♪ Gavin Jackson> Welcome to a "This Week in South Carolina", special report.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

This week, we take time to reflect on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America.

We visit a key battlefield in the state, talked with veterans, excavating another, and hear from Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Jon Meacham.

Throughout the year, there have been dozens of events across South Carolina, a colony that played a pivotal role in winning the Revolutionary War against the British.

Thanks in part to the over 200 battles and skirmishes fought here, including one of the first decisive victories at the Battle of Sullivan's Island on June 28th, 1776, a day we commemorate as Carolina Day.

Now, in 1780, several defining battles and Patriot losses took place, including the Siege of Charleston and the Battle of Camden.

But the tide began changing with the victory at the Battle of King's Mountain in October 1780 and the early January 1781 Battle of Cowpens that crippled the British and helped lead to their surrender later that year at Yorktown.

Let's go to Cowpens, where in January, the National Battlefield celebrated its 245th anniversary with fanfare, re-enactors and weapons and cavalry demonstrations at the battlefield in Spartanburg County in what is still studied as a masterpiece in military tactics.

As American General Daniel Morgan and his militia successfully executed a double envelopment and decimated British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton's elite forces, several re-enactors, including Stephen McKee, walked us through this critical time period.

(marching band music) ♪ Stephen McKee> Really, if you look at the Southern Campaign, the war absolutely started in the North, but the war was 100% percent won and independence secured here in the Southern Department.

And the Battle of Cowpens really played a huge role in making that happen.

But there's lots of letters pouring out of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, back to England, basically saying, "Hey, there's a lot of loyalists in, in the South.

And if you would just send an army down here and raise the king's standard, then all these loyalists are going to flock to the king's standard, and we can put down the rebellion in the south, restore the Carolinas and Georgia to royal control, and then you can march north and finish off Washington.

So that's really the, southern strategy comes about from those letters and really from, from discussions of, "Hey, we're not really winning in the North."

"Let's see if we can conquer the South "and then, and then finish this thing."

So in 1779, the British had, attacked and captured Savannah, Georgia, and later Augusta, Georgia.

And in 1779 they even marched inland through South Carolina, winning string after string of victories.

And right outside of Charlestown, or Charleston today, but ultimately they don't capture it.

They marched back to Georgia until 1780.

Then they come back and they, they captured Charleston after the Second Battle of Charleston, and they begin marching inland where they, they in a series of successful victories, basically just pushing patriots out of, of, I guess, rebel or rebel held territory, they capture Camden 96, all of that stuff.

At that time, the American Army, after the surrender of Charleston, largest American defeat of the war, roughly 5500 to 6000 rebels were captured at that point.

And there's not really an army in the South to speak of anymore.

They're, they're going to check the British advance, which is why they're so successful marching out of Charleston.

The idea now is, hey, these pitched battles that we're trying to fight with the British is not really working out for us too well here in the South.

So what we'll do is we'll have a highly mobile army that can move and strike and take things, and then move before it can be defeated.

And so you get, this situation where you get two dynamic commanders in Daniel Morgan and Banastre Tarleton that are going to meet here at the Cowpens.

But prior to that, in October of 1780, you get the Battle of Kings Mountain, and then you also get the Battle of Shallow Ford.

But Kings Mountain happens, and it's mostly Americans versus Americans, and it defeats Cornwallis' left flank, and it prevents Cornwallis from moving into North Carolina quite as early as he wanted to.

So he retreats from Charlotte, at that point, back to Winnsboro in South Carolina.

And so the, the winter campaign is now just going to be in winter, garrisoned essentially in South Carolina.

And they're going to reinvade North Carolina in the spring.

So it kind of stops the British advance.

A week after the Battle of Kings Mountain is the Battle of Shallow Ford.

And Shallow Ford, 900 loyalists from North Carolina were coming to reinforce Cornwallis' army.

And they're stopped at the Shallow Ford.

They're ambushed there at the Ford on the Yadkin River in North Carolina, soundly defeated, and really, between the Battle of Ramsour's Mill that took place in June 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain that took place in October.

And Shallow Ford really kind of crushes any type of loyalist uprising that could occur in North Carolina, which combined with the withering effects of fighting here in South Carolina, is going to remove Cornwallis' ability really to wage offensive war.

So when South Carolina says that the Revolutionary War was won in South Carolina, I would argue it was won in the Carolinas, but South Carolina certainly has a strong claim to that, given as much fighting that did occur, here in the state.

It was more battles here than any other state of the 13.

So you get to that point.

And then in January of 1781, as I mentioned, you got two very dynamic, characters as commanders.

You've got Daniel Morgan.

He's, he's been an Indian fighter.

He fought in the French and Indian War.

