03:01 PM EDT on Monday, July 17, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

The Siege of Yorktown did not end the American Revolution; in the South it continued to smolder, and Nathanael Greene remained in the thick of it. When fever season broke in the cooling air of mid-November, he decided to move his army from their camp in the High Hills of the Santee down into the swamps of the South Carolina Low Country in hopes of driving the remaining Loyalists into Charleston.

Informing Gen. Francis Marion of his move into the Low Country, Greene wrote in mid-November 1781: I expect several more good hard fights this winter; and if we hold our ground until Spring possibly an evacuation [of Charleston] may take place.

As Greene predicted, there were some "good hard fights" though no major battles on the scale of his recent battle at Eutaw Springs. On Nov. 28, 1781, Greene groused about parties of Tories . . . doing great mischief upon the Saluda [River], and in the neighborhood of Ninety-Six . These parties were part of "the Bloody Scout," the last large-scale operation of the war.

Loyalist militia led by Maj. William "Bloody Bill" Cunningham pushed into the South Carolina backcountry behind Greene's army, plundering from people who had not fled.

Cunningham's main force of 300 men pinned down a party of two dozen Whig militia led by Capt. Sterling Turner; for two hours Turner's men, firing from inside a house, fought them off until they ran out of ammunition. Turner then offered to surrender. Bloody Bill refused to grant any quarter.

American militia Col. LeRoy Hamilton reported to Greene: "The Capt. And 14 others were most cruelly murdered and mangled. The Captains head was cut off and one Butler[,] a man who had been remarkable actif was tortured with more than savage Cruelty[.] Both his hands were cut of[f] whilst alive . . . . After burng sundry Mills, Houses, grain &c they went off with impunity."

American militia under Hammond and Gen. Andrew Pickens eventually chased the last of the Loyalist raiders into Charleston and into the Cherokee territory high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, putting an end to the Bloody Scout. For Pickens the dispersal came at a price: the Loyalists who fled to the Cherokees took with them as prisoner John Pickens, the general's brother. He was never again seen.

Proposal to arm slaves

The loss of 7,000 men at Yorktown prompted King George III to make a bellicose speech to Parliament calling for "your firm concurrence and assistance, to frustrate the designs of our enemies."

The Charleston Royal Gazette published the king's November speech on March 2, 1782; within a week, Greene had read it, commenting to Gen. George Washington: Your Excellency will see by the King's speech . . . [that] the enemy are determined to prosecute the war.

Greene did not feel his army was ready for a renewal of warfare on the scale of Guilford Courthouse and Eutaw Springs. He complained to Washington:

We have 300 men now without arms, and twice that number so naked as to be unfit for any duty but in cases of desparation. Not a rag of clothing has arrived to us this winter. Indeed our Prospects are really deplorable.

To raise troops that he really felt he needed, Greene proposed arming and training slaves in Georgia and South Carolina; in exchange for fighting, the slaves would win their freedom. Before the war, slaves outnumbered whites in South Carolina by about 100,000 to 70,000.

The natural strength of this country in point of numbers, appears to me to consist much more in the blacks, than the whites, Greene wrote to South Carolina Gov. John Rutledge. . . . That they would make good Soldiers I have not the least doubt . . . .

Greene had seen black soldiers fight at Monmouth and had commanded the First Rhode Island Regiment, comprising slaves, when it held off the Hessians near Newport. He knew they could fight.

Greene made a similar pitch for arming slaves to the Georgia legislature; it tabled it without even a discussion. South Carolina's legislature, spurred by the abolitionist Col. John Laurens, at least discussed Greene's proposal -- before rejecting it by a vote: "12 or 15 were for it and about 100 against."

"Genr Greene favored it -- wished for its success," noted one participant in the debate. "The northern people I have observed, regard the condition in which we hold our slaves in a light different from us. I am much deceived indeed, if they do not secretly wish for a general Emancipation, if the present struggle was over."

South Carolina did offer to send slaves to the Continental Army as unarmed servants and artisans, but with two catches: they'd retain their status as slaves, and the slaves would count toward the state's quota of armed men they were obliged to provide.

Greene felt this was preposterous. Writing back to Gov. John Mathews in an almost sarcastic tone, Greene noted: unless the Negroes have an interest in their [freedom], I am persuaded they will be of little benefit and by no means to be depended on. I would beg leave to propose therefore that the public cloth them, and that the Negroes be allowed the same wages granted by Congress to the Soldiers of the Continental army. If this is agreed to[,] the fidelity of the Negroes may be depended on, and they will perhaps perform the service expected from them, with chearfulness.

If the South Carolina legislature responded to Greene's proposal, the response has not been found.

While every state except Greene's native Rhode Island refused to arm slaves, he knew that the British in Charleston were doing it. He wrote:

The [British] army are now arming a considerable body of negroes and I am well informed that they determine to compleat them to the number of 3,000 for the defence of Charlestown should it be necessary nor can we doubt of the measures being approved by british Administration when Lord Sandwich declared in Parliament that the Ministry would avail themselves of every thing that God and Nature had put in their power to crush this rebellion.

The British never did arm 3,000 slaves, far from it; the actual number was closer to 700, including two legions of mounted dragoons that mostly operated on the outskirts of Savannah. Most of the fiercest fighting of 1782 took place around Savannah, where Gen. "Mad Anthony" Wayne's troops killed a member of the Black Dragoons called General March. Unlike the all-slave First Rhode Island Regiment, Britain's black troops served under black officers, such as March. About 10 weeks after March's death, the British abandoned Savannah, leaving them in possession of just two cities in the United States: New York and Charleston.

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

A continuing series.