This battle or large skirmish between partisan militia forces occurred on July 12, 1780. A rebel victory, though small in comparison, it gains importance when considered the first of many skirmishes and battles between loyalist and patriot forces that lead to the all-decisive Battle of King’s Mountain, October 7, 1780. On May 12, 1780, two months to the day before the battle, Charleston fell and the American Army had surrendered. British forces under Lord Cornwallis and his favorite mastiff, Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, immediately began subduing the remnants of the Continental force and patriot resistance across South Carolina. By early June, Lord Rawdon, second to Cornwallis, was in command at Camden, S. Carolina, a strong garrison about 130 miles northwest of Charleston. Additional forts and strongholds were thrown out west and north; at Ninety-Six, Rocky Mount, Gowens Fort, Earle’s Ford, Blackstock, and Prince’s Fort. The British were confident that South Carolina was secured and set plans for North Carolina. But even early on, there were small bastions of hope for the Whig cause in the deep south.
Backcountry after Charleston Falls to British
The back country, west of Camden, between the Broad and Catawba Rivers to the piedmont, had not been pacified by the red tide of British influence. Specifically, the Scotch Irish were posing problems. Called ‘The Borderers,’ they or their parents had immigrated from the border regions of England; more specifically lowland Scots from Scotland or in England, counties that bordered Scotland – Cumberland, Northumberland, and Yorkshire. Many had traveled down the Great Wagon Road from ports north, through Virginia, to settle in the Carolina backcountry.
In June, two small clash of arms with few casualties occurred between Tory and Patriot forces. One at a Baptist meeting house near Winnsboro, thirty miles west of Camden. Militia horsemen under Colonel William Bratton and Captain John McClare physically confronted and dispersed a group of Loyalists. Another happened forty miles further north, at the Alexander Old Field, a mile from modern day Great Falls. Captain McClare, this time with the Reverend John Simpson, commanded thirty-two horse in a surprise attack against a much larger gathering of Loyalists; 200 in all. The fight was short and aggressive, with the Tory force almost immediately routed.
Lord Rawdon Offers a Proclamation to Rebels
Lord Rawdon believed it necessary to take action to affirm England’s control of the region. He sent a commissioner into the back country to speak to Whig partisans and read a proclamation. William Hill, owner of William Hill’s Ironworks, wrote a memoir in which he listened to the proclamation read at his works. Accordingly, the commissioner (Hill never gave his name in his memoirs) was there to take their submissions and grant paroles and protections to all who gave oaths to become British subjects. The proclamation drafted by Rawdon basically stated that the Continental Congress had abandoned the Carolinas, and that George Washington and his army had been reduced to a small number of men and had ‘fled to the mountains.’
According to Hill, he took the floor and told those listening that what they were being told was a lie. That Congress had come to a resolution not to give up the states and that Washington “was in a more prosperous way than he had been in for some time, that he had actually appointed an officer with a considerable army, and was then on their march to the relief of the Southern States.” He remined his neighbors that “we had all taken an oath to defend and maintain the independence of the State.” He continued to urge that if they were unable to raise a force necessary to do so, that they could unite with fellow militia in North Carolina and return to see that South Carolina did not fall fully within Tory control. Hill happily wrote that “the poor Commissr was obliged to disappear with his proclamation and protections for fear of the resentment of the audience.”
Whigs Continue to Form and British Go after Rebel Bands
It appears that Hill used his influence for the gathering to elect two colonels, choosing Andrew Neel, and of course William Hill (it was common in southern militias to have two colonels per regiment). Afterwards, officers were selected to lead companies within the regiment. Hill wrote that “And as soon as this was known there were men both of the states of Georgia and South Carolina adding daily to our numbers that we soon became a respectable body.”
For Rawdon, the backcountry Whigs had gone too far. Those loyal to the crown needed British protection. These bands of marauding rebels had to be dealt with, especially prior to joining into stronger groups, organized under vocal, rebellious leaders. From Fort Ninety-Six, to Camden, on up to the Waxhaw at Rocky Mount, by July, the British had fully deployed and began to seek out rebel bands.
Spartan Rebel Band and British Major Patrick Ferguson Plans Attack
Up near modern day Spartanburg and the North Carolina border, Colonel John Thomas Sr. had led the Waxhaw region rebel band called the Spartan Regiment. Many were members of the Fairforest Presbyterian Church. When he was captured and imprisoned at the British stronghold at Ninety-Six, some sixty-five miles to the south, his son, Major John Thomas Jr. was promoted to colonel and took over command. In early July, Thomas, with about sixty militiamen, were encamped within the region. He had been calling out local Whigs to gather at his camp before marching to join up with Colonel Thomas Sumter.
The area Thomas was recruiting had a strong Tory presence, most particularly Tory militia leader Thomas Fletchall, owner of Fairforest Plantation on Fairforest Creek and branch of Tyger River. Fletchall had been in the same militia with both Thomas’ prior to the war. Thomas had remained cautious, but word soon filtered back to British authorities that Thomas was recruiting in the area. British Major Patrick Ferguson, inventor of the breech loading rifle, had been assigned as the backcountry Militia Coordinator. Among his instructions from Lord Rawdon was to seek out bands of rebel militia and destroy them before they could join up with larger patriot forces. When he was informed of Thomas’ presence at Cedar Springs and his intent, accordingly, Ferguson dispatched a Tory force of around 150 militiamen to Cedar Springs.
