Opposed by "Bloody" Tarleton's Raiders, American Revolution patriots
under Francis Marion fought a brutal guerrilla war throughout South
Carolina and North Carolina.
The American Revolution was deadlocked in the north, and after the
battle at Monmouth Courthouse in 1778 the focus of the conflict shifted
south. Following-up on his decisive May 12, 1780 victory at Charleston,
South Carolina, Cornwallis launched a campaign through the Carolinas
that was designed to expel American Continental and militia forces from
the southern theater. With a second British victory at Camden in August,
conventional American forces adopted a policy of avoiding another large
battle in favor of smaller, more limited operations. As regular forces
were constrained by traditional logistics and organization, soldiers
like Francis Marion were able to inflict numerous raids and skirmishes
against British and Loyalist forces, after which they would dissolve to
form and fight at a later time. Cornwallis subsequently directed
contingents to secure the countryside and capture such leaders, but the
Patriot victory at King's Mountain (October), forced him to withdraw
into South Carolina in what was one of the turning points in the
Revolutionary War.
To the southeast, Francis Marion continued his hit-and-run operations in
which his band rescued American prisoners at Nelson's Ferry, dispersed
Loyalist forces at Blue Savannah (September), and defeated a British
outpost at Black Mingo (September). When Marion defeated Loyalist
militia at Tearcoat Swamp in October, Cornwallis responded to this
string of raids across northeastern South Carolina by assigning his
aggressive cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton, to capture or kill the
rebel guerrilla commander. What followed was an unsuccessful two-week
pursuit of the elusive Marion, in which Tarleton practiced a
scorched-earth policy that ultimately disillusioned Loyalist
sympathizers and hurt the British cause in the Carolinas.
Unlike much of the Revolutionary War in the north, the fighting in the
Carolinas was generally less civilized and brutal, with Loyalists and
Rebels in roughly equal numbers. Except for Cornwallis' British regulars
and Greene's Continental army, militias and irregular forces were the
norm. A Raid book covering the Marion/Tarleton (British) struggle would
be used to showcase this style of frontier warfare, and how its
combatants were supplied, organized, and operated. Although not a
single, defined raid, the series of actions between August and November
1780 illustrate Marion's unconventional, yet successful, efforts to
hinder their enemy's war effort in the south, and Tarleton's equally
irregular efforts to counter it.
