Revolution AMERICAN PARTS 1, 2, & 3^{[1, 2, 3]}

• Name	Revolution AMERICAN PARTS 1, 2, & 3
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  HIST	How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part I Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2026 6:00 am By Skip Johnson Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." When most people think of the American Revolutionary War, they think of names like Boston, Lexington, Concord, Valley Forge, Yorktown. Few people think of South Carolina first, if at all, but South Carolina actually won the war - at the very least, America would have lost the war four years earlier if it hadn't been for South Carolina. South Carolina also recorded more battles than any other state, lost more men to the war than any other state, and, after the war ended, South Carolina was saddled with more war debt than any other state. The reason that South Carolina's story isn't more widely known has to do with geography, how histories of wars are written and human nature. One of the perks of winning a war is that you get to write its story. In the case of the Revolutionary War, South Carolina's economy was primarily agricultural. Most historians, especially those with ready access to presses, lived in northern states, so they naturally focused on the war they saw, which was Boston, Lexington, etc., but they paid little attention to South Carolina.This is South Carolina's story: The first shots of the American Revolution were fired in April 1775 in Lexington, Massachusetts, and Concord, New Hampshire, and for the next few months the war was fought only in the North. But by early 1776, it was obvious to the world that the British would soon attack Charles Town. Not only was Charles Town England's richest possession in the New World, but it was also North America's fourth-largest city and an important port. Perhaps most important, though, Charles Town was completely vulnerable to attack. No forts protected it, and aside from South Carolina's small militia on Sullivan's Island, a barrier island that protects the mainland from the sea, no soldiers occupied it. George Washington couldn't spare any troops from the Continental Army because they were needed to fight the British in the North, so if the British were to attack Sullivan's Island, South Carolina's little militia would fall like a picket fence in a hurricane. The British plan was to easily overwhelm Charles Town, move quickly through South Carolina's sparsely populated and undefended Midlands, speed through the unprotected Upstate, North Carolina and Virginia, and attack Washington's army from the south. With Washington's troops trapped between British armies on their north and south, he would have no choice but to surrender. England would win the war, and the American dream would be dead. On May 31, 1776, the first British ships appeared on Charles Town's horizon. Desperate for help, South Carolinians in the Continental Congress pleaded for a general and troops. They got the general but not the troops. And the general who came, Charles Lee, was ordered to serve only as an adviser. When Lee arrived and inspected what was called Fort Sullivan's south end, which would defend Charles Town if attacked, he was appalled. There was no fort - only sand, sea oats and palmetto trees. There were 289 cannon, but with no walls to protect them they were naked to attack from the sea. When Lee inspected the troops he was even more appalled. Of the fort's 425 enlisted men, not one was a cannoneer. All of them had been trained as infantrymen for the South Carolina militia, but because there were no trained cannoneers in Charles Town - no Army troops at all - they had been pressed into service as cannoneers at the last moment. (There was another complement of 750 men on the north tip of Sullivan's Island, commanded by Lt. Col. Willliam Thompson, but it was there to prevent a ground attack via Long Island - now the Isle of Palms - which was separated from Sullivan's Island by the narrow Breach Inlet. However, Thompson's troops had no cannon or trained cannoneers, and therefore they would be useless should the British attack from the sea.) Lee immediately reported to South Carolina President (governor) John Rutledge that the so-called fort was untenable, "a slaughter pen" that should be abandoned. In reply, Rutledge sent word to Col. William Moultrie, commander of the fort: "General Lee wishes you to evacuate the fort. You will not without an order from me. I will sooner cut off my hand than write one." Part II will focus on the British Armada attacking Sullivan's Island. How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 2 Posted Saturday, February 14, 2026 6:00 am By Skip Johnson Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one at https://tinyurl.com/5ps7d9nk. With the order in hand to defend Charles Town at any cost, Col. Moultrie redoubled his effort to build a fort. But since there was no time to obtain the material he needed from the mainland, he had to use whatever he could find on the island. He had his soldiers cut down palmetto trees, trim their fronds and pile the trunks into a makeshift log-and-sand wall along the beachfront. He had little hope that the logs would stop an attack from the British warships, but they were all he had. And they were better than nothing. By mid-June, it was apparent that