The Waxhaws District, near the Northern border of South Carolina

Mid-May 1780

CHAPTER XVIII

* * *

Caleb Dunson and Primus sat slumped against an ancient, decaying palmetto log near a bog, shirts soaked, sweat running in the sweltering midday heat as they drank tepid water from battered wooden canteens. Scattered in the thick undergrowth beneath towering oak and palmettos were the five hundred men under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford. Most of them were collapsed on the sodden ground, hidden by the heavy foliage of the dense South Carolina forest just south of the North Carolina border. They had been under forced march for days, dodging British patrols as they worked their way north, away from the fallen Charleston and the swarming British, searching for any American force they could find.

It had rained in the night, a steady, drenching downpour that dwindled and stopped with the rising of the sun. By eight o’clock the woods were steaming, sucking the moisture and the strength from the men. By ten o’clock they could go no further, and Colonel Buford called a stop for one-half hour before they slogged on, following a dirt wagon trace that wound northward through the rolling Carolina hills. At half-past twelve Buford called their second halt and the men had dropped where they were, wanting only water and to be left alone.

They heard the sounds of a man running through the forest before they saw him, and Caleb and Primus lifted their heads to watch a soldier plunge past, face pasty white, gasping for air. Half a dozen men rose to see the man disappear in the direction of the head of their column.

“He be scared. Somethin’ wrong,” Primus said.

Caleb heaved himself to his feet. “Come on.”

They seized their muskets and trotted north, guided by the sound of the man ripping through the forest ahead. They were into a small clearing before they realized they were at the head of the column, where they saw the man standing before Colonel Buford, shoulders heaving as he panted out his frantic message, arm extended, pointing back south.

“I seen ’em, sir. British cavalry. Hunnerds—less’n half an hour behind an’ comin’ fast. Green uniforms an’ the leader has that big green feather stuck in his hat. Has to be Tarleton.”

Buford held up a hand to stop the man. “Did they have muskets? Did you see?”

For a moment the man searched his memory. “Didn’t see no muskets. Just swords.”

“Did you get a count?”

“Not all. Only the first hunnerd or so. But there’s a lot of ’em.”

“Did they see you?”

“No. If they’da seen me I wouldn’t be here.”

Buford stared south, weary mind reeling as he tried to force some coherence to his thoughts. For several seconds he studied the wagon trace they had been following, then turned to a major and a captain standing near by.

“Tarleton’s coming. Get the men up here and hide them in the woods on the south side of the road. Not a sound, not a movement, until the British are within ten paces. Then on my command every man that has a musket will fire. Understand?”

At the name Tarleton the two officers gaped and hesitated for a moment before they answered. “Yes, sir.”

“Move!”

Caleb and Primus stared in disbelief. Tarleton! Bloody Tarleton! The red-haired, fiery-tempered Scot was the most feared and hated officer in the British army. Fearless. Clever. Merciless in the field.

Fatigue vanished as they spun and sprinted back toward their place in the ranks, listening as the two officers ahead of them shouted men to their feet.

“Tarleton! On your feet! Get into the woods on the south side of the road and take cover. Do not fire until you hear the order. Hold your fire until you hear Buford’s order.”

Within five minutes the only sign the Americans had been there was the trampled and broken foliage. Not a squirrel chattered, not a bird warbled; the only sound was the click of grasshoppers and the hum of the clouds of mosquitoes and swamp insects that rose and settled. Not one man remembered his thirst or fatigue as they remained still, dripping sweat, straining to hear the first sounds of the approaching force.

Hearts pounding, they crouched in ambush to kill the British soldiers. The heat and fatigue and fear played tricks with their minds. Sounds they had heard all their lives suddenly became different— loud, menacing, and time lost any dimension—seconds became hours, minutes became days. Faces flitted in their brains—mother, sister, wife—and then the face of the man each was about to kill. Will it be round? Square? A long face? Will he be old, bearded? Will he be young, wide-eyed, frightened? Will he look like someone I know?—a friend? a brother? Will he be a good man? With a wife? With children? Or will he be a bad man? What might he look like, and what kind of man will he be?

The thoughts and the images came and went, and the crouching Americans waited, struggling to breathe, sweaty thumbs hooked over the heavy hammers of their muskets.

