♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ ♪ [musket fire popping] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [mortar fire booming] Prof.

Henry Lumpkin> It has been said, somewhat facetiously, that of the circa three million inhabitants settled in the thirteen British North American colonies at the time of the Revolution, one million supported the Revolution, one million supported the British, and one million didn't give a damn.

This, of course, is an oversimplification of a very complex period in American history, but it has some validity.

We therefore are concerned today with that often forgotten or neglected element in 18th-century America... the many Loyalists who followed their king and fought with dedication and courage for the British cause.

There were some 73 regular Loyalist units of various strengths and designations serving with the British army, and probably 25,000 Americans wore, as regular provincial soldiers, the British uniform between 1775 and 1783.

There undoubtedly were other Loyalist regular units whose military designations have not been preserved, since William Dobein James, who served with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, cites black dragoons recruited by the British command in Charleston among the escaped Negro slaves in that city.

(silence) The best of these provincial regulars, such as Banastre Tarleton's Legion, Lord Francis Rawdon's Volunteers of Ireland, John Simcoe's Queen's Rangers, Patrick Ferguson's independent command, or all of the DeLancey's Brigade, were as well trained and effective as their British or German mercenary counterparts.

Since American Loyalist soldiers knew the terrain and understood their American Patriot enemy, they probably were more effective than British or German troops against fast-moving American partisans.

As a commentary on the numbers of Loyalists in British service, it should be noted that the American Continental regulars after 1776 never equaled 28,000-- or 38,000, rather-- at a single time.

There also were periods in the war during the terrible winters of 1779 and 1780 when George Washington would have had difficulty in fielding 5,000 Continental regulars.

By the reorganization of 1780, which placed the American army on something like a permanent basis with new enlistments in the Continentals for the duration of the war, the total Continental Army, horse, foot, and guns and attached corps, on paper--on paper-- came to 36,000 men.

No more than half this number ever were in the field at the same time, and the full force never was recruited.

It therefore may be stated that the Americans serving in Loyalist units often equaled, and, on occasion, undoubtedly exceeded, the number of Americans serving in the Continental line.

This, of course, does not include American state militia or Loyalist militia for that matter, called up for service in specific area campaigns or battles.

As I've said before, the Revolutionary War in the South was truly a civil war.

The 18th-century South was a wild, harsh, and violent land inhabited by a hard and violent people.

The Southern Loyalists fought their former friends, cousins, and neighbors who supported the cause of American independence with a cruel and sanguinary ferocity only equaled-- and at times, I fear, surpassed-- by the cruel and sanguinary ferocity with which the American Patriots fought them.

The Loyalist leadership in the South also included, as it did in the Northern states, men and families of substance and social standing.

Thomas Brown of Augusta, Georgia, a man of considerable property, was tarred and feathered and his bare feet held to a fire by his pro-Revolution neighbors for expressing too forcibly his support of the king's cause.

After this grim experience, he fled to British Florida where he organized his Florida Rangers from among other Loyalist refugees and harried South Georgia.

On his return to Georgia with Sir Henry Clinton's invading army, he was made a lieutenant colonel and commanded the King's Carolina Rangers.

Later in 1781, with these troops and other Loyalist units, he defended Augusta with obstinate courage against the attack by Henry Lee and Andrew Pickens.

When that town fell, because he was such a gallant officer, Henry Lee and Andrew Pickens granted him safe conduct to British-held Savannah... and sent an escort to ensure his safety against revengeful Georgians and South Carolinians.

Lieutenant Colonel John Hamilton of the Royal North Carolina Regiment was a prominent merchant and planter and an outstanding Loyalist officer.

His somewhat uncommon mercy toward those American soldiers who fell into his hands won for him the lasting respect of his enemies.

Charles Steadman, who served with Sir William Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, and Lord Cornwallis, states that the British nation owed more to Colonel Hamilton than to any other individual Loyalist in the British service.

Hamilton fought in nearly every major engagement in the three Southern colonies... Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and in Virginia, too, for that matter, and after the war, removed to England, where he died in 1817.

Sir James Wright, a son of the royal governor of Georgia, commanded the Georgia Loyalists at the siege of Savannah in 1779.

Another prominent Loyalist, Alexander McDonald was a major in the regiment of North Carolina Highlanders.

He also was the husband of the famous Flora McDonald, who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape from Scotland after his defeat at Culloden in 1746 by the Duke of Cumberland.

