The Battle of Beattie’s Hill, March 23, 1781, was an American victory. It pitted 180 mounted Georgia and South Carolina patriot militia against reportedly 90 British loyalists that included 75 Partisan Dragoons with a company of mounted light infantry; New Jersey Volunteers – all trained and equipped as British Regulars. So too, among the loyalists were a small number of mounted South Carolina militia. The battle lasted over four hours and was particularly brutal in a war that had denigrated the southern theatre into a vengeful civil war between hated factions. Noteworthy was the fact that this occurred a week after the British Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, March 15, 1781, which saw British Commanding General Lord Charles Cornwallis give up the Carolina backcountry for the coast so to rest and resupply his army. With Cornwallis out of the picture, Carolina backcountry militia became bolder, attacking British outposts throughout the south. In this case, the target was a large foraging party from the important British outpost Fort Ninety-Six at Cambridge, South Carolina.
On March 15th, Georgian leader Colonel Elijah Clarke had just returned to duty from wounds he had received at the Long Canes Skirmish, Dec. 12, 1780. He once again took the reins of his Wilkes County Militia. He rode was his old comrade in arms Lt. Colonel James McCall of the South Carolina Upper Ninety-Six District Regiment of Militia. The two leaders had combined forces several times over the past years; most recently at the Long Canes Skirmish and the First Siege of Augusta, September 14 – 18, 1780. Clarke and McCall’s militia were campaigning with Brigadier General Andrew Pickens, head of South Carolina state militia. Clarke was with Pickens when the able commander defeated a large Tory force at the Battle of Kettle Creek, February 14, 1779, throwing back a British invasion of Georgia until the following year. While Southern Continental Army commander General Nathanael Greene drew Cornwallis’ army north toward the Virginia border, Pickens remained in the South Carolina backcountry to harass British outposts.
Pickens received intelligence that a British party of horsemen, mostly a cavalry corps of dragoons and mounted infantry had left Fort Ninety-Six and were foraging further west in the Little River District. He also learned that its commander was the hated Major James Dunlop [often misspelt Dunlap]; a former captain in the Loyal Queen’s Ranger. Dunlop was recruited in August, 1776 under then Major Robert Rogers and later served under the new Queen’s Ranger’s leader, Colonel John Graves Simcoe. He received his captain’s commission one month after the Battle of Mamaroneck, Oct. 22, 1776. His company served with distinction at the Battle of Brandywine Creek, Sept. 11, 1777.
With the British invasion of South Carolina in 1780, Dunlop was transferred to the American Volunteers and campaigned under Major Patrick Fergusson who led a large loyalist militia along the British western left flank. While Dunlop was recovering from wounds received near Cowan’s Ford, Fergusson met his end at the Battle of King’s Mountain, Oct. 7, 1780. Cornwallis needed a proven officer to fill some of the gap left by Ferguson’s demise and lead a corps of horsemen in the Ninety-Six Region. He chose Dunlop; assigning him three corps of cavalry. Having recovered from his wounds by November, 1780, Dunlop aggressively led his Provincial Cavalry on several raids, including the January, 1781 destruction of General Andrew Pickens home in the Long Canes Settlement. Throughout Dunlop’s tenue in the south, he had been accused of several atrocities against South Carolina patriots; including a questionable abduction, rape, and death of a young girl from a patriot family. As such, among rebel militiamen, there was but one conclusion to Dunlop’s fate; death.
Pickens, eager to catch the despised dragoon leader who had torched his home, dispatched Clarke and McCall, along with one company from Roebuck’s Battalion of Spartan Regiment (led by Captain Major Parson) to set an ambush. According to pensioner Thomas Leslie, Pickens told them that “if they found any [Loyalists] that needed killing, not to spare them.” So too, Clarke and McCall had their own axes to grind. Three months earlier, Dunlop had plundered McCall’s home and abused his family. According to McCall’s son, early Georgian author Hugh McCall, he had placed a halter around the neck of one of the sons to extract information. And while under Major Fergusson, the cavalryman had chased Clarke and his Wilkes County Militia (known as the Georgia Refugees) all over western South Carolina, clashing with his men on more than one occasion. Both men were eager to deal with Dunlop once and for all.
Though the rebels outnumbered the loyalists two to one, many of the patriots were recently recruited and had yet to be armed. All but around a dozen of the British foragers were hardened regular veterans of several campaigns. Once the patriots were assembled, they rode hard after their prey. Lt. Col. Nisbet Balfour, former commander of Ninety-Six who had commanded Dunlop stated that he “behaved rather well, rather too far forward in his patrols, by which he got into scrapes…” For Dunlop, his tendency to ride too far forward had finally caught up to him; one last scrape with luck taking a deadly turn.
