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The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry, 1775-1776

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The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry, 1775-1776 W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2007 The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry, 1775-1776 Pierson J. Bell College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Bell, Pierson J., "The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry, 1775-1776" (2007). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626534. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-cn1c-j927 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Struggle for the South Carolina Backcountry, 1775-1776 Pierson J. Bell Buffalo, New York Bachelor of Arts, Canisius College, 2006 A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History The College of William and Mary August 2007 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Pierson J. Bell Approved by the Committee, July 2007 <^ferH^A'XUJU ________ James Axtell, Chair James Allegro Gail Bossenga ABSTRACT In 1775, the South Carolina Council of Safety and Provincial Congress faced the tall order of convincing backcountry settlers to join them in overthrowing royal government. Throughout the backcountry, enthusiasm for independence ran low. The lack of revolutionary zeal was a consequence of political, economic, and social differences between the backcountry and the lowcountry. Political power was concentrated in Charleston and the lowcountry. The backcountry lacked representation in the colonial Assembly, courts to prosecute criminals, and the Anglican establishment necessary to establishing a deferential social order. Economically, backcountry farmers were unable to replicate the rice plantations of the lowcountry. Without profits from a staple-crop such as rice, an egalitarian social order developed in the backcountry. Certain historians have argued that the influence of prominent individuals within the backcountry, who shared economic interests with coastal planters, helped to rally the backcountry to independence. Without strong political institutions and a staple-crop economy, deference failed to take root, undermining the arguments of these historians. In light of the differences between the two regions, revolutionary allegiances were not forged on a common ideology. How then did the Whig government secure the backcountry? The answer is two-fold and centers on the issue of protection. While the Whigs faced open opposition from back-settlers, the backcountry was subdued through threats of violence. The Council of Safety and Provincial Congress used militia forces to suppress political dissent in addition to waging economic warfare against those opposed to the independence movement. Rather than take up arms as active loyalists, most individuals chose to preserve their property by acquiescing to Whig rule. Whig forces also benefited from a major strategic blunder on the part of the British. Fear of Indian attacks ran high in the backcountry, and though the British had no intention of using the Indians to attack the colony, their actions sparked suspicion. While British intentions remained unclear to back-settlers, Whig forces sacked the Cherokees in 1776, securing the allegiance of thousands of back-settlers in the process. In 1780, thousands of back- settlers took up arms under the guard of British troops, reinforcing the notion that allegiance was based on protection and not political ideology. TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter I. Life in the Backcountry 7 Chapter II. Intimidation 22 Chapter III. The Indian Threat 38 Conclusion 48 Bibliography 60 Vita 64 i DEDICATION To Mom and Dad, without whom I would have never made it to William & Mary. To Aimee, whose unwavering faith in my abilities helped me overcome the many inferiority complexes I developed while a graduate student. To Dr. Jonathan Mercantini, formerly of Canisius College, who sparked my interest in revolutionary South Carolina. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks goes out to Professor James Axtell for serving as my thesis advisor and Professors James Allegro and Gail Bossenga for agreeing to serve on my committee. The first chapter of this thesis is an evolution of a paper I completed for Professor Allegro’s readings course in early America, and I am especially grateful to him for his comments and criticisms. I would also like to thank all three professors for taking time away from their own research to read drafts of this thesis over the summer. INTRODUCTION When Thomas Brown regained full consciousness on the evening of August 2, 1775, he probably awoke with a splitting headache. A strong blow from a rifle to the back of his skull had left Brown semiconscious. Just hours before he had been confronting a hostile mob from the porch of a plantation house deep within the Georgia backcountry. The headaches Brown would suffer for the rest of his life were not the only permanent wound he carried with him as a result of the confrontation. Brown’s feet had sustained severe trauma from exposure to a fire, crippling two toes and forcing him to walk with a limp for several months. Had his hand reached up to touch his head, he would have found a raw, open wound. If the blow to his head had clouded Brown’s memory, he may have assumed that Creek Indians had claimed his scalp; but his legs revealed the true identity of his assailants. A thick layer of tar caked his lower extremities, the signature punishment for those who opposed the will of the revolutionary mob.1 In the aftermath of the attack, Brown fled Georgia for the Ninety-Six district of the South Carolina backcountry to join forces with prominent loyalists. The angry mob that appeared at his door demanded that he sign an association swearing allegiance to the 1 Edward J. Cashin, The King's Ranger: Thomas Brown and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), 27-29. Though Brown settled in Georgia, he became a staunch loyalist and traveled extensively throughout South Carolina seeking to rally back-settlers for the Crown. His experience is similar to those who opposed Whig rule in South Carolina and thus is used as an example here. 1 Whig government. Brown had arrived in the colony less than a year before the attack, but he immediately entered a polarized society. As a new immigrant, he lacked the hatred of British policies that had been brewing for ten years among many colonists. Yet the angry mob that appeared at his door did not seek conciliatory gestures or afford him the option of neutrality. He was either with them or against them. Brown’s mistreatment at the hands of the Whigs spurred him to become a prominent loyalist leader, the commander of a provincial regiment known as the King’s Rangers, and Indian Superintendent for the Southern Department late in the war. Though the abuse Brown received at the hands of the Whigs was uncommon for most backcountry settlers, each backcountry resident was confronted with a choice: patriot or loyalist, associator or non-associator; there was no in-between. In the political and social turbulence of 1775, a year that witnessed the fall of royal government and open conflict between neighbors throughout South Carolina, the decisions made by tens of thousands of backcountry settlers determined the fate of the Revolution in South Carolina. What makes the backcountry settler in South Carolina different from any other individual in any other colony who would participate in the war? The settlement of the South Carolina backcountry occurred mere decades before the outbreak of the Revolution. Though the backcountry was slowly moving towards integration with the coastal establishment, the war interrupted the process. Economically, politically, and socially, the backcountry differed from the sophisticated, wealthy, Anglicized society it bordered. As a result, the Whig government encountered opposition as it attempted to rally the backcountry to war. Given the lowcountry’s record of political indifference towards the backcountry and the economic differences between the two regions, many 2 men had no desire to exchange a peaceful way of life and recently acquired economic stability for the havoc brought by war. Local concerns such as preventing the next Indian attack, getting the next crop to market, and establishing schools dominated the minds of the back-inhabitants, not abstract issues concerning a Parliament three thousand miles away. This description of the backcountry directly challenges that of Rachel Klein, who downplays the sectional divide between the two regions by attacking the notion of the backcountry as an egalitarian frontier. According to Klein, the backcountry was not isolated because a rising planter elite within the backcountry, who wielded a great deal of power in their localities, shared common economic interests with the planter elite in the South Carolina lowcountry. While the fact that that the vast majority of these rising planters took up arms for the Whigs is well-known, Klein goes further by arguing that lesser men of property followed their example. Her study, however, exaggerates the strength of deference in the backcountry and consequently, she gives the rising planter elite too much agency. In 1775 and 1776, deference had no bearing on the breakdown of allegiances for the vast majority of the white backcountry population. As mentioned above, the social, political, and economic conditions within the backcountry served as an obstacle to revolution. Yet, by the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, the Whigs controlled the entire province.
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