South Carolina in the American Revolution
When the London government harshly punished Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party, South Carolina's leaders joined eleven other colonies (except Georgia) in forming the Continental Congress.
After Parliament began taxing the North American colonies to raise revenue to make up for the costs of the French and Indian War and Pontiac's War, to protest the Stamp Act, South Carolina sent wealthy rice planter Thomas Lynch, 26-year-old lawyer John Rutledge, and Christopher Gadsden to the Stamp Act Congress.
Gadsden, leader of the pro-Independence "Liberty Boys," is often grouped with James Otis and Patrick Henry as the prime agitators for American independence by historians.
The following January the South Carolina colonial assembly was disbanded by Royal Governor Lord William Campbell, and it was reformed as an extralegal Provincial Congress.
Most Loyalists came from the Upcountry (known as the Upstate, since the 1960s), which thought that domination by the rich, elitist Charles Town planter class in an unsupervised government was worse than remaining under the rule of the British Crown.
On November 19, 1775, Patriot forces of the Long Cane Militia fought Loyalists in the first battle of Ninety Six, resulting in the death of James Birmingham, the first South Carolinian and southerner of the war.
Colonel Richard Richardson led a large party of Whigs into the Upcountry to arrest Loyalists and to assert the power of the revolutionary General Committee over the entire colony.
Under Colonel William Moultrie, the South Carolinians defeated the Royal Navy in the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28, 1776, and brought the Patriot Continental Army a major victory.
The Battle of Sullivan's Island also caused the British to rethink their strategy and leave the South for approximately three years.
Although the British officer in charge of the operation had told the Cherokee to attack only Patriot soldiers in organized groups, soon murder and cabin burnings were widespread on the frontier.
In 1780, the British, stalemated in the north and facing pressure from home to end the war, embarked on a plan of action that would come to be known to historians as "The Southern Strategy."
General Washington begged Governor John Rutledge and the rest of the state's council to leave Charles Town while there was still time, and they did.
Just before the battle of Camden, Gates met with Francis Marion, a militia officer who had escaped parole at the defeat of Charleston because of an accidental injury, which caused him to be out of town at the surrender.
After leaving Gates, Marion began a new and unheard of policy, as he destroyed boats the British might use, and commandeered food, horses and other property from the settlers.
General Clinton thought that South Carolina was a Loyalist colony that had been bullied into revolutionary actions by a small minority.
American Colonel Abraham Buford and his body of Virginia patriots had set south in hopes of defending Charles Town but turned back when they realized they were too late.
British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton was unwilling to let the rebels escape back to the North and chased after them, another act that alienated more loyalists.
The third British mistake was burning the Stateburg, South Carolina, home and harassing the incapacitated wife of a then inconsequential colonel named Thomas Sumter.
America's first major poet, William Cullen Bryant, described the home field advantage that led to the Patriot victory in one of his poems.
Kings Mountain is considered to be the turning point of the revolution in the South, because it squashed any significant further recruitment of Loyalists, and compelled Cornwallis to temporarily abandon North Carolina.
When Greene heard of Tarleton's approach, he sent Brigadier General Daniel Morgan and his backwoodsmen over the Appalachian Mountains to stop him.
On January 17, 1781, the two forces met at a grassy field with widespread hardwoods, reeds, and marsh in a well-known cattle grazing area called Cowpens.
Morgan still felt they were not strong enough to take on Tarleton's trained troops and wanted to cross a river that would separate them from the British and secure them a chance to retreat.
Pickens convinced Morgan that staying on the British side of the river would force his men to fight it out in what some historians consider the best-planned battle of the entire war.
On May 29, 1787, he presented the convention with a detailed outline of the United States Constitution, and John Rutledge provided valuable input.