First they felt the vibrations of horses’ hooves in the earth beneath them, then came the sounds of grunting horses and the rattle and clank of equipment. A moment more and they caught flashes and glimpses through the trees of men wearing green uniforms, hunched forward in their saddles, swatting branches aside as they urged their mounts forward, intense, watching, listening. Their uniforms were sweated black at the arms and between their shoulder blades, and there was a look of weariness on them. They had covered one hundred fifty-eight miles in fifty-four hours, and their jaded mounts were streaked with sweat, white lather rimming the saddle blankets and the leather straps of the bridles.

Caleb gauged distance and numbers, slowly leveling his musket. One hundred yards . . . eighty . . . fifty. He heard Primus breathe beside him and did not look. Thirty yards . . . twenty—and he was staring at a young cavalryman, so near that Caleb saw he had not shaved for five days and could see the fear in his eyes and the ridges along his jaw where he had his mouth clamped shut too tight.

Then they were ten yards away, and Caleb felt a stab of panic in his stomach. They were too close—too close—if the Americans fired now they would not have time to reload in time for a second volley, and the surviving green-coated cavalrymen would be among them with their sabers. Without bayonets or sabers of their own, the Americans would have no chance against the crack cavalry of Banastre Tarleton.

Without warning, the command came from behind Caleb—“FIRE!” and he jerked the hammer back and pulled the trigger at near point-blank range. His musket bucked and the startled young cavalryman pitched backward from his saddle and disappeared and for two seconds the world was filled with the deafening roar of muskets and white smoke hung in the air and hid the oncoming cavalry and then the green-coated demons were among the Americans, swinging their sabers with deadly efficiency and the Americans were throwing down their useless muskets and thrusting both hands upward, shouting, “Quarter—quarter!”

Instantly Buford realized his awful mistake and rigged a white shirt on a tree branch and sent an officer running toward the British, crying “Quarter—quarter—we surrender—we surrender” and a pistol cracked and the American officer slumped, rolling, dead, and another American seized the fallen white flag and raised it and a cavalryman swung his saber and the man toppled.

For five seconds that were an eternity, Caleb stood with his musket in his hand in the midst of Americans with their arms raised, screaming their surrender while Tarleton’s cavalry rode among them in blood-lust with flashing sabers, cutting them down like wheat in a field—slaughtering them like cattle. Through the trees Caleb saw Tarleton with the great green plume in his hat and he saw his mount shudder and go down and Tarleton roll from the mortally wounded horse back onto his feet and then Caleb heard a horse coming in from his left and blind rage rose to choke him and he turned and danced backward and swung his musket smashing into the animal’s face and it screamed and reared and the rider was off balance but stayed mounted as Caleb leaped forward to throw his left arm around the man’s waist and drag him from the saddle slamming to the ground and Caleb was on top of him and hitting him in the face with his fist once, twice, three times and the man went limp and Caleb swept up the dropped saber and came to his feet, crouched, turning, poised, ready, swinging the sabre at horses and anyone wearing green and he saw the blood jump as the blade laid the horses open four inches deep and he didn’t know how many men he struck down and then he felt more than saw a man behind him and he pivoted and it was Primus swinging his musket like a scythe and they locked shoulders and began a retreat through the horses and the sabers and the men dead and dying on the ground and suddenly they were in the trees and the massacre was in front of them and they turned and ran blind through the forest until the sounds of the screaming men and horses were far behind them.

Dripping sweat and splattered with the blood of horses and men, they sagged to their knees, fighting to breathe in the stifling heat, and Caleb bent forward and wretched smoking in the thick grass and he dropped the sword and toppled onto his side. He did not know how long he lay there, eyes clenched, seeing the massacre again and again as though in an evil dream. He heard a rustle beside him and opened his eyes and Primus was sitting there with blood on his arms and face and shirt and his clothes sweat-soaked and clinging to him, and his face and eyes blank as he stared at Caleb.

For a time they did not speak and then Primus rose and walked a short distance to a clear-flowing stream and waded in and sat down and began to scoop water over himself, rubbing his arms again and again, and his face, as though trying to wash away the memory of the slaughter along with the blood. Caleb followed and sat down in the water and for a time did nothing, and then he began to wash away the blood. They did not know nor care how long they sat in the cool water.