A distinguished North Carolina-Scottish Loyalist brigadier general, Donald McDonald, in January of 1776, raised the royal standard in that state and rallied his clansmen and other Scottish settlers around it.

A South Carolina Loyalist, Robert Cuningham, prior to the war, was a judge in the Ninety Six District.

In 1780, he was made a brigadier general by Lord Cornwallis and took the field with Loyalist militia.

His brothers Patrick, David, and John all were substantial citizens of South Carolina and served the British cause during the war with varying distinction.

The Loyalist leader Micajah Ganey was Francis Marion's great opponent in the partisan war of the South Carolina Lowcountry, as was Colonel John Coming Ball, in this area right here.

Colonel John Coming Ball was of a notable Charleston family and lost his horse to Francis Marion in one engagement, which, fine an animal, Marion renamed "Ball" and rode throughout the war.

Edmund Fanning of North Carolina became a general in the British army, while Colonel David Fanning, whose narrative is one of our best sources for Loyalist activities in the South during the Revolution, was a scourge to his Whig neighbors.

Among other adventures, David Fanning, on the morning of September 12, 1781, with 950 men of his own Loyalist regiment, captured Hillsborough, North Carolina, and took 200 prisoners, among them the governor of North Carolina, the governor's council, part of the Continental colonels, several captains and subalterns, and 71 Continental soldiers.

This feat was accomplished after the battle of Guilford Courthouse, after British fortunes already were on the wane.

Fanning's casualties were one man wounded.

Those whom I've mentioned are only a few of the more outstanding Loyalist leaders in the South, but many humble people also declared for the king and formed the backbone of the fighting units which served with such distinguished courage on so many battlefields.

Thousands of Highland Scots had migrated to the Carolinas after the disaster to Stuart arms at Culloden.

Many of the same men or their sons who'd fought against the Hanoverians-- the Hanoverian kings in Great Britain-- now supported a Hanoverian king against the American cause of independence.

There also were elements among the old backcountry regulators who rallied to the royal standard.

Prior to the Revolution, the regulators in the two Carolinas had opposed, sometimes with violence, tidewater domination of the economic and political life of those colonies.

Since leadership and support for the Revolution in its early stages came chiefly from the Lowcountry, some of the regulators took their stand for the king and against their old Lowcountry enemies.

You also found support for the British cause among some of the German settlers in the Carolinas who had been granted a religious and political haven by the royal government.

Naturally grateful and naturally fearful of losing their grants, they gave logistical support to the British armies operating in their territory.

The first military action between Loyalist and American Patriot forces took place in Virginia when the citizens of Norfolk, feeling their interest to be endangered by the activities of the Patriot assembly at Williamsburg, called on the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, to occupy the town.

This he did, and when the Patriots mustered 300 militia from Princess Anne and Norfolk Counties, Dunmore assembled a few regulars, some Scottish clerks, and armed Negro slaves and attacked the rebel militia at Kempsville, where he easily defeated them.

After this successful action, several thousand men came in to swear allegiance to the king.

Dunmore raided the shores of Virginia... (silence) freed Negro slaves who deserted their masters, and raised two Loyalist regiments, one of them black.

In South Carolina during October 1775, the Loyalist Patrick Cuningham, with 60 armed men, had seized a wagon loaded with 1,000 pounds of powder and 2,000 pounds of lead sent by the Council of Safety in Charleston to the Cherokee Indians.

Major Andrew Williamson, on November 19, 1775, moving against the Loyalists, was attacked for two days in a makeshift fortification near Ninety Six by Patrick Cuningham.

There were 562 men with Williamson and a larger force with Cuningham.

The fight ended somewhat ingloriously with an agreed truce.

Several men were killed, however, and about 32 wounded on both sides... the first blood shed in South Carolina during the Revolution.

It's interesting to see that after the capture of Charleston by Sir Henry Clinton in 1780-- the peninsula right here, city of Charleston-- Andrew Williamson, who had fought under Colonel Richard Richardson in upper South Carolina and commanded with skill and bravery against the Cherokees in 1776, took his parole and came over to the British side, a commentary on the complex and even agonizing nature of loyalties in the Southern states during this period.

On the 21st of December, 1775, Colonel William Woodford, with 700 Virginia militia and 200 North Carolinians, attacked Governor Dunmore, who'd taken up a strong position with a force of 500 British regulars and Loyalists at Great Bridge, commanding the road to Norfolk, Virginia.

