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An Independence Day Reminder: The Short Version of How the American Revolution Was Won In South Carolina

Submitted by: John Warner on Jul 04, 2009 at 12:01 am Tagged with: history Source: Converse College

Written by Melissa Walker and originally published in The State

The American South is so identified with the Civil War that people often forget that the key battles from the final years of the American Revolution were fought in the Southern colonies.

By 1778, the British effort to subdue the rebellious American colonies in New England and the Mid-Atlantic had bogged down, so they turned their attention to the South. British officials were aware that many backcountry settlers remained loyal to the Crown while others were ambivalent about the revolutionary effort. Believing that a large population of Loyalists would support English efforts to restore imperial rule and that the Southern colonies were ultimately more valuable to them than Northern ones because the South produced important crops, the British set out to subdue Patriots in the South.

Yet conquering the Carolinas proved more difficult than British officials had anticipated. A May 1779 siege of Charleston was unsuccessful, and the British did not seize control of Savannah until the fall of that year. The following spring, they finally took Charleston, capturing 5,000 Continental troops. They quickly occupied other strategic towns near the coast. It seemed that the British would quickly gain control of the entire colony of South Carolina.

But in the spring of 1780, British officers made a series of fatal blunders. Gen. Henry Clinton revoked the terms of the Charleston surrender, requiring paroled American prisoners of war to sign loyalty oaths. Men who had returned to their homes intending to maintain a position of neutrality were enraged. Then, at the May 1780 Battle of the Waxhaws, British troops under the command of Banastre Tarleton killed surrendering Americans. Finally, British occupation forces looked the other way as Tory militia brutally retaliated against Patriots and suspected Patriots throughout the backcountry. Scots-Irish Presbyterians, whose churches were labeled “sedition shops,” became particular targets of British hostilities. These events infuriated many previously neutral backcountry settlers. In the summer of 1780, the ranks of Patriot militia units swelled. During the late summer and fall, a series of important battles in the backcountry offered testimony to a renewed spirit of resistance among backcountry Patriots,

The first blow was struck at the July 1780 Battle of Huck’s Defeat near McConnells, where Patriot troops defeated British forces in a surprise attack, the first successful Patriot military effort in the South since the fall of Charleston. On Oct. 7, 1780, the pivotal Patriot victory at the Battle of King’s Mountain destroyed the left wing of Gen. Cornwallis’ army. Then in January 1781, the Patriots scored a victory over British regulars led by the hated Banastre Tarleton. Continental Gen. Daniel Morgan led a combined force of Continental regulars, militia and cavalry in a brilliant tactical victory still studied by military strategists in the U.S. Army. These battles paved the way for the British retreat from the Carolinas and Cornwallis’s eventual surrender at Yorktown.

In recent years, scholars have given renewed attention to the war in the backcountry. University of South Carolina Professor Walter Edgar’s book Partisans and Redcoats has fueled renewed interest in the war in the South. So have new activities for social studies teachers.

This month, 80 K-12 teachers from as far away as California, Maine, Texas and the Midwest will converge on the Converse College campus in Spartanburg to study this critical phase of the American Revolution. Participants in a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshop organized by Converse, they will study with noted scholars of the Revolution in the South. They also will visit the sites of the Battles of Huck’s Defeat, Kings Mountain, Cowpens and Ninety-Six. They’ll learn about backcountry life at Spartanburg’s Walnut Grove Plantation, and they’ll see important art of the American Revolution at the Greenville County Museum of Art. They will gather rich material on the war in the South to share with their own students.

This week, as we celebrate our nation’s independence, it’s a good time to join these teachers in remembering that settlers from the backcountry of North and South Carolina played key roles in winning our freedom.

Dr. Walker is the George Dean Johnson Jr. Professor of History at Converse College and director of the Partisans and Redcoats NEH Landmarks in American History and Culture Workshop.