a British attack was imminent. There was no time to finish the beachfront wall, much less time to build any protection for its southern or western sides. Both sides remained easily vulnerable to any water-borne attack. To make matters worse, Gen. Lee was so certain that Fort Sullivan had no chance against the vastly superior British forces that he limited the amount of gunpowder it could have to a pittance of what it needed. Gunpowder was scarce in America, so why waste it on a hopeless mission? By late June, the fort's annihilation seemed inescapable. The odds seemed impossible: - The British Armada, led by Sir Peter Parker, carried nearly 3,000 officers and men, all thoroughly trained members of the British Army and Royal Marines. Fort Sullivan had 425 state militiamen, most of them young South Carolinian farmers, only hurriedly trained as cannoneers. - The armada had 262 big guns and a bombship. Fort Sullivan had 28 cannon, all of them behind make-do cover. - The armada carried enormous amounts of gunpowder. Fort Sullivan had so little gunpowder that Moultrie ordered his cannoneers to fire no more than one round every 10 minutes, and then only if ships were nearby. Each cannoneer had enough powder to fire 27 cannonballs, no more. On June 28, 1776, six days before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the full British Armada unfurled its sails and attacked Fort Sullivan. Sir Parker planned to bring the first ships to anchorage, then send three ships around the island's southern tip so that a bomb ketch could lob large mortar rounds into the fort's exposed and unarmed side and rear. With Fort Sullivan out of the way, defenseless Charles Town would fall easily. After that, the British would follow the rest of the plan, easily win the war and go home. As soon as the attack began, however, everything began to unravel for the British. First, the local harbor pilots who had been pressed into British service refused to take the warships as close to shore as the British demanded because they feared running aground. Then the three ships that were supposed to attack the exposed sides of the fort got caught in a tide change and ran aground on a shoal in the harbor (where Fort Sumter now stands). But perhaps most amazing of all, the palmetto logs held. Instead of splintering when cannonballs hit them, the softwood logs absorbed the shock, and the balls bounced off. The walls remained standing, and the men and cannon remained protected. In the meantime, the inexperienced Patriot cannoneers rained down death and destruction on the British ships. They killed or wounded every person on the British flagship H.M.S. Bristol's quarterdeck, including Commodore Parker, whose injuries rendered him unable to walk without help. All the other ships sustained varying degrees of damage, and a number of their officers and men died. The South Carolina militia's defeat of the British Armada was total, but Sir Parker would not give up. He immediately planned a new attack. He would land troops on Long Island (now the Isle of Palms), send them in small boats across the narrow Breach Inlet to Sullivan's Island and mount a ground attack on Fort Sullivan's exposed and defenseless north side. An armed British schooner would provide them cover. But Lt. Col. Thompson and his 750 men on Sullivan Island's north tip were ready. As the boats made their way across the inlet, Thompson ordered his men to hold their fire until the lead boats had almost reached land. When the first boats were within a few feet of land, the militiamen opened up from point-blank range, and the result was slaughter. Direct gunfire killed many of the British soldiers, and many others, unaware of the inlet's treacherous undercurrents, dived into the water and drowned. It was no contest. The surviving British soldiers, not one of whom ever set foot on Sullivan's Island, limped back to their ships, and, for the next three years, the British gave up trying to enter South Carolina. Part III will focus on the Midlands and Upstate South Carolinians thwarting the British. How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 3 Posted Sunday, February 22, 2026 6:00 am BY SKIP JOHNSON Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one at https://tinyurl.com/5ps7d9nk and part two at https://tinyurl.com/pz6y7hsn. Three years after England's humiliating defeat at Sullivan's Island, they came again, but this time from land. On Feb. 11, 1780, 8,000 British troops landed on Johns Island, just south of Charleston, made their way across James Island, then crossed the Ashley River to Charles Town's neck area, thus cutting the Charles Town peninsula's only land connection to the rest of the world. From there, beginning April 13, they unleashed a nonstop artillery attack on civilian-occupied Charles Town that rained down fire and death on civilians and militia members alike. After a month of unrelenting bombardment, Charles Town's residents asked to surrender. Once the British established control of Charles Town they began to execute the rest of the plan, which still was to move rapidly through undefended South Carolina's Midlands and Upstate, then head north through defenseless North Carolina and Virginia and attack Washington's troops from below, squeezing them between northern and southern fronts and therefore forcing Washington to surrender. But once again the