With the sun settling toward the west, they rose and walked dripping back to the sword and the musket and sat down. For a long time neither spoke.

Then Primus said, “We be lost. We follow the crik it take us to a river an’ maybe it be the Pee Dee and we find someone. Maybe we find Massa Marion. Someone got to tell Massa Marion the Buford men gone. Kilt. Someone got to tell him. He know what to do.”

Caleb nodded assent. “We’ll travel at night when we can.”

They went back to the stream to wash the blood from the sword and the musket, then laid down on the bank to wait for sunset. In the twilight the croaking began, and Primus caught four huge bullfrogs, cleaned them, and struck a fire with the flint from the musket to roast them. With a half-moon rising low in the east they waded into the knee-deep stream and went with the current, walking slowly, feeling their way in the soft silt that lay six inches thick on the bottom.

Dawn found them at a place where the small stream emptied into a larger one, and they climbed the bank to rest—hungry, quiet, still half-numb in their minds as they remembered the sabers and the screams of men trying to surrender while they were being butchered.

The frogs quieted and disappeared with the rising of the sun, and with the sun midway to its zenith, they felt hunger. Primus moved slowly ahead in the water, head turning from side to side, until he stopped and slowly raised his hand, pointing. It took Caleb twenty seconds to see the nearly invisible five-foot-long water moccasin stretched out in plain sight on the decayed skeleton of a pine tree that had been ripped from the ground by a hurricane more than a century earlier. The huge log, long since rotted and nearly all gone, was less than fifteen feet away with the big end on land and the small end in the water. Quietly Caleb closed within five feet of the snake before he swung the saber once. The severed head fell into the water while the body instantly curled and writhed, then fell splashing. Primus caught the flopping remains, and twenty minutes later they divided the cooked, white meat and ate.

They stopped at sunset and ate roasted sweet potatoes dug by Primus. With dusk upon them, fearful of being seen by a roving British patrol, or Tories looking for rebels, Caleb scattered the small fire and stepped on the glowing embers until they were dead. Then the two men sat quietly in the growing darkness, listening for sounds other than the frogs and the insects, but there were none. The evening star came on, and then the moon and the endless scatter of stars overhead, and Caleb spoke quietly.

“You said you were on a plantation. A big one. Where?”

“Williamsburg. Nearby the Santee.”

“Santee?”

“River.”

“Far from here?”

“Don’t know ’zackly where we is. But it can’t be far. We movin’ into the sun each mornin’ an’ away from the sun each evenin’ so we goin’ the right direction. The Pee Dee north of the Santee. Maybe we find Massa Marion there somewhere. I hope so. I surely do.”

“What was grown on the plantation?”

“Rice first. Then when rice was poor they come with indigo.”

“Indigo?”

“Make color for clothes. No good to eat. Jus’ make clothes red.”

“Your family? You said you never knew your father.”

“Father sold off somewhere ’fore I come. Momma die birthin’ me. Never saw either one.”

“Who raised you?”

Primus shrugged in the darkness. “The others. Slaves. Toadie nurse me ’til one day she die. Us younguns without no momma or daddy sit in the corner and they give us scraps to eat. Workin’ in the rice when I was seven, wadin’ in the swamps settin’ sprouts in the spring, wadin’ in the swamps to gather it in the fall. Then they come with indigo, an’ I was swingin’ a hoe choppin’ holes in the fields to plant in the spring an pullin’ weeds through the sickly season an’ swingin’ a knife to gather it when it was growed full.”

A sense of sadness, then anger, rose inside Caleb. “How old are you?”

Primus shook his head. “Don’t know. Nobody keep writin’ of when animals is birthed.”

“Can you read?”

There was pride in the answer. “Some. I kin write some letters, too. Write my name. Read some of the Bible.”

“The Bible?”

“The Gulah Bible.”

“Gulah?”

“Bible wrote by slaves.”

“You said once you ran away from the plantation.”

“Twice. Caught me the firs’ time. Beat me good.”

“Whipped you?”

“With iron nails in the end. Long time healin’.”

“Why did you try it again?”

For a time Primus did not answer, and Caleb was afraid he had not heard the question, or that he was refusing to answer.

“Seem like the Almighty mean his children be free. So I pray like in the Bible and somethin’ inside says be free. So I run again. But not like before. This time I run in the swamp with the cottonmouth an’ the copperheads an’ the ’gators. Stay for long time. White folk don’t like the swamp. They give up on me an’ I come out. Learned they was a war to be free, an’ I join with Massa Marion. He fightin’ to be free. Don’t matter to him we black or we white. Only we want to be free. That all he care about.”

“Who is Massa Marion?”

“Francis Marion. White man. Small. Sick when he a chile, so he go into the swamp to die but he live instead. Learn all about the swamp. He kin charm the cottonmouth and talk to the ’gator and not no creature in the swamp hurt Massa Marion. He eat anything there, live as long as he want in the swamp. He know to fight, too. Take ten men, surprise the soldiers in the red coats, hurt ’em bad, then go in the swamp and no one find him.”

“When I escaped back at Charleston, why did you come?”

“I seen the las’ of bein’ a slave, an’ bein’ a prisoner is like bein’ a slave. I be free, or I be dead. Whichever come first. Don’t matter to me no more.”

“You married? Children?”

“White folk don’t let animals git married, and we animals jus’ like a horse or a cow or a pig. I made promises like in the Bible with Callie, an’ she made promises back, an’ we had a little boychild. When he was five they sold Callie off to someone in Charleston an’ the boy—Morro—he was sold to someone down by Savannah. They gone. Never seen either one since.”

Caleb fell silent and his thoughts ran. Never had he known the sense of outrage and sickness that came into his heart as he listened. Slowly he realized that by accident, or design, Boston Town, and New England, had turned its back on an entire race whose sufferings, on American soil, were evil and inhuman beyond anything he could have imagined. He wondered why he hadn’t known about it, why nothing was ever said, then concluded that it is much easier and infinitely less troubling to turn your back and delude yourself with the lie, than face and resolve the ugliness. He shook his head, knowing in his heart that if life laid it at his feet to do, he would strike a blow against slavery no matter the cost.

In the heat of the night and the sound of frogs and night insects, the two men laid down on the forest floor and slept. They were up and moving with the morning star, always southeast with the flow of the river. At noon Primus pointed to an opossum sitting on a tree branch fifteen feet above the forest floor, studying them as they walked. He stripped off his shirt and climbed up to snare the animal with it and bring it down tied inside. As Primus knelt, working with the shirt, Caleb saw the black man’s bare back, and he stiffened. The skin was a crosshatched mass of ugly welts and scars that went to the bone. Caleb said nothing, but went about gathering small sticks for a cooking fire, jaw clenched, eyes flashing.

It was early afternoon when Caleb’s head swung around, probing for what caused the whisper of sound that had come from their right, away from the river. He dropped to his haunches as Primus came to his side, crouched, head swiveling as he also listened, probing the dense woods, searching for what had stopped Caleb.

Caleb made the slightest head gesture, and Primus froze, concentrating. Large green fronds moved where there should have been no movement, and then a man rose to a crouched running position and moved away from them. Two seconds later another followed. Neither wore a uniform. Both were clad in ragged, worn homespun, barefooted, bearded, hair wild, faces dirty. Both carried muskets and wore belt knives.

For one full minute neither Caleb or Primus moved. Then slowly they followed the two men, silent, listening, watching everything ahead. The birds had fallen silent with men in the forest. Nothing moved, and there was no sound as the two men crept forward. Through the trees and undergrowth, they saw a clearing ahead with a white, two-storied house and outbuildings, and cultivated fields on three sides. Caleb went to one knee, puzzled, unsure, clutching the saber. Then Primus was beside him, musket at the ready, eyes narrowed as he studied the farm through the trees.

The sound of trotting horses reached them, and they dropped to the ground, invisible in the dense growth. The sound grew louder, and for an instant they thought the horses were going to overrun them as they came cantering on an unseen trail less than ten feet away. The two hidden men watched them pass—two bays, one gray, one sorrel, and they saw the riders, grim, booted, spurs, tricorns, swords, muskets, oiled bridles, riding oiled saddles. None wore uniforms.

The four riders passed without speaking, and as the sounds dwindled, Caleb whispered, “Something’s wrong.”

Primus’s eyes were wide. “Po’ whites on foot up ahead. Rich whites on good horses followin’. Somethin’ bad happenin’.”

Hunched low, saber in hand, Caleb moved ahead, short running steps, stop, listen, move again, with Primus six feet behind. They had covered fifty feet and had the mounted riders in sight forty yards ahead when the silence was shattered by the blasting of muskets and the shouts of voices thick with bloodlust, and clouds of white gun smoke erupted from both sides of the dim trail. All four mounted riders threw their hands in the air, weapons flying, and pitched from their horses. Dirty, barefooted men were on top of them before they hit the ground, knives flashing, and in less than ten seconds, four men lay dead.

Grinning, cursing, the attackers seized the reins of the rearing horses and pulled them to a standstill, and four of the murderers swung up onto their backs. They spun the mounts and kicked them to a gallop toward the house, one-hundred-fifty yards distant, with the other three running after them on foot. While Caleb and Primus stared in stunned disbelief, the four men smashed open the front door and twenty seconds later roughly pushed two women and three children out into the yard, laughing, waiting until those on foot stopped before them, chests heaving, panting. While the seven men reloaded their muskets, the women seized the children and forced them to the ground and fell on them, then turned to their attackers, pleading, begging.

The moment the muskets were loaded, the seven men pointed them at point-blank range and fired. The heavy musketballs struck, and all five on the ground collapsed. One woman and one child moved, and the men seized them with one hand, their knives in the other.

Caleb stood white-faced, scarcely breathing, shocked beyond word or movement. Primus bowed his head and closed his eyes, and neither of them moved as the seven men scattered, two to the house, five to the outbuildings. Two slaves ran out the back door of the house toward the woods, and three others leaped from a barn window to run for their lives. The seven men disappeared into the buildings, and within two minutes smoke was coming from the doors and windows. Within five minutes the roofs were ablaze. Black smoke rose straight into the still, hot, humid air to stain the clear blue of the sky as the seven men gathered again in the yard, laughing and pointing, eyes glittering. Then they mounted the four dancing horses, three of them carrying double, and rode east into the forest and were gone.

Without a word Caleb broke into a run toward the bodies in the yard. He slowed as he approached, sickened by the awful sight of what the knives had done. He went to his knees beside them and felt at their throats. They were all dead: an older woman with gray hair; a younger woman, pretty. A boy with curly blond hair who looked like his mother, just beginning his growth to manhood; a dark-haired girl with two large front teeth grown halfway in; and a younger girl, brown hair, blue eyes wide open. Caleb turned to look at Primus, standing behind him, head down.

They got a cart from the toolshed and pulled it by hand to the woods and brought the four dead men back to the yard, where they straightened the bodies and laid them in a row. They looked for something to cover them, but there was nothing. When they could, they entered the smoking remains of the burned barn and found shovels with partially burned handles, and in the gathering darkness dug nine graves inside the fenced family cemetery plot behind the house, where, with sparks rising from the glowing embers of the collapsed house, they buried the dead.

Sweat-soaked, they stood at the head of the mounded graves, and Caleb repeated words he had heard Reverend Silas Olmsted recite at the funerals in the little white church near his home in Boston, in a time that seemed long, long ago. He finished, and Primus said some words that Caleb did not understand, and they walked in the dark to the horse trough at the well. While they washed, Caleb spoke.

“Who were they? Why were they killed?”

Primus’s words came slowly. “They rich white folk. Kilt by po’ white folk. The hate between ’em is strong. I seen it afore but not never like this. Somethin’ happened. Somethin’ wrong.”

They waited until the eastern sky was changing from black to purple, but none of the slaves returned. They took their bearings from the approaching sunrise, and they walked away. They did not look back.

Notes

Caleb Dunson and Primus are fictional characters. However, the creation of the slave trade, the treatment of slaves, the price and use of slaves, and the fact that suicide was common among the older slaves, as well as other shocking facts are well-chronicled. The principal crops handled by slaves during the revolutionary period were rice and indigo (Edgar, South Carolina: A Short History, pp. 62–81).

The ambush and killing of well-to-do white men and their families is accurate and included herein to demonstrate that the British triggered a war within the Revolutionary War, wherein old hatreds erupted between rich and poor Americans (Wallace, South Carolina, A Short History, p. 300–01; Higginbotham, The War of American Independence, p. 360).

The massacre of Americans by Banastre Tarleton’s cavalry is factual as described (see Mackesy, The War for America, 1775–1783, pp. 342–43).