British victory 1781 1782 1783 The Battle of Waxhaws (also known as the Waxhaws Massacre and Buford's Massacre) was a military engagement which took place on May 29, 1780, during the American Revolutionary War between a Patriot force led by Abraham Buford and a British force led by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton near Lancaster, South Carolina.

Buford was eventually joined by about 40 Virginia 1st and 3rd Light Dragoons who had escaped the siege or during battles outside the city, and by Richard Caswell's North Carolina militia.

Receiving news of the surrender, Buford was ordered by General Isaac Huger to return to Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Buford was accompanied for a time by South Carolina Governor John Rutledge, who had been actively recruiting militia in the backcountry.

When Buford stopped to rest his troops at Waxhaw Creek, Rutledge rode ahead toward Charlotte, North Carolina.

[7] General Clinton learned of Huger's and Rutledge's forces and on May 15 ordered Lord Cornwallis to bring the South Carolina and Georgia backcountry under British control.

Tarleton sent Captain David Kinlock forward to the rebel column, carrying a white flag, to demand Buford's surrender.

The note also said, "Resistance being vain, to prevent the effusion of human blood, I make offers which can never be repeated", indicating that Tarleton would ask only once for Buford to surrender.

Forty years after the event, Robert Brownfield, a Patriot surgeon’s mate at the time, said[9] the five dragoons of the rear guard were captured, and their leader, Captain Pearson, was "inhumanely mangled" by saber cuts, some inflicted after he had fallen.

[8] Buford stopped the column (except for the artillery and the baggage, which he ordered to continue on) and formed a single battle line near some open woods.

[10][11] Tarleton, some of whose horses were so tired from the pursuit that he was unable to bring his field artillery into range, established a command post on a nearby hill, and organized his forces for the attack.

[12] Traditional American histories say that as Tarleton's cavalry tore Buford's line to pieces, and many of the Patriots began laying down their arms and offering to surrender.

[13] According to Tarleton's report of the battle, the Patriot casualties were 113 men killed, 147 wounded and released on parole, and 2 six pounders and 26 wagons captured.

[14] Tarleton, in a version published in 1787, said that the battle was a "slaughter"; he said that his horse had been shot from under him during the initial charge and his men, thinking him dead, engaged in "a vindictive asperity not easily restrained".

When they learned what had happened from the wounded they were treating, albeit one-sidedly, a belief in an apparent violation of quarter on Tarleton's part spread rapidly through the region.

News of the massacre directly inspired the creation of volunteer militia forces among the Overmountain Men (from the Wataugan settlements at and near Sycamore Shoals).