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The Battle Of Musgrove's Mill: The Prelude To Kings Mountain -- August 19, 1780

Colonel Issac Shelby's Overmountain Men crossing the Pacolet River on their way to
Musgrove's Mill. August 1780.

 The Battle of Musgrove's Mill

The Prelude To Kings Mountain

Saturday, August 19, 1780

By: C.W. Roden

(Part 11 of a 15 part series)

On the evening of Friday, August 18th, a force of about two hundred mounted Partisans under the joint command of Colonel Isaac Shelby, Lieutenant Colonel James Williams and Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke were preparing to raid a Loyalist camp at the site of Musgrove's Mill and farm, which controlled the local grain supply and guarded a strategic ford along the Enoree River in the Spartan District (present-day Spartanburg, Laurens, and Union Counties in South Carolina). 

Women's Monument at the Musgrove Mill State Historical Site
dedicated to Mary Musgrove, the daughter of the mill owner
and possibly a spy for the Patriot cause during the
Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War.
While her story may, or may not, have been fictional, this
monument stands in memory of Patriot women of South
Carolina who defended the State and American independence.

The owner of the mill, Edward Musgrove, was a local farmer, road manager, and land surveyor. At the time of the war he was considered a fairly aged man at about 64 years old. Like many in that part of the State, he wanted to remain neutral and wanted no part in the bloody backcountry civil war between those still loyal to the British Crown and those who supported the independence of South Carolina and the other former British colonies.

In the summer of 1780, however, the war came to his doorstep. His home and land along the river were used by the Loyalists as an encampment and his grist mill used to provide an important source of food for the hungry soldiers.

There have been rumors that his daughter, Mary Musgrove, was a spy for the local Patriots and would listen in on the British and Loyalists camped on her father's lands, then run to the Patriot's camp to relay their plans. This was never actually proven to be true though and there is come speculation that the rumors actually come from a fictional character in a 19th century novel by John P. Kennedy called Horseshoe Robinson: A Tale of the Tory Ascendancy published in 1835.


Shelby's Campaign & Battle Of Fort Thicketty
 

During the summer of 1780, a group of Overmountain Men (Scots-Irish, or Ulster Scotch settlers from the western Appalachian regions of North Carolina, Virginia, and what is today eastern Tennessee and Kentucky) led by Colonel Isaac Shelby joined up with Colonel Charles McDowell to raid Loyalist outposts in the Piedmont mountain region of northwestern South Carolina.

Born in Maryland before moving further west, Shelby had his first experience fighting Native Americans as a teenager during Pontiac’s War of 1763. It was during this that, at just 13 years old, Shelby scalped an Indian scout during the conflict.

Shelby was surveying lands in Kentucky in 1780 when he heard of the Southern Continental Army's defeat at Charleston. He hurried to North Carolina, where he found a request for aid from General Charles McDowell to defend the borders of North Carolina from the British. Shelby assembled three hundred militiamen and joined McDowell.

Just prior to joining General Horatio Gates' "grand army" on their ill-fated attempt to defeat Cornwallis at Camden, General Thomas Sumter had learned that the British Major Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist troops were moving beyond the Broad River and he directed Lt. Colonel Elijah Clarke and his band of Georgia partisans to move towards that area. Clarke met up with McDowell on July 15th at Earle's Ford along the Chattooga River then moved their camp to Cherokee Ford along the Broad River.

On Tuesday, July 25th McDowell detached Shelby's Overmountain men and Clarke's Georgia Patriots, along with Rutherford County (North Carolina) Regiment of Militia under Colonel Andrew Hamilton and Colonel William Graham to attack Fort Anderson (also known locally as Thickety Fort) on the Pacolet River. Along the way they met up with two companies of the South Carolina 1st Spartan Regiment of Militia led by Captain John Collins and Captain Josiah Culbertson. A total force of about 600 men.

On the morning of Wednesday, July 26, 1780, Shelby and his 600 Patriot militia surrounded the British stronghold. The fort, a log structure built in the early 1760s during the Anglo-Cherokee War, contained a Loyalist garrison commanded by Captain Patrick Moore. 