British underestimated South Carolinians - Francis Marion, for example. Marion, a wealthy planter from what is now Berkeley County, just west of Charles Town, became a militia officer before the war and served with honor during the Battle of Sullivan's Island. He was still in Charles Town when the British attacked the second time, but he escaped to his home a few miles inland. There he organized troops to fight the British by embellishing a tactic he had learned from America's Indigenous people. He and his troops would lay in wait for the British to appear, then gallop out of the swamps, strike quickly and fiercely and just as quickly disappear back into the swamps. It was the first time anyone had employed guerrilla tactics in a war. The ploy worked. British troops chased Marion and his men but could not find them once they disappeared into the deep, dark Lowcountry South Carolina swamps that Marion knew so well. And then, as the British began to move again, Marion struck again - and again and again and again, always using the same method. The British chased him every time but never caught him. Marion thus slowed the British Army's advance through South Carolina to a crawl and earned for himself an honored place in American Revolutionary War history as "The Swamp Fox." But Marion wasn't the only problem the British faced in South Carolina. They met strong resistance everywhere. In all, they fought 207 battles with South Carolina militia, more battles than they fought in any other state. Not all the battles were militia successes. On Aug. 16, 1780, 2,200 British soldiers bayonet-attacked a patriot force in Camden, near Columbia in South Carolina's Midlands. The Patriot force was larger but exhausted, and the result was slaughter. More than 1,800 Patriots were killed, wounded or captured. The British won other battles as well, and the victories encouraged and emboldened them as they made their way through the state. But when they reached Kings Mountain, N.C., just a few miles from the South Carolina border, their good fortunes ended. Unknown to them, more than 900 mountain men from North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, enraged by threats from British Maj. Patrick Ferguson, had come to Kings Mountain to confront him. When Ferguson arrived at Kings Mountain on Oct. 7, 1780, the ad hoc army killed him and annihilated his thousand-man army. The slaughter set in motion events that would lead to the British surrender at Yorktown a year later. Primary among these was the Battle of Cowpens in Upstate South Carolina, which many credit with winning the war for America. In mid-December 1780, Patriot Gen. Daniel Morgan positioned his "Flying Army" near the British stronghold of Ninety-Six in Upstate South Carolina. In reply, British Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton was ordered to protect Ninety-Six and drive Morgan out of South Carolina. Once Tarleton decided Ninety-Six was secure he led a 1,250-man detachment on his mission to chase Morgan into North Carolina. Morgan fled across the Upcountry until, on Jan. 17, 1781, he let Tarleton catch him at Cowpens, near the North Carolina border, where he had set a trap that sucked the British into a major, humiliating defeat. Two dozen Americans were killed, but the British lost more than 800 men and were forced into full retreat. The battle set in motion events that soon compelled the British to abandon their stronghold in Ninety-Six and retreat all the way to Charles Town, forcing the British to delay their planned movement through South Carolina again, thus giving Gen. Washington more time to prepare. By the time the British finally did fight their way through South Carolina and reach Yorktown, more than four years behind schedule, they were limping badly. The troops were cold, exhausted, dispirited and outnumbered. Troop morale was gone. That was their condition on Sept. 28, 1781, when they engaged Gen. Washington's Army at Yorktown. Three weeks later, on Oct. 19, 1781, they went down to their final ground war-ending defeat. The war continued at sea for several months, but eventually the British gave up. On Sept. 14, 1783, they signed the Treaty of Paris, the United States Congress of the Confederation ratified it on Jan. 14, 1784, and after more than eight years of fighting, the war was over. And the American dream became a reality.  [1, 2, 3]
  HIST	How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part I Posted Wednesday, February 11, 2026 6:00 am By Skip Johnson Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." When most people think of the American Revolutionary War, they think of names like Boston, Lexington, Concord, Valley Forge, Yorktown. Few people think of South Carolina first, if at all, but South Carolina actually won the war - at the very least, America would have lost the war four years earlier if it hadn't been for South Carolina. South Carolina also recorded more battles than any other state, lost more men to the war than any other state, and, after the war ended, South Carolina was saddled with more war debt than any other state. The reason that South Carolina's story isn't more widely known has to do with geography, how histories of wars are written and human nature. One of the perks of winning a war is that you get to write its story. In the case of the Revolutionary War, South Carolina's economