The Battle of Nelson’s Ferry (also called Great Savannah), August 20, 1780, was Colonel Francis Marion’s (1732-1795) first battle as a partisan militia leader. It was also the first of many victories for the former Lt. Colonel of Continental troops. A man of small stature, his cautious nature combined with bold and daring aggressive attacks against his enemy would make him one of the largest figures in the southern partisan war against Tory and British troops. But in August, 1780, he had yet to earn the title ‘Swamp Fox, that which his enemy called him out of respect.
By the start of the American Revolution, he was an acclaimed combat veteran of the French and Indian War and a Cherokee uprising. This action, his first leading partisan troops, would be like all future assaults against his enemy. Meticulously planned, Marion took into consideration all aspects of terrain, his enemy’s capabilities, fire power, surprise and ambush, and importantly, avenues of retreat from pursuit. Within two weeks of Nelson’s Ferry, Marion would defeat British provincial regulars, rout a Tory force five times his command, and more than triple the number of new recruits to his rebel band. By the first week of September, “Swamp Fox” was a title Marion proudly wore and so too, gained the notice of a British army determined to cage the crafty fox.
Marion’s Early Life
Do you know that when he was born, he was so small that he was put in a quart measure to be weighed, and that he almost got lost in it.
Colonel Henry Middleton Rutledge (great grandson of Governor John Rutledge of South Carolina) as told to his son Archibald
Marion was probably born in St. John’s Parish, Berkeley County, near Georgetown, South Carolina, about 1732. As a descendant of French Huguenots who settled on the Santee River, he received a country school education before establishing himself as a small planter in St. John’s Parish. Like most planters within the region, had led militias during the French and Indian War (1756 – 1763) He had fought well; most particularly during the Cherokee War of 1760-61. After the war, he returned to his farm and worked diligently to improve his financial status.
Within a few years he came into a small inheritance. As such, Marion entered the realm of planters in and around Charleston, South Carolina who garnished the title as Rice Kings; wealthy men who ran South Carolina’s politics and laws while basically ignoring the needs of the colony’s interior ‘backcountry’ residents. Only when war broke out and the need arose for ‘cannon fodder’ to fill the ranks of the two Continental regiments and state militias did the backcountry settlers gain importance among those leading the rebellion.
Marion as Continental Army Officer
When hostilities broke out in 1775 between colonialists and mother England, Marion was commissioned a captain on June 17th of the 2nd South Carolina; one of the state’s two continental regiments. He was promoted to Major in November and soon after, led his regiment during the Snow Campaign, December 23 – 30, 1775. During the September 28, 1776 British attack on Fort Sullivan, Charleston, South Carolina, Marion helped aim the cannon that drove off Admiral Sir Peter Parker’s fleet.
When Colonel William Moultrie was promoted to Brigadier General in September, 1776, Marion was commissioned a Lt. Colonel in the 2nd under Colonel Isaac Motte. On September 19, 1778, Motte resigned his commission and on the 23rd, Marion took over as commandant of the 2nd S. Carolina Continental Regiment. The future Swamp Fox led his 2nd regiment during the ill-fated Franco-American siege of Savannah, September 16 – October 18. Marion was present in Charlston when the British under General Henry Clinton laid siege to the city, March 29 – May 12, 1780.
In April, one month before Charleston fell to Clinton’s army, Maron had fallen and broke his ankle. He was deemed unfit for duty and ordered to leave the city, therefore avoiding capture when American General Benjamin Lincoln surrendered the southern army on May 12, 1780. Marion, with around a dozen followers, began to regroup and recruit a small band of local partisan fighters from the Pee Dee and Santee River regions. When word that a force of Continental soldiers were marching towards South Carolina, Marion rode north to meet them and offer his services as both former officer and one who knew the lay of the land as well as any.
Marion Leads a Small Band of Partisan Fighters Gathering Intelligence
By July, 1780, American Continental reinforcements under Major General Jean de Kalb sent by Washington to revitalize the Southern Army, had reached Deep River in North Carolina. Soon after, Marion had ridden into de Kalb’s camp unnoticed at the head of his small band of rebels.
A small, dark man with thick, misshapen knees and ankles, Marion was a man of contradictions. The former plantation owner and Rice King was considered kind, accommodating, and a refined gentleman. Yet so too, while commanding the SC 2nd Continental Regiment, he was a strict disciplinarian whose spartan nature and commanding presence garnished him the description as “an ugly, cross, knock kneed, hook-nosed son-of-a-bitch.” Yet in all things military, he proved his genius. As a partisan leader, he was cautious, especially in security of camp and movements. And crafty; knowing when to fight or fly, retreating when warranted that continually thwarted his enemy. But when the time was right, and he was rarely if ever wrong in this, he lashed out with an aggressive vengeance, often against odds far beyond his command.
But Marion had yet to establish his legend as one of the war’s greatest guerrilla fighters. Soon after General de Kalb met the former continental officer, he sent him and his men to the Pee Dee River to scout out the enemy and report back on their movements. General de Kalb was relieved by Major General Horatio Gates on July 25, 1780. Two days later Marion returned from his intelligence gathering mission. Colonel Otho Williams of the Maryland 1st Continental Regiment described the appearance of Marion and his band in his “Narrative” after the war writing that the partisans were “distinguished by small black leather caps and the wretchedness of their attire; their number did not exceed twenty men and boys, some white, some black, but most of them miserably equipped, their appearance was in fact so burlesque that it was with much difficulty the diversion of the regular soldiery was restrained by the officers.”
General Gates was even less impressed by Marion’s presence or the partisan’s usefulness, mirroring his officers’ low opinions. Colonel Williams recorded that the “general himself was glad of an opportunity of detaching Colonel Marion at his own instance towards the interior of South Carolina, with orders to watch the motions of the enemy and furnish intelligence.” The decision to send away a valuable mounted resource, one who had extensive combat experience and who also was native to the region upon which Gate’s army were to march through, can only be considered foolhardy and for the southern army, would prove fatal.
But Marion did not see this rejection as a slight. He had knowledge of Colonel Thomas Sumter’s exploits recruiting and leading partisan militia and therefore looked upon this separate command as an opportunity for similar ambitions. Author John Buchanan wrote, “…militia of the Williamsburg District north of Charleston had asked that a Continental officer be sent to lead them. He [Marion] rode off at the head of his men and boys, white and black, a legend in the making.”
Prior to Battle
Once Marion left Gate’s camp, he had set his eyes on procuring the Santee River; its tributaries and all crossings. On August 17th, he was reinforced by the Williamsburg militia at Witherspoon’s Ferry on the Lynches River. Word had yet reached Marion of Gate’s defeat at Camden the previous day. Under the former Continental officer’s command were two competent fighters, brothers Peter and Hugh Horry. He split his force and ordered Peter to the lower portion of the Santee River. From there Horry would proceed up river to Lenud’s Ferry, destroying all river boats, including ferries as he marched. Marion marched sixty miles directly to Lenud’s Ferry and turned up river, so too wrecking all river craft.
On August 19th, he reached Nelson’s Ferry, an important crossing point on the Santee River in the Charlestown District, presently Orangeburg County. There he received word of Gate’s defeat, but did not share it with his men at first, thinking that it would discourage them at the very start of his campaign. That night he received word from a Tory deserter that six miles distant, on Colonel Thomas Sumter’s abandoned plantation at Great Savannah, one hundred American prisoners from the Battle of Camden were encamped. They were being escorted from the battlefield, some sixty miles northwest of Nelson’s Ferry, toward Charleston by thirty-six troops, mainly of the 63rd Regiment of Foot. Marion had fifty-two mounted militia to contest the hardened veteran regulars, but wasted no time; he would attack at dawn, August 20, 1780.
The Battle
The British regulars under Captain Jonathan Roberts had never heard of Francis Marion. Roberts, resting after three days of vigorous marching, had no idea that he and his men were being stalked by partisan rebels. Roberts and his officers made themselves at home in Sumter’s abandoned residence while his men stacked their arms outside the plantation house. Sentries were posted and the British, along with their exhausted captives, slept soundly. Just before dawn, Marion and his men had arrived outside the camp.
The partisan leader dispatched Hugh Horry and sixteen men to the ford at horse Creek to act as a blocking force to prevent escape. Marion would launch the main attack on the plantation’s rear with the rest of his men. Horry’s men cautiously advanced to their posting; however, they were spotted by one of the British sentries and fired upon. Instead of carrying on to the ford, Horry instinctive decision won the day for the rebels. He immediately ordered his sixteen men to charge the house. They raced down the lane in a mad dash and just as the British were aroused to the danger, Horry’s detachment gained the enemy’s stacked arms.
At that same instant, Marion’s horsemen charged from the rear. The action was over in a few minutes. Redcoats were shot or cut down as they emerged from the house and tents. The slaughter was complete with twenty-four British killed, wounded, or captured. Accordingly, ten regulars would manage to escape to report the destruction of the escort and loss of American captives. Though small in comparison, the action freed 147 American prisoners, while Marion’s loss was minor, only two wounded.
Afterward
The action at Sumter’s Great Savannah plantation, though a small affair, would be the first of many for the partisan leader. The sudden and complete annihilation of a company of regular troops by backwater militia was enough for British commanding General Charles Cornwallis to launch an investigation as to who was behind the assault. A week later, Marion would strike again at what has been called the Battle of Blue Savannah, September 4, 1780. This time his small band of fifty-three riders attacked a Tory militia five times their number. Again, Marion would cautiously plan his attack and when it fell, it was carried out quickly and aggressively; the result was a complete rout and destruction of the loyalists. So too, word was spreading and within days of the Tory defeat, sixty more rebels rode into Marion’s camp.
And the British, confident in their victory at Camden with their eyes on North Carolina, began to realize they had a real problem on their hands. South Carolina, in fact, had not been subjugated as reported to London. The British right flank was under renewed attack by an emerging rebel leader. While angered backwater Over the Mountain men threated the British army’s left flank. In fact, the partisan war that annoyingly drained British resources was just getting started. A war of attrition emerged that over time, contributed immensely to the ruin of England’s hopes in regaining the south.
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RESOURCES
Allaire, Anthony. Diary of Lieut. Anthony Allaire. 1881: Lyman Copeland Draper. 1968: Arno Press, Inc., New York, NY.
Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas. 1997: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY.
Crawford, Alan Pell. This Fierce People, The Untold Story of America’s Revolution in the South. 2024: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY.
Draper, Lyman C. King’s Mountain and Its Heroes: History of the Battle of King’s Mountain, October 7th, 1780, and the Events Which Led to It. 1881: P. G. Thompson, New York, NY.
James, William Dobein. General Francis Marion And His Guerilla Fighters Of The American Revolution. 1821: Gould & Riley, Charleston, South Carolina.
Walter, Edgar. Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution. 2001: Harper Collins, New York, NY.
Williams, Otho Holland. Brigade and Regimental Orders, September 13, 1780 – O.H. Williams Commanding. Manuscripts Collection, Maryland Historical Society