He's kind of a, I'm not going to call him an insolent person, but he's certainly a very... do it his own way kind of guy.

He had been whipped mercilessly by the British when he was in the British service for striking a British officer during the French and Indian War, so he kind of, he held a grudge against British forces that, after the war, he said he, he, he gave them some of those lashes back here at the Battle of Cowpens.

But Banastre Tarleton, the British commander, was a very brash, very bold, confident commander.

And if he caught you in the field, he was going to attack.

That's what he was going to do.

And, Daniel Morgan understood that.

He knew that.

And so when Tarleton gets here at the Cowpens and he catches Daniel Morgan's army, Daniel Morgan decides he's going to use that brashness against Tarleton, to try and lure him into a trap.

So what happens is, Daniel Morgan sets up three lines.

You've got his rifleman in the first line.

You've got militia in the second line, and then in reserves just behind a rise where Tarleton couldn't see them, he had a company of Continentals standing in reserve, and the idea was, hey, as... Tarleton charges into us, I need one or two good shots from the riflemen and pick your marks.

Hit your marks.

And then after one or two good shots, you can then retreat and leave the battlefield.

Because again, the militia in the South had not been fighting as much as the militia in the north.

There were really green troops, that didn't have a lot of experience.

And, and quite frankly, facing a cavalry charge is a terrifying thing to go through.

Mark Kirkman> Militia shoulder fire lock.

Right, about face.

Present.

Mark.

(rifles fire) Militia, when ready.

(random gunfire) Mark> As a re-enactor, it's fun.

It is literally like a time machine.

Re-enactor#2> Had to be done.

Mark> Back then, it would have been terrifying because the people beside you might be getting hit, and falling.

And you were you were, you were trained to, the guy in front of you, a lot of times, they fired in two ranks.

You'd step over them.

It is smoky.

These things produce a big cloud of smoke, and especially down south, not too much in January, but in the summer, if it's humid, that smoke just kind of hangs.

They're loud.

But they're not as loud as say, modern guns.

The bullets, the rounds don't go supersonic.

So it's like, it's like thunder.

It's not a sharp...crack.

Stephen> So he gets those first good shots out of the riflemen, who then retreat to the second line, and then there's a miscommunication.

So the second line, the militia sees the riflemen coming, and they think that they're fleeing.

So the second line starts to break, as well.

So it's looking like the Battle of Cowpens is going to be a disaster, but unlike Camden, the commanders managed to get hold of the militia, stop their flight.

And as the British charge it, they halt the militia.

They have them do an about face and they fire practically point blank into the charging British.

And it absolutely crushes the British advance here on the field.

Field artillery pieces, especially in the time period, they're mostly anti-personnel in nature.

Right.

So, each one of them is sized, when I say a light three pound field artillery piece.

That means the, the weight of the shock that, that artillery piece shoots is three pounds, whether it's a solid cannonball, whether it's grapeshot or any type of projectile that you would fire out of the cannon.

So when you're watching movies, you know, if you watch The Patriot and you see the cannons firing and you see the big explosion, that's not, that's not how it actually worked with field artillery pieces.

And in the field, you would predominantly use grapeshot, which were iron or steel balls that were, basically turned the cannon into a giant shotgun with about 600 yards of range, because again, the whole purpose of the artillery was to thin out the ranks of the army as the armies were marching towards each other, eliminate as many personnel as you can to where once they're in musket range and they start firing each other, you weaken that army as much as humanly possible.

Re-enactor #3> Hut.

(cannon fires) (shouts and applause) Stephen> At that point, the Continentals then spill in, as reinforcements, And Colonel Washington, George Washington's cousin, who's in charge of the, the cavalry here, the American cavalry, spills onto the field.

And basically, the Americans surround the British Army and force the British Army to surrender.

Now, Tarleton, he does make a flight from the field.

So he, he escapes with some of his officers, but the British army itself is surrounded, and it's one of the few successful double envelopments that take place in all of warfare.

It's, it's such a consequential battle here at the Cowpens and even at West Point today, Army officers still study this battle for its, its tactical and strategic brilliance, in...basically capitalizing on the strengths of the American army while absolutely capitalizing on the weaknesses of the British Army, which wasn't their experience.

It wasn't their training, but it was the brashness of their commander and his willingness to fight that had basically allowed him to run roughshod through the Carolinas and Georgia.

His name was feared because, again, if Tarleton was after you, Tarleton was going to get you.

But here at the Cowpens, they managed to use that against him, and defeat that army.