Shelby sent Captain William Cocke to immediately demand the fort's surrender. Captain Moore replied that he would defend the fort to the last extremity. Shelby brought his men and formed them within musket range and again demanded surrender.

Though the fort likely would have withstood the attack, Moore lost his nerve and capitulated, not wishing a repeat of the Loyalist defeat at Ramsour's Mill the previous month. Without firing a shot, Shelby's men captured 94 prisoners (93 Loyalists and a British Sergeant Major who was assigned to train the Loyalists), along with 200 badly needed muskets and ammunition. The Loyalists' muskets had been loaded with buck and ball shot and were at the ready at the nearby portholes, and likely would have been sufficient to stop twice the number of men that Shelby had.

Shelby and his men moved back to Cherokee Ford with their prisoners. The British would later censure Moore for the loss of the garrison.


The Engagement At Wofford's Iron Works & Cedar Springs 

 
After Shelby’s success at Thicketty Fort, McDowell detached about 600 men under Colonels Isaac Shelby and Elijah Clarke from his camp at Cherokee Ford to monitor British Major Patrick Ferguson’s backcountry movements with his loyalist militia and provincials. Ferguson knew of Shelby and Clarke’s partisan bands and hoped to catch them by surprise.

They rode first down the Broad River before retreating 30 to 40 miles to the northwest, stopping along Fairforest Creek about a mile from Cedar Springs. Early on August 8, they learned from the wife of a local patriot that a detachment of Ferguson’s men under Major James Dunlap -- British Legion troops and Loyalist militia --were only a half-mile away. The Patriots quickly decamped and moved about four miles toward Wofford’s Iron Works, taking a position near a peach orchard.

When Dunlap and his mounted men rode hard into the camp, the patriots, who had lined the road, opened fire, knocking many from their saddles and throwing the rest into confusion. Once Dunlap regained control, the fighting devolved into hand-to-hand combat, which Shelby described as “An action severe and bloody” that lasted about an hour. Dunlap retreated with thirty men killed and fifty taken prisoner, pursued by Shelby and Clarke for two miles. However, he met Ferguson coming up with reinforcements, and the retreat became an advance against the Patriot militia.

Ferguson was meeting the Overmountain Men in battle for the first time.

Shelby's men were gathering peaches from an orchard when they were surprised by some of Ferguson's Loyalists on a reconnaissance mission. Shelby's men quickly readied their arms and drove back the Loyalist patrol. Soon, however, the redcoats were reinforced and the patriots fell back. The pattern continued, with one side being reinforced and gaining an advantage, followed by the other. Shelby's men were winning the battle when Ferguson's main force of 1,000 men arrived.

Overwhelmed by numbers, Shelby and Clarke retreated, stopping at points to fight and hold off the loyalist advance. Ferguson pursued for four miles, until the rebels crossed the Pacolet River; he halted pursuit and watched as the patriots taunted them from atop a hill across the river where British musket fire could not reach them. Now safe, they taunted the British, and Ferguson's force withdrew from the area, thus ending the Battle of Cedar Springs. Shelby and Clarke continued toward Cherokee Ford with their fifty prisoners, having lost only four killed and twenty wounded.


Moving On Musgrove's Mill

General McDowell then ordered Shelby and Clarke to take Musgrove's Mill. They rode all night with 200 men including another North Carolina officer, Colonel James Williams, reaching their location about the evening of Friday, August 18, 1780.

The Patriots revealed their presence when several of their scouts clashed with a Loyalist patrol across the river. Two Rebels were wounded in the brief clash. Because surprise was now out of the question, Clarke, Williams, and Shelby fell back, taking a defensive position half a mile away from Musgrove's Ford.

In the meantime the Patriots encountered a local farmer who informed them that, contrary to their initial intelligence, the Tory garrison, commanded by Colonel Alexander Innes, had been recently reinforced by an additional 100 Loyalist militia under Colonel Daniel Clary and 200 Provincial regulars. The Provincials included a company of the Royal New Jersey Brigade under Captain Abraham de Peyster, and about 100 mounted infantry of the South Carolina Loyalist regiment, part of Innes's own command, as well as North Carolina Loyalists under Captain David Fanning. A total of approximately 500 Loyalists in the camp who were preparing for join Major Ferguson's force.

Shelby's men and horses were too tired for a retreat and they had lost the element of surprise. With their position compromised by an enemy patrol and horses unable to go on without rest, the Patriots understood that they must stand and fight despite being outnumbered better than two to one.

Outfits worn by the Patriot militia and British Provincials
in the Southern Campaign of the American Revolutionary War.
(Photo courtesy of the Musgroves Mill State Historical Site)

The Battle

Outnumbered, and having lost the element of surprise, Shelby, Williams, and Clarke held a council of war that night and came up with a plan that displayed the best tradition of guerrilla tactics. They would lure Innes' Loyalists into an ambush.

Early the next morning at the top of a ridge across the road leading down to Musgrove Mill, the partisans quickly formed a semicircular breastwork of brush and fallen timber about three hundred yards long. In half an hour the makeshift fortifications were complete.

A band of about twenty Georgia men under the leadership of Captain Shadrach Inman Jr. then crossed the Enoree and engaged the enemy. Feigning confusion they retreated back across the river. Colonel Innes, believing that he could overrun and capture the Patriot force, took the bait and ordered the pursuit.

Inman's force reached the hidden line of ambush, closely pursued by the Loyalists. The Patriots were ordered to hold fire until they could distinguish the buttons on the clothes of the approaching Loyalists. When Innes’s men were within 70 yards, they spotted the Patriot line and fired too early. However, the Patriots held their fire until the Loyalists got within killing range of their muskets and opened fired with devastating effect.

Nonetheless, the Provincials were well-trained and disciplined and nearly overwhelmed the Patriot right flank with a bayonet charge. Lacking bayonets with which to defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat, the frontiersmen fell back. Attempting to relieve some of the pressure on the imperiled Patriot line, Colonel Clarke attacked the enemy’s right flank. At around the same time, one of Shelby’s men shot and wounded Innes, who fell from his horse. Shelby ordered his reserve of Overmountain Men to support him. They rallied and returned to the fray as the Loyalists began to waverand they rushed into the battle shrieking Indian war cries. Patriots ran from their positions yelling, shooting, and slashing at their enemies. The Patriots pressed home their attack, and the Loyalist wavered after a number of their officers went down, then they broke and retreated back across the river in a rout, some of them throwing their muskets as they ran.

The whole battle took perhaps less than an hour. Within that period, 63 Tories were killed, about 90 wounded, and 70 were taken prisoner. The Patriots losses were negligible, with about 5 dead and 12 wounded. Among those killed was Captain Inman himself, who played the key role in implementing the Patriot strategy.

Marker at the Musgrove Mill National Battlefield Park
at the site where Captain Shadrach Inman fell in battle.

Aftermath

With their demoralized enemy driven back across the river, the Patriot leaders briefly considered following up on their success and attacking the British stronghold at Ninety Six. They were preparing to do so when a messenger arrived from Colonel Charles Caswell with the news of Gates' defeat at Camden three days before.

The savage action fought at Musgrove's Mill was a clear victory for the backcountry Partisans and the Overmountain Men, but it could not mitigate the double disasters at Camden and Sumter's rout at Fishing Creek. Shelby was also informed that Ferguson's Loyalists were headed their way from Ninety Six in pursuit. 

With this new intelligence, the Patriots decided to disperse their forces and withdraw north towards North Carolina. Shelby's forces covered sixty miles with Ferguson in hot pursuit before making good their escape. Williams conducted the prisoners taken at Musgrove's Mill to Hillsborough, North Carolina, where the remnants of Gates' defeated Continental Army were slowly reassembling. Shelby and his Overmountain Men fled back into North Carolina and returned to their settlements on the western side of the Appalachians. With the approach of the 1780 harvesting season, most of the Overmountain Men returned to their farms on the frontier, though it would not be the last time many of these men faced the Loyalists. McDowell remained in South Carolina to continue with harassing the Loyalists in the area with Sumter, while Clarke returned to British occupied Georgia to raise more partisans to continue the fight.

Despite yet another setback in the South Carolina backcountry, General Cornwallis, emboldened by his decisive victory of Gates' Continental army north of Camden and Tarleton's defeat of Sumter at Fishing Creek, would soon be preparing to lead his British Army north to try and implement the next stage of the British Southern Strategy -- the invasion and subjugation of North Carolina. 

Nonetheless, the Battle of Musgrove’s Mill signaled that resistance to British rule had not been snuffed out. The defeat of the Loyalists there would also play a role in the upcoming campaign that would turn the tide of the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War decisively in the favor of the American Patriots less than two months later at a place called Kings Mountain on the border between the two Carolinas, which will be the discussed in detail in the next chapter of this series.

 

For more information about the Battles of Fort Thicketty and Musgrove's Mill and their significance to American history please consult the following sources that were used to help with this blog post: 
Partisans & Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned The Tide of the American Revolution   

by Walter Edgar (2001) ISBN 0-308-97760-5
South Carolina's Revolutionary War Battlefields: A Tour Guideby R.L. Barbour (2002) ISBN 1-58980-008-7 (pbk.)

The Battle Of Fishing Creek: "Blood Ban" Tarleton Routes Sumter -- August 18, 1780

Tarleton's British Legion Cavalry attacking Sumter's men
at Catawba Ford along the Catawba River in Chester County, SC.

 The Battle of Fishing Creek

"Bloody Ban" Tarleton Routes Sumter

Friday, August 18, 1780 

By: C.W. Roden 

(Part 10 of a 15 part series)

Heading north along the western bank of the Catawba River at a leisurely pace, Brigadier General Thomas Sumter was unaware of the disastrous outcome at Camden, unaware that General Horatio Gates, the so-called "Hero of Saratoga" had abandoned his own army and retreated into North Carolina to avoid being captured. 

It wasn't until the evening of Wednesday, August 16th that a dispatch rider, 13-year-old Andrew Jackson, from Major William Richardson Davie informed Sumter of the disaster at Camden and the disgraceful retreat of General Horatio Gates -- whom Davie had encountered only hours before.

Despite this alarming news, Sumter did not increase his pace.

Among Sumter's force were about 700 mounted militia and 100 Maryland Continentals and two artillery pieces detached to his force by Gates only a few days before. Traveling with Sumter's force were also fifty wagons full of captured British supplies and about 250 prisoners of war. The latter was severely slowing Sumter's usual quick progress.

Unwilling to abandon his captured plunder, Sumter and his men continued to move slowly north along the river towards Charlotte and safety.

The Pursuit of Sumter

In the immediate aftermath of his decisive victory just north of Camden, General Lord Cornwallis gave orders to the Loyalist British Legion commander Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton to pursue Sumter's backcountry militia and recapture the prisoners and supplies taken by the Patriot leader.

Lord Cornwallis considered Sumter such an annoyance that he called him one of his "great plagues" -- an accurate description given the work that Patriot militia under his command had accomplished disrupting British outposts in the backcountry over the course of the summer. He gave Tarleton orders to capture, or kill, Sumter if possible.

The British Legion had just returned to camp following their pursuit and slaughter of routed Patriot militia and Continentals following the retreat from Camden. Tarleton was more than eager to take up his mission and immediately set out up the eastern bank of the Catawba River with about 350 men -- including a detachment of the 71st Regiment of Foot (Fraser's Highlanders) riding double with the Legion cavalry.

The proud English aristocrat sought revenge for the defeat of a detachment of his own British Legion under Captain Christian Huck at Williamson's Plantation the month before at the hands of Patriot militia from Sumter's command. It had been a blow to the reputation of his Legion as a force to be feared in the back country. 

By the evening of Thursday, August 17th, Sumter had crossed the rover and only moved as far as Rocky Mount, setting up camp in the open along the riverbank not far from the now abandoned British outpost. From the other side of the river, Tarleton could easily spot the partisan camp, seeing their cooking fires in the darkness. To keep his own position secret, Tarleton ordered his own men not to build fires. Crossing over the next morning and moving with characteristic speed, he reached the site of Sumter's camp, once again finding that Sumter had already moved on. Picking around 160 dragoons from his Legion and leaving the infantry to cover his rear and follow at their own pace, Tarleton continued the pursuit.

The stifling 90F degree August heat and the difficult conditions continued to slow Sumter's progress. About noon, after an eight-mile march, Sumter halted his force near Catawba Ford (in modern-day Chester County, South Carolina), where Fishing Creek feeds into the Catawba River.

In spite of warnings he had received, Sumter took no special security precautions, save for a few sentries posted along the road. Most of his men were using the halt in the march for rest and recreation. They stacked arms and relaxed, many taking the opportunity to swim and bathe in the creek, while others, including Sumter himself, decided to take a nap in whatever shade they could find. Sumter rested underneath one of the captured wagons.

Fishing Creek in Chester County, South Carolina as it would
have appeared in mid-to-late August in the summer of 1780.

The Battle

Tarleton's dragoons finally caught up to Sumter that afternoon, overwhelming the posted sentries before they could raise the alarm. He quickly formed them for attack. Despite being outnumbered about four-to-one, Colonel Tarleton and the British Legion dragoons charged into the Patriot camp, catching the militia and Sumter completely by surprise and quickly gaining control of the stacked arms.

The Patriot militia, many of which were caught literally with their pants down, were completely routed. Sumter woke from underneath the wagon as the green-coated Legion cavalry swept into the camp. Unable to get to his own horse, he cut the harness of a draft horse from the wagon and, riding bareback, tried to rally his panicked men. Ultimately, this proved futile as the Patriots were routed; each man for himself in the escaped. General Sumter fled into the nearby woods half-dressed, leaving behind his hat, coat, and boots; barely escaping capture himself.

The British Legion cavalry virtually decimated the militia and Continentals. The losses were one-sided and severe. The Patriots lost about 150 men killed and wounded, and more than 300 prisoners were taken. The Legion also freed the 250 captured British prisoners and captured all of Sumter's supplies and captured war material, including: 800 horses, 1,000 individual weapons, and his two artillery pieces. Tarleton himself only lost 16 men killed and wounded.

Not long after the battle, the rest of the British Legion infantry and the detachment of Highlanders that had been left behind arrived to help take charge of the prisoners and recaptured supplies.

"Blood Ban" Tarleton and his British Legion had their vengeance.


Aftermath

Two days later, following the battle at Fishing Creek (also known as the Battle of Catawba Ford) Sumter arrived in Charlotte and joined up with Major Davie's militia. He was a brigadier general without servant, soldiers, or baggage. He would soon gather another force of upcountry militia for the coming campaign that many of them now dreaded. Many of the Patriot militiamen from the District Between the Broad and Catawba Rivers who'd avoided capture by Tarleton's Legion would continue to resist the Loyalist militias and their British allies on their own over the course of the next couple of months.

The defeat of Gates at Camden and the routing of Sumter at Fishing Creek were terrible blows to the morale of the upcountry partisans. Lord Cornwallis, on the other hand, was jubilant. The news of the twin defeats would reach London, making the earl the toast of the capital. When the Comte de Vergennes, King Louie XVI's foreign minister, learned of the defeats, he believed that the American cause was lost. He floated a peace feeler based on uti possidetis ("as you possess") that would have left South Carolina and Georgia as British colonies.

Tarleton himself believed that the defeat of Sumter would be enough to eliminate any further organized resistance to the Crown in the upcountry. Lord Cornwallis himself was not as certain of that since Sumter himself had not been captured, or killed. None-the-less, the British general now felt that the time was right to begin the next step in the conquest of the American South -- the invasion of North Carolina.

However, all was not lost to the upcountry South Carolina Patriots. Help would soon come from an unexpected ally from the North Carolina Appalachians and the British Southern strategy would find itself coming to a grinding halt -- the beginning of which will be discussed in detail in the next chapter of this series.

Monument near the site of the Battle of Fishing Creek
(also known as the Battle of Catawba Ford) near Great Falls,
SC in Chester County.

For more information about the Battle of Rocky Mount and its significance to American history please consult the following sources that were used to help with this blog post:

 Partisans & Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned The Tide of the American Revolution  

by Walter Edgar (2001) ISBN 0-308-97760-5