Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

CORNWALLIS ’ S INVASION OF NORTH CAROLINA , 1780

163

American Militia or threats of such attacks. To the southwest, around the British post of Ninety-Six, problems worsened. Lieutenant-Colonel John Harris Cruger, commanding there, reported on 7 September that his Militiamen would not stand against a sizable enemy force and his men showed signs that they wished to join the Americans. 69 Two of Cornwallis’s correspondents reported that Lieutenant- Colonel Brown had been attacked and driven from Augusta, Georgia, by American Militia, thereby possibly threatening the security of western South Carolina. 70 Ferguson faced his own challenges and soon reported that he was ‘in the centre of a variety of rebel parties who, if their own report were to be believed, exceed us in number six to one’. Despite enlisting hundreds of Militia, he began to request reinforcements from Cornwallis, eventually asking for a ‘diversion of the Legion’ in order to disperse the American Militia that threatened him. 71 To the east, in the Cheraw Hills region on the South Carolina border, the situation was equally bleak. Major Wemyss informed Cornwallis that it was impossible to give him ‘an idea of the disaffection of this country. Every inhabitant has been or is concerned in the rebellion and most of them very deeply’. 72 The effort to raise and maintain Militia was failing miserably as the British advanced. Not only would the Militia they raised not be able to ‘hold ground’, but they were in need of protection themselves. By 20 September, Cornwallis’s forces were in the Waxhaws region 54 kilometres from Charlotte. That afternoon, newly-commissioned ‘Colonel and Commander of all the [American] Militia Horse acting in the Western District’, William R. Davie, moved out from his camp south of Charlotte, to attack a Loyalist detachment positioned on Cornwallis’s right flank in the Battle of Wahab’s Plantation. 73 It was an audacious and dangerous plan for a seemingly ill-armed and recently assembled Militia force: a night-time attack on an enemy encampment over 48 kilometres from their base. Davie, however, had several advantages. His 150 men, as Cornwallis described them the day after the battle, were ‘esteemed rather better than Militia’ 74 — and, indeed 72% of them who submitted pension statements after the war listed previous battle experience, several of them as far back as 1775. 75 A few men, including Davie himself, lived in the area, which gave them a distinct advantage in avoiding enemy pickets and patrols. As luck would have it, 300 to 400 of Cornwallis’s Provincial Troops and Loyalist

69 Cruger to Cornwallis, 7 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, pp. 182-183. 70 Cary to Cornwallis, 18 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 236. 71 Ferguson to Cornwallis, 28 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 159. 72 Wemyss to Cornwallis, 20 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 215. 73 Robinson, Revolutionary War Sketches , p. 55. 74 Cornwallis to Clinton, 22 Sept. 1780, Cornwallis Papers, II, p. 45.

75 Pension Statements and Rosters, Pension statements of: Alexander, S21599; William Alexander, S6496; Thomas Cummings (Cumming), S6780; Jeremiah Cunningham, W6753; Daniel Carter, S3126; John Fitzpatrick, W7276; Samuel Givens, W743; William Holland, W4698; John Hollis, R5892; James McAdow, S2760; John Morrison, S2867, William Price, R8478; Robert Shaw, W60061; William Shaw, W127; Thomas Sloan, S32522; Andrew Walker, S7830; Samuel Walkup, S30766. See https://revwarapps.org/