(silence) Dunmore and his men were driven in rout and Norfolk was burned-- was burned-- by the Patriot militia.

In South Carolina Colonel Richard Richardson and Colonel William Thompson, with some 2,500 men, pushed into the backcountry to break up the strong concentration of Loyalists under Colonel Thomas Fletchall and Patrick Cuningham.

Fletchall was captured.

It was rather ludicrous.

He was found hiding in a hollow of a tree.

With 1,100 reinforcements from North Carolina and 800 South Carolinians under Major Andrew Williamson arriving in support, Richard Richardson led about 4,000 militia.

This force penetrated four miles beyond the Cherokee tribal boundary line to a place called Great Canebrake on the Reedy River.

Colonel William "Danger" Thompson was sent with his 3rd Ranger Regiment and support forces, about 1300 men in all, to attack the Loyalist camp known to be at the Canebreak.

Toward daylight on the 22nd of December, 1775, William Thompson moved his troops forward and almost had the camp surrounded when his force was discovered.

A sharp fight took place, the Loyalists losing 6 killed and 130 taken prisoner.

Patrick Cuningham escaped riding a horse bareback and shouting to his men to shift for themselves.

Colonel Thompson lost no men and had only one wounded.

Richard Richardson, his mission accomplished, dismissed his North Carolina allies... and marched homewards.

Heavy snow fell during the last days of the operation.

It therefore always has been known as the "Snow Campaign."

For Richard Richardson, a man in his 70s, this was his first and last campaign.

He was promoted to brigadier general and later captured by the British.

He died in 1780 at the age of 75 from the results of a long and grim imprisonment after refusing to accept the terms imposed by the conqueror.

In North Carolina the royal governor, Martin, during January of 1776, ordered the Loyalist Highland Scots of that colony to rally about the king's standard raised by Brigadier General Donald McDonald.

The Loyalists were to assemble as secretly as possible and march to the coast where Governor Martin expected regiments from Ireland as reinforcements for a campaign... to put down the rebellion in North Carolina.

Donald McDonald and his second in command, a Captain McLeod, marched to the bridge crossing Moore's Creek, some 17 miles from Wilmington, North Carolina, with about 1,600 men.

Here they were met by Colonel Richard Caswell with a battalion of American Patriot militia from Newbern and militia companies from Craven, Johnston, Dobbs, and Wake.

There also was a second battalion of militia from Wilmington led by a Colonel John Lillington.

With all of the bridges destroyed, the Loyalists Highlanders and their supporters converged on Moore's Bridge.

There on February 27, 1776, as their forebears had done at Culloden, and with equal lack of success, the Scots charged Richard Caswell's entrenchments frontally.

They were met with a furious musket and cannon fire, losing 30 men killed and 850 captured.

So civil war came to the South in 1775 and 1776.

It was to be waged for almost six more terrible years, with increasing hatred and intensity after the British invasion of the South in 1779.

When the British high command decided in 1778 to transfer major operations to the South, some of the finest Northern Loyalist provincial units came with the British forces to Georgia and, later, South Carolina.

They were to be joined by equally effective Loyalist soldiers raised in Florida, Georgia, and the two Carolinas, although the first real action between Loyalist and Patriot forces was at Kettle Creek where Andrew Pickens, commanding South Carolina militia, on February 4, 1779, crushingly defeated Colonel Boyd's North Carolina Loyalist militia.

When Benjamin Lincoln and Admiral the Count d'Estaing besieged Savannah, Georgia, from September 16 to October 19, 1779... [cane tapping] tap, tap, tap with a combined French and American army, Loyalists constituted more than half of Major General Augustine Prevost's garrison.

These included... Lieutenant Colonel John Hamilton's North Carolina Regiment, the South Carolina King's Rangers, the South Carolina Dragoons, a regiment of South Carolina Loyalists commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown, a company of the British Legion, a battalion of DeLancey's New York brigade led by Lieutenant John Harris Cruger, and a battalion of Georgia Loyalists under Major James Wright.

It should be remembered that the siege was unsuccessful, the French and American attempt to take the town by direct assault being repulsed with heavy losses.

The entire left wing of Lord Charles Cornwallis's army at the Battle of Camden, fought on August 16, 1780, was composed of Loyalists from the North and the South.

A premature rising of some 400 North Carolina Loyalists already had been checkmated by American Patriot militia in a bloody, if indecisive, battle at Ramsaur's Mill on June 20, 1780.

Colonel Isaac Shelby, with his wild riflemen from across the mountains, and that famous Georgia partisan Elijah Clark also administered a sharp defeat to a Loyalist force of provincials, regulars, and militia at Musgrove's Mill, South Carolina.

This took place at the same time as the Battle of Camden but was more than counterbalanced, I fear, by the American rout at Camden and the total surprise and scattering of Thomas Sumter's men at Fishing Creek by Banastre Tarleton's Loyalist Legion on August 18, 1780.

The defeat and destruction of Patrick Ferguson's small force at Kings Mountain by American riflemen from east and west of the mountains, under the overall command of William Campbell of Virginia forced Lord Cornwallis to abandon his plan to invade North Carolina in 1780.

It's very interesting to see that Patrick Ferguson, a Scot and the commanding officer, was the only British soldier present at the Battle of Kings Mountain.

About 1,000 Loyalists were defeated by a generally equal number of American Patriots.

Of the British force engaged, 100 were provincial rangers brought by Ferguson from the North, and the remainder, South Carolina and North Carolina Loyalists, recruited and trained by Ferguson himself.

At the battle of Blackstocks on November 20, 1780, at Cowpens on January 17, 1781, and Guilford Courthouse, March 15, 1781, Banastre Tarleton's Loyalist force formed the major part of the British cavalry present at those engagements.

The battle of Hobkirk's Hill was fought outside of Camden, the city of Camden, South Carolina, on April 25, 1781, by approximately equal numbers on both sides.

Here, Lord Francis Rawdon forced Nathanael Greene from the field.

Again, it was American against American.

Most of Rawdon's men were Loyalists, and the Loyalists won.

At Augusta, Colonel Thomas Brown finally surrendered, after a desperate and prolonged defense, to Henry Lee and Andrew Pickens on June 5, 1781.

Brown's garrisons at Forts Grierson and Cornwallis consisted of 400 Georgia and South Carolina provincials and militia, with 200 Black laborers who loyally, under fire, maintained the fortifications.

The town of Ninety Six, which Nathanael Greene tried to capture by siege and assault from 22 May 1781 until 19 June 1781, was defended successfully by that most gallant of New York Loyalists, Lieutenant Colonel John Harris Cruger.

The 60 bayonet men-- 30 on each side who came around the ditch defending the star fort at Ninety Six and drove out the American attackers in hand-to-hand fighting-- were chosen from the New Jersey Volunteers and DeLancey's New York battalion.

At Eutaw Springs, where Nathanael Greene again, after almost winning the battle, was forced to retire from the field on September 8, 1781, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stuart commanded over 2,000 men.

Nathanael Greene's army was approximately the same size.

About half the British force was composed of Loyalists.

It's sad to note, it's sad to note that by this time, in a long war, a large portion of each Loyalist provincial regiment was recruited from American deserters, and many of the Continental troops on the American side were recruited from the discharged soldiers and deserters from the British army.

General Nathanael Greene stated that at the close of the war, we fought the enemy with British soldiers, and they fought us with those of America.

Eutaw Springs cannot be considered a full American defeat.

It's true that Greene retired from the field, but Alexander Stuart retired on Charleston the next day with Greene's light troops and cavalry following down behind it onto the peninsula.

One reason, however, for the discomfiture of the Americans at Eutaw Springs was the house in the middle of the battlefield... a strong house in the middle of the battlefield.

When the British center and left fell back early in the battle, Major Henry Sheridan, with a detachment of New York Volunteers, held that house against all attack which, with the stubborn defense of the British right, permitted Alexander Stuart to reform and continue the battle.

These then, were the Loyalists in the South, who supported their king and were defeated.

Some, at the end, came over to the American side.

Others were permitted after the war to return, but many, with their lands, property, and belongings confiscated, left to start a new life in the Bahamas, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Canada, or in Great Britain.

Some of our ancestors are among them.

Certainly some of mine and my wife's ancestors are.

It was, in the South, a cruel, bitter civil war.

While Americans cannot agree with the Loyalists' convictions, our nation was born in blood and war, in pain and fighting, and we must honor the American Loyalists' courage and devotion to a cause for which they died or sacrificed everything.

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