewart bespeaks the loss of whatever civilian support the British had. Stewart remarked on the absence of information about his enemy, an absence so complete that he was taken almost by surprise by Greene's attack. Greene's army included Lee's Legion, Francis Marion's partisans, militia from both the Carolinas, and Continentals from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He also had the ever faithful Colonel William Washington and his cavalry. Stewart's force was just about equal in numbers. It consisted of companies from three regiments of regulars, eight companies of the "Irish Buffs" as the 3rd Regiment was called, and loyalist provincials commanded by John Cruger and John Coffin. Early on the morning of September 8, the Americans started toward Stewart's camp from their own at Burdell's Plantation, seven miles away. At about eight o'clock the van of Major John Armstrong's North Carolina Continentals ran into a small party of enemy soldiers who had been sent out to dig yams. Short of bread the British were substituting yams which could be found in nearby fields. Armstrong shot up the yam diggers and a small covering party of Coffin's cavalry, but the action deprived the Americans of surprise. Warned that an unknown number of enemy was approaching, Stewart placed a battalion on his far right next to the Santee in heavy blackjack, a shrub so tough and thick as to prevent cavalry from riding through it. ____________________
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out his regiments in a line, with most of the Tories near the center, about a hundred yards west of his camp.
Greene had formed his column as the rules of warfare enjoined, so that it might deploy into line easily with its units arrayed as he wanted them. He wanted them in two heavy lines, militia in the lead and regulars following about a hundred yards behind. He placed Lee's Legion on his right flank and partisan units under John Henderson and Wade Hampton on his left. The two sides made heavy contact about an hour after the yam diggers were driven in. Greene's lines were probably a little uneven by this time, for they had to make their way through trees and heavy brush. Nonetheless, the militia fought well until a charge by Stewart's men broke them in the center. The flanks held, however, and Greene sent the North Carolina Continentals into the gap. These men restored the American line until a second attack by the British broke them. Greene then inserted the Virginia and Maryland regulars, Richard Campbell and Otho Williams commanding, and had the satisfaction of seeing them use their bayonets as skillfully as European professionals. He later gave these regiments considerable praise in his report to Congress: "I think myself principally indebted for the victory we obtained to the free use of the Bayonet by the Virginians and Marylanders, the Infantry of the Legion and Captain Kirkwood's Light Infantry." Indeed the rush of the American regulars forced the British back, some units apparently in great disorder and confusion.
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In a few minutes the Americans shared this disorder and confusion. As they pursued the British they ran into the enemy's camp and paused to plunder it. What they found in ample supply seems to have been rum. The pause found them milling around entirely without discipline; and the few that maintained the attack ran into a large, heavily fortified brick house at the northeastern edge of the British camp. This house produced further confusion as the troops lost their unity in their attempts to take it. The one British battalion still in good order now asserted itself. This battalion belonged to Major John Marjoribanks. It had held together despite assaults from the cavalry of William Washington and Wade Hampton. After pretty well demolishing the American horse, Marjoribanks. pulled back close to the brick house. From that position, he, aided by re-formed British regiments, drove the disorganized looters from the British camp. A battalion of Maryland regulars slowed this counterattack and prevented the withdrawal from degenerating into a rout.
Still the British, despite many casualties, held the field.