Clarke and McCall got word that Dunlop’s party had halted at Beattie’s Mill on Little River. The exact location of Beattie’s Mill remains unknown; however, it is believed the site was in present day Abbeville County, South Carolina, about twenty miles west of Fort Ninety-Six. Lt. Col. McCall took a small party and seized a bridge near the mill so to prevent the enemy’s retreat. Once the bridge was secured, Clarke’s main force charged the mill by surprise. Most of the South Carolina mounted militia under Captain Edward Fenwick fled once shots were fired. But the seventy-five disciplined partisan dragoons and light infantry, along with a few loyalist militiamen, took to the mill and outbuildings. Though their location was too open for a proper defense, Dunlop knew he was dubbed a vicious and brutal man with a reputation for indiscriminate slaughter. That his abuses against patriot settlers, most likely the families of some of the very men attacking him, offered what southerners labeled ‘Tarleton’s Quarter’ or a ‘Georgia Parole;’ the only mercy – a quick death. Therefore, the man General Cornwallis called “an active and gallant officer” had no choice but to fight.
The battle carried on for four desperate hours while skilled rebel riflemen picked off the defenders one by one. Not until thirty-four loyalists were killed and most of the rest wounded, Dunlop included, was a flag hung and surrender offered. Brigadier General Andrew Pickens, who subsequently met up with Col. Elijah Clarke, reported British casualties to Major General Nathanael Greene as 34 killed and 42 captured with no word on wounded. There is no primary report of rebel casualties, but most accounts list none or minimal.
As to Dunlop’s fate, Lt. McCall’s son wrote that he died the next evening. He then added that “the British account of this affair, stated that Dunlop was murdered by the guard after he had surrendered; but such was not the fact, however much he deserved such treatment.” But did Hugh McCall’s son choose to ignore an inconvenient truth, verified by several primary sources that could cast a shadow on his father’s involvement? Dunlop, along with the other officers were ridden north to Gilbertown, just over the North Carolina border. According to pensioner Joshua Barnett, the officers were sent “back to a little town in N. C. called Gilbert, where Dunlop was confined for some time, in an upper room, where one of our men (as was said) privately shot him dead with a pistol.” Pickens confirmed this in a report to Greene writing it was done by “a set of men chiefly known.” He identified one as an “Overmountain Man named Cobb.” Overmountain Men were chiefly responsible for Major Fergusson’s defeat at King’s Mountain and was a term for settlers who illegally settled along the wilderness on Native American land claimed by North Carolina; that which became eastern Tennessee.
But the most detailed description of Dunlop’s murder came from Captain Daniel Cozens who had led the company of New Jersey Volunteers. He was in the same cell as Dunlop when five militiamen entered and shot Dunlop, the flash setting the bed afire. After the flames were extinguished, it was found Dunlop was still alive and he was shot once more. However, after the rebels left the cell, Dunlop’s fellow officers dressed his wounds and by morning he was still breathing. At two that afternoon, Cozens saw Arthur Cobb enter the cell. After cursing out Dunlap, Cobb shot Dunlop point black with a rifle, killing him instantly. Cozen stated Cobb was identified by name to him the following day by attending guards. Cozen also implicated the officer staff in the murder, stating that “A Major Evan Shelby lay in the same house all night…” but did nothing to aid Dunlop nor halt the execution.
Though Pickens despised Dunlop and perhaps privately approved of the hated officer’s fate, he no doubt was concerned for retaliation on American prisoners once word of the assignation got out. He sent word of the murder to Lt. Col. Cruger at Ninety-Six and that his officers looked upon Dunlop’s death with “horror and detestation.” In similar fashion to the classic line uttered by the French Magistrate in the movie Casablanca, “Round up the usual suspects,” Pickens offered a reward for the perpetrator of the deed, though knowing precisely who had pulled the deciding trigger. Not surprisingly, no one was ever held accountable.
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RESOURCE
American Battlefield Trust. “Beattie’s Mill.”
American Revolution in South Carolina. “Beattie’s Mill or Dunlap’s Defeat.”
Cashin, Edward J editor. “The Pension Claim of Joshua Burnett.” Richmond County History. Vol. 10 (Winter 1978): pp. 14-19.
Coleman, Kenneth. The American Revolution in Georgia, 1763-1789. 1958 reissue 2021: University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.
Crawford, Alan Pell. This Fierce People, The Untold Story of America’s Revolution in the South. 2024: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY.
Crawley, Ron. “Major James Dunlop: An Officer of Much Energy and Promptitude.” Paper presented at the Sept. 2008 American Revolution Symposium in Spartanburg, SC. Theme – Redcoats: The British in South Carolina.
Hall, Leslie. Land & Allegiance in Revolutionary Georgia. 2001: University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.
Lynch, Wayne. “Major James Dunlap: Was He Murdered Twice?” January 14, 2016. All Things Liberty.
McCall, Hugh. The History of Georgia Containing Brief Sketches of the Most Remarkable Events up to the Present. Vol. 2. 1816: Seymour and Williams, Savannah, GA.