Colonel Thomas’ Mother Rides to Warn Rebels
Throughout the generations of historical accounts in warfare, actions that entail men are considered fact and suspect only upon further research. Actions that entail women are considered legend first and foremost, and remain as such. One has but to consider dozens of women who took part in the American Revolution, as cannoneer, defender of property, manning parapets, espionage, or riding to warn of eminent danger, and it would be hard pressed to name one event that has not gone down in the archives as legend. With that in mind, comes the remarkable ride by Jane Thomas, wife of John Thomas Sr., and mother of then current leader of the Spartan Regiment, John Thomas Jr.
Jane Thomas was visiting her husband and other son held captive at the Ninety-Six British stronghold and prison. While there, she happened to overhear some Tory women talking about Major Ferguson conducting a surprise attack the following night on the rebel camp at Cedar Spring, her son’s camp. Some accounts state she saddled the next morning and rode hard, covering the sixty-mile trek in one day. Other accounts state she rode throughout the night, arriving the next morning. After warning her son, she went home
Battle
That night, Colonel Thomas and his sixty men left their campfires burning, moved to the rear of camp, and concealed themselves to wait. During the early hours of July 12th, around 150 Tories charged the camp, expecting the Whigs were wrapped up in their blankets. There is no recorded history of who commanded this force. A few accounts state Major Ferguson himself, but there are no sources to back that up. The rebels volleyed from the woods that startled the militia, no doubt several if not most had never seen action before. One loyalist was reported to have been killed, John White, though perhaps more were left lying on the field with several wounded. The entire action lasted minutes as the loyalists’ panicked and scattered.
Aftermath
After the action at Cedar Springs, Thomas and his men joined General Sumter’s Brigade. Colonel Thomas would lead his Spartan Regiment in several battles and skirmishes including Hanging Rock, Old Iron Works, Musgrove’s Mills, Fish Dam Ford, Blackstock’s Plantation, Cowan’s Ford, Guilford Court House, Fort Granby, and Quinby Bridge.
The region would see six engagements between mainly partisan forces in the following four weeks that had begun with was later labeled, the First Battle of Cedar Springs. Each time, the violence escalated with Gowen’s Fort, Earle’s Ford, Fort Prince, Second Battle of Cedar Spring, and Musgrove Mill. It was a string of events that drew in not just South Carolina partisan farmers, but so too ‘over the mountain men’, those backwoods frontiersmen who had settled in what would later be eastern Tennessee. A plot that thickened until the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780, the final curtain call. It was an overwhelming rebel victory that destroyed Major Patrick Ferguson’s Tory Militia force and doomed the British army’s southern commander, Lt. General Charles Cornwallis’ hopes of future reinforcements from loyalist militias.
Additional Research Questions Sources of Battle
After the war, descriptions of past actions were told and retold again with a natural tendency to confuse some actions for another, particularly when the participants aged. In the case of the First Battle of Cedar Springs, early historian Hugh McCall’s 1816 text, The History of Georgia, was the first to offer any detail of the battle, citing three primary sources for his description of the battle; Frank Moore’s Diary, and two by British Lt. Anthony Allaire, officer in the Loyal American Regiment. . Another historian, Draper Lyman, who did extensive research on the Battle of King’s Mountain in his 1881 text, Kings Mountain and Its Heroes…, cited Moore’s primary sources as well as was the first to set the date on July 12th.
More modern researchers have dug deeper into the descriptions McCall’s primary sources gave, offering some skepticism as to how events played out. Some state it had been confused with other documented skirmishes between partisan forces; even doubting the action ever took place, sourcing James Hodge Saye’s 1847 Memoirs of Major Joseph McJunkin. Connor Runyan, in a 2016 article, Did the First Cedar Springs Skirmish Ever Happen, offers that Cedar Springs may have occurred, but under different circumstances than given by McCall. He suggests that there was no pre-planned attack on Colonel Thomas’ camp; therefore, negating Jane Thomas’ ride to warn her son, [leaving Jane firmly listed among the large number of women legends]. That on the night of July 12th, a Tory militia was on its way to join loyalist Major Zacharis Gibb’s call to muster at Wofford’s Old Field, not far from Cedar Springs. The loyalists stumbled upon Thomas’ rebel militia and a fight ensued in which the Whigs were the victor. He also interjects that perhaps it was a clash between two Fairforest Spartan Regiments – one rebel and the other Tory.
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RESOURCE
American Revolution in South Carolina. “Cedar Springs.”
Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse. 1997: John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, NY.
Draper, Lyman C. King’s Mountain and Its Heroes History of the Battle of King’s Mountain, October 7, 1780 and the events that led to it. 1881, 1929: Dauber & Pine Bookshops, Inc., New York, NY.
Hill, William edited by A. S. Salley Jr. Colonel William Hill’s Memoirs of the Revolution. 1921: The Historical Commission of South Carolina, Columbia, S. Carolina.
McCall, Hugh. The History of Georgia, Containing Brief Sketches of the Most Remarkable Events, Up to the Present Day in Two Volumes. 1816: William T. Williams, Savannah, GA.
Runyan, Conner. May 12, 2016. “Did the First Cedar Springs Skirmish Really Happen?”
Saye, James Hodge. Memoirs of Major Joseph McJunkin, Revolutionary Patriot. 1847: Watchman and Observer, Richmond, VA. 1977: Reprint A. Press Inc., University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.
Southern, Ed editor. Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas. 2009: John F. Blair Publisher, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.