On the South Carolina frontier in the early spring of 1781 at Wrights Bluff, the ghosts of Roman legionnaires arose from their distant graves to assist the Patriot forces commanded by Col. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee and Gen. Francis Marion. From the mists of the past, the skills and techniques of these long-dead soldiers made possible a victory over the British.
In the broad strategic picture, the British success in the southern colonies was withering away. Lord Cornwallis was leading the main British army northward into Virginia along a road that would lead, eventually, to Yorktown and a climactic Patriot victory. Behind Cornwallis, leaders such as Nathanael Greene, Henry Lee, Thomas Sumter, and Francis Marion were isolating and wiping out the fortified positions that had been established by the Royal Army in an attempt to control the countryside.
IN JUNE 1775 the British warship HMS Margaretta was boarded and captured by a group of Patriots armed largely with axes and pitchforks.
Francis Marion had already become famous as a leader of irregular troops, fighting what later generations would call a guerrilla war, although that term was not in usage among English-speaking people during the Revolutionary War. Because of his success, Col. Henry Lee and a group of regular troops, the Continentals, had been sent to join Marion to provide the firepower and disciplined strike force the guerrillas often lacked. On April 14, 1781, these two Patriot leaders met and decided that the next target in the campaign to retake the South would be the British position at Fort Watson.
The location for Fort Watson had been carefully chosen. In an area of flat terrain, the British had found an Indian burial mound some 30 feet in height. A stockade built of heavy logs was erected atop the mound, and three lines of abatis were stretched around its bottom. The abatis were built of treetops, with the branches tangled together and the ends trimmed into sharp points facing the direction from which any enemy would approach. These barriers were the equivalent of today’s barbed wire entanglements. All trees and bushes had been cleared for 200 yards around the fort so the defenders would have a clear field of fire, and so there would be no cover for an attacker. The weak point of the defenses was that water had to be brought from a lake several hundred yards beyond the walls. Inside this strong position were 120 men, regulars and militia combined, under the command of Lt. James McKay.
It was an easy task for Marion and Lee to surround the fort and to station sharpshooters to pick off any of the garrison trying to go to the lake for water. Lieutenant McKay was not going to give up that easily, however, and put his men to digging a well. Meanwhile, each side took occasional long-range shots at each other. On April 18, just as the last kegs of water in the fort were being tapped, the diggers struck water. Now, it appeared the fort might hold out indefinitely.
Marion and Lee were worried. They did not have the entrenching tools at hand to undertake a formal siege. That time-consuming method required digging a trench parallel to the enemy position to protect one’s own men, then digging a zigzag approach, or “sap,” to get closer to the enemy, followed by another parallel, and so on until the trenches were close enough to allow troops to charge the walls. Not only did the Patriots lack entrenching tools, they lacked time. The British were gathering the garrisons from other fortified positions and were preparing to attack Marion and Lee from the rear.
If only they had a cannon, Lee thought. Even a small piece of artillery would make short work of the wooden stockade. So a messenger on a good horse was sent to the main Patriot army to ask for a cannon, but it was doubtful that artillery could be moved fast enough over the wretched roads to arrive in time to capture the fort before a British rescue force would arrive.
Then an even greater threat appeared. A few men in the Patriot camp came down with smallpox. Given the crowded conditions under which the men lived, this disease could sweep through the entire force in a flash. Lee’s regulars had been inoculated, but few of Marion’s militia had been. These guerrilla fighters did not fear the British, but the thought of catching smallpox unnerved them. Every night men slipped away from the camp.
The fear of disease and the worry of an attack from the rear were made worse by the men having nothing to do. The troops needed to be kept busy, and there needed to be some progress toward capturing the fort if morale was to be maintained.
Among the besiegers was Lt. Col. Hezikiah Maham of the St. Stephen’s Parish militia. Maham had seen quite a bit of war, having served as a captain in a rifle regiment before accepting his commission as an officer in the militia cavalry. As he led his men on patrols through the surrounding countryside, watching for the approach of a British relief force, Lieutenant Colonel Maham pondered the problem of how to capture the fort. His mind wandered back to his school days when he had studied Latin and had translated Caesar’s Commentaries about Roman military actions in Gaul. The Roman soldiers he had read about often came up against fortifications, and they certainly had no artillery. How had they captured forts? Then he remembered. Siege towers.
The Roman legionnaires built wooden towers taller than the walls they were attacking. These towers were mounted on wheels and were pushed up close to the walls, a ramp was lowered, and soldiers charged across to capture the fort. The concept would have to be modified, Maham knew, but the Patriots had axes, and the militiamen were accustomed to using them every day on their farms.
Maham took his plan to Marion and Lee, and the two immediately endorsed it. Soon, details of men were going into the nearby woods, and axes were crashing into the trunks of trees. The British garrison could hear the sound of chopping, but the Patriots carefully kept all their preparations out of sight. For five days teams of men cut logs to specific lengths, while other teams cut notches near each end of each log. On the night of April 22, shielded by darkness, the prefabricated pieces were carried to within easy rifle range of the fort, and a square crib of logs was raised. When the tower wall was tall enough to allow a marksman to see into the interior of the fort, a floor was laid. Then a parapet of logs was built on the side next to the fort. Before daylight, riflemen were atop the tower, waiting for a target.
Lt. James McKay had been warned by sentries that there was a lot of noise coming from the Patriot camp, so he had all his men at their battle positions on the walls ready to repel a dawn attack. The growing light revealed a tower, nearly 45 feet high, looming over his men. From the top of the tower, rifles began to crack, and McKay’s men began to fall. Quickly, he ordered the garrison under cover, but as soon as the British were off the walls, parties of axe men rushed from the Patriot lines to hew lanes through the abatis. In a short while axes were thudding against the logs of the palisade, while the Continental troops fell into formation with bayonets fixed, ready to charge into the first gap to open. Reluctantly, Lieutenant McKay lowered the Union Jack. And somewhere the shade of Julius Caesar surely smiled. His legions had won yet another victory.
FRANCIS MARION
C. 1732–FEBRUARY 27, 1795
Francis Marion is one of the more picturesque figures from the Revolutionary War, as shown by his nickname “The Swamp Fox.” In military history, he is considered one of the fathers of “asymmetrical” or guerrilla warfare. Actually, Marion learned from the Cherokee much of the style of warfare he would one day practice against the British. In 1757, he was recruited to serve in the South Carolina militia during the French and Indian War, protecting the frontier against the Cherokee.
When his first military experience came to an end, Marion returned to his plantation until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He helped defend Fort Sullivan in 1775 (see “The Lowly Palmetto Defeats the Royal Oak”) and served in the siege of Savannah in 1779. Marion escaped capture at Charleston in 1780 and began a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British occupying his native South Carolina.
Marion proved to be a master of surprise attacks against small groups of British soldiers and in ambushing supply trains. He inspired the Patriots and terrified the Loyalists to the extent that Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the South, said the entire South Carolina coastal region was up in arms against the Crown. Marion is said to have welcomed anyone willing to fight the Redcoats, and one historian says Marion’s command included both black and white men, all of them volunteers. A painting of Marion and his men hangs in the United States Capitol.
Marion returned to his home at the end of the war to find all the buildings burned and all his slaves gone—they had been recruited by the British and given their freedom in other British possessions. Marion rebuilt his plantation and served several terms in the state legislature prior to his death.