The Swamp Fox by John Oller

Author:John Oller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780306824586
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2016-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

a Williamson would later partially redeem himself in patriot eyes by providing valuable intelligence to the American forces.

21

“At Eutaw Springs the Valiant Died”

Having spent much of the summer resting his army, Nathanael Greene was ready to fight. But despite his many misgivings about the quality of the militia, he did not want to go into battle without them.

Just as Marion was heading south to go to Harden’s aid, Greene decided to end his respite in the High Hills of Santee. Since mid-July he had been camped at John Singleton’s Midway Plantation in the High Hills, barely fifteen miles north of the British army at William Thomson’s Belleville plantation (next door to the site of the former Fort Motte). Ever since Alexander Stewart, Rawdon’s replacement, had moved to Belleville with more than fifteen hundred men in early August, the two armies had been close enough to see each other’s campfires. But they were separated by a large, impassable lake that had accumulated from the heavy rains that summer. By the last week of August, Greene had resolved to attack Stewart, but he would not be able to go directly at him.

Logically, to reach the enemy from his position in the High Hills, Greene would have marched south and crossed the Santee at Nelson’s Ferry, then moved upriver to Stewart’s camp just below the Congaree. But the approach to Nelson’s was flooded. Thus, when he broke camp on August 23, Greene set out north, away from Stewart’s army. For almost two weeks he marched in a counterclockwise direction that took him up, around, and then back down toward Stewart. He marched at a leisurely pace during the cooler morning and early evening hours to conserve his troops’ strength and to give time to various militia commanders to respond to his orders to join him. With Cornwallis now at Yorktown, Virginia was no longer willing to send Greene the two thousand militia it had promised him, so he needed every militiaman from the Carolinas he could get. Greene’s Continental army numbered about 1,250, and as he explained to Lee, he was confident that with the addition of six or eight hundred militia he could defeat Stewart with little loss to the regular army.

With his Continentals, including Lee’s Legion, Greene headed north up the east side of the Wateree and ferried across at Camden on August 26. He picked up a group of 150 to 200 newly raised militia from North Carolina under French army officer François de Malmedy. From Camden he moved south to cross the Congaree at Howell’s Ferry, where he camped on August 28. He was joined there by Pickens with 300 South Carolina militia (including members of Sumter’s old brigade) and by Colonel William Henderson, Sumter’s replacement, commanding about 150 to 200 South Carolina state troops. William Washington’s Virginia Continental cavalry united with the army as well.

Greene was now within striking distance of Thomson’s plantation, where he had planned to attack Stewart. But after learning of Greene’s movement toward him,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.