And really, when you look at Kings Mountain or you look at Ramsour's Mill, Kings Mountain, Shallow Ford, Cowpens, it weakens the British army in the south so much, that by the time they get to Guilford Courthouse near Greensboro, North Carolina, in March and lose 20%, 25% percent of their soldiers, the ability of Cornwallis to wear any type of offensive war or to capitalize on any of the gains that were made in 1779 or 1780, are now gone, which then leads Cornwallis down to Wilmington and then to the north onto the Yorktown Peninsula, where in October of 1781, the French Navy, in one of their rare stunning victories against the Royal Navy, defeats the Royal Navy that had been sent from New York to relieve Cornwallis, Washington and...the French sweep down.

They leave...New York, leave a small group up there to keep Sir Henry Clinton convinced they're still encamped around New York, and they swoop down.

They trap Cornwallis by land, and ultimately, Cornwallis surrenders.

And at that point, when word reaches London, Lord North basically says, "My God, it's over."

(marching band plays music) ♪ Gavin> Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, historian, and intellectual.

His knowledge and interpretation of history provide needed factual insight.

As our country continues to strive to become a more perfect union.

250 years into this revolutionary experiment.

He spoke at the Revolutionary Ideas Symposium at Charleston's Dock Street Theater in late June and was also in conversation with Florence lawyer and SC250 board member, Ben Ziegler.

Jon Meacham> We end extremists, often at the last moment, often in spite of our darker and more selfish impulses, we have in fact, done the right thing.

And my God, it's been a close call.

If I ask you to think about for a moment over the last 250 years, what's the greatest thing the United States of America ever did?

There are a couple of candidates.

Right?

There's declaring independence itself, which creates, helps create a global, fuels a global move toward self-government as opposed to hereditary authority.

There's the abolition of human enslavement.

But the largest event, arguably, in human history is the Second World War.

You just think about, George Marshall became chief of staff of the Army on September 1st, 1939.

It was the day Hitler invaded Poland.

Welcome to the job.

The United States Army had 170,000 men in it.

By the time 1945 is over, we're north of 10 million.

In places like the Charleston Shipyard and places all over the country, we reacted to the threat of fascism and tyranny with a remarkable and really unprecedented productive and human investment in the projection of force to achieve a moral end that would have economic and political implications, but which was fundamentally immoral in sight, largest event in human history, an event that ends with the capacity of, in August of 1945 for the world to destroy itself.

Trivia question, when did we declare war on Adolf Hitler?

Five...well, we did finally.

It was five days after Pearl Harbor.

All right, so Japanese attack us on December 7th.

F.D.R.

goes to Congress on the eighth.

The American people and their righteous might shall win through to absolute victory.

He doesn't declare war on Germany.

Why?

Because Germany hadn't declared war on us.

People say, "Oh, well, of course it was going to happen" "because of the Tripartite Pact".

And did Hitler pay a lot of attention to treaties?

(laughter) We didn't know.

F.D.R.

didn't know what was going to happen.

Those five days were the longest five days in Winston Churchill's life, because he didn't know if he was going to continue to have to stand alone against the Third Reich in Europe, while we focused on Asia.

And finally, in one of the mistakes from which Hitler would never recover, on Thursday, December 11th, he declares war on the United States.

We declare war on Germany, and then we do the greatest thing we've ever done.

I think it's really important to remember that the greatest thing we ever did, we were dragged into, not so that we, you and I, can somehow feel superior to the past.

As if, well, if we had been there, we would, of course, you know, in 1940 we would have told Lindbergh, no, we're not going to be isolationist.

We shall march forward, because we probably wouldn't have, because we're not any... better.

But importantly, we're not any worse, than the people in the past.

And I think that's a vital insight in a season of commemoration.

It is a sin to despair.

We have come too far.

People have bled and died so that you and I could gather in a beautiful place like this to talk about important things, in an era where democratic capitalism continues for all of its imperfections, to create the means for us to live lives of prosperity and purpose.

And I, for one, decline to surrender that experiment to cable news and social media algorithms.

(applause) Only three times since the Second World War have 60% percent of us.

So think about it.

Think of, look around upon your row four of the people on your row, we're going to say that you were wrong about who you voted for, for president.

That's when we were most united.

In 1964, in 1972, and in 1984, President Johnson, President Nixon and President Reagan all got 59 to 61 percent of the vote.

Every other election, was infantest.... was infinitely closer.

From 1932 to 2000, don't hold me to these exact numbers, but it's close, the average decisive number, the margin in a presidential election 1932 to 2000, was 8.5% percent.

Since 2000, it's less than 1% percent.

President Biden would not have been President Biden if a home game at Yankee Stadium.

45,000 votes had shifted in 2020.

Vice President Harris would be President Harris, if a home stand at Yankee Stadium, 200,000 votes had changed.

These are not vast margins, and that should be empowering.

It does mean that all of us matter.

It means that our habits of heart and mind matter.

It means that what we have learned again and again in a government based on the will of the people, is that the will and whims and character of those people matters.

We'd have to put down the phones.

You have to know that the algorithm is sending you what it thinks you want.

You have to resist playing into the people who have monetized conflict.

And it's hard.

I'm not very good at it.

When Musk bought Twitter, I got off Twitter.

And then when Zuckerberg started doing what he did, I got off all his stuff, too.

I am much healthier mentally, which is a low bar for me.

(laughter) But I don't pay attention to minute to minutem and believe...I promise you I'm fine.

And it's hard and it's and it's, you know, it is, but we have this... There's a machinery of perpetual conflict that thrives on, producing momentary bursts of attention getting anger.

The story of when we have become a more perfect union has to be told because we're not doing it right now.

So the story matters.

And the kids born in the 21st century.

Let's think about it.

It begins with September 11th, the failure of weapons of mass destruction intelligence, the Great Recession, a biographically interesting but historically, indispositive Obama presidency, COVID, the rise of President Trump, the popular impression that the Supreme Court has never been more politicized and I would argue too, that one of the reasons there is so little trust in institutions among folks of the born in the 21st century, is that we have told them, when we run through school shooting drills, we have told them we can't keep you safe.

We have admitted that.

There are three places you're supposed to feel safe, right, home, church, classroom.

And we've said, you know, we're not really sure we can do this, so this is what you do, if someone walks in here with a gun.

I don't think we've thought about how, the impact that's had.

But why would you trust the grown ups who have to, have you trained for that?

It makes the story so important, right?

It makes the fact that folks, kids your age went to Omaha Beach, kids your age went to Gettysburg, and the story matters.

>> In March of this year, several veterans with American Veterans Archeological Recovery excavated and surveyed parts of the former colonial town site in Camden.

Stephen Humphreys, CEO of the organization, and Stacey Ferguson with Historic Camden, take us back in time to Colonial Camden through their discoveries while also providing present day lessons.

>> The, the big goal of that mission on the battlefield isn't just the cool stuff you get to dig out of the ground More importantly, it's where it was found.

So every time there's an artifact that's found, they're...tracked by G.P.S.. So they get a very exact coordinate where exactly it was found.

So what this can tell us is when you look at that map and if you see really heavy concentration of all those dots, you know, there was probably some heavy fighting in that area.

And the Battle of Camden happened on August 16th, 1780.

For years, what we knew about it was simply from the accounts of those that were there.

So we have commanders, after action reports, and then also some common soldiers who were writing home and talking about the action, those kind of things.

There were also a few maps that were drawn by the, well, especially the British military.

And, so that was as much as we knew about it.

We've spent a lot of time last year and this year, looking at the area where we believe the militia, the American militia, was on the line.

Now, the American militia at the Battle of Camden, they en masse, they broke and ran pretty early in the action.

So they came down here, with little to no training, and their commanders put them out in front of, you know, the toughest army in the world, possibly, and expected them to stand up and fight, and that didn't happen so much, right?

I don't know why they would think it would go any other way.

And so that's what we've always known... militia (indistinct) Right.

But now we're finding a lot of firing munitions, American and British munitions, in that area that says, Yeah, there was fighting going on there.

There was, there were at least some people that were fighting back.

So we're going to keep continuing to explore that, and it's going to just kind of give us an accurate picture with using that GPS data and the heat maps to say where it was the heaviest fighting.

You know, from a archeological perspective, whether you're talking about the, battlefield archeology, it's, it's own field called conflict archeology, or you're talking about the, you know, the just the material culture of the colonial and young city of Camden.

We are in a really great location.

>> As a program we have really tried to focus on connecting our veterans with the American Revolution, because for us as service members, that's, that's really what the country came from.

That's the birth of the country as a whole, but that's really the, the, the birth of our own culture, as well.

That's where you have the first American service members.

And we do consider ourselves to be, you know, we inherited that legacy.

I also think for us, we see past service members, those past individuals who wear the uniform as, family members.

So, we have a connection to those individuals that really goes beyond these kind of bigger picture, you know, bigger picture questions.

For us, it's all about those individual named service members who may have been lost to history and who may now only really exist in a scatter of artifacts or even one musket ball.

So what we're doing is we're going and sending these current service members or veterans out to find those objects so that we can remember those individual soldiers.

So what we're giving, veterans is an opportunity to come and do meaningful work that gives them a renewed sense of purpose and compensates them and pays their bills, by the way.

But they get to do that alongside people that become that found family for them over time.

And that's a, that's a really rewarding thing for us to watch.

And it's a really rewarding thing for us to watch as they learn to do really high quality science.

Gavin> And that's it for us this week.

But you can find this report and more at youtube.com/SCETV news.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson, Be well, South Carolina and Happy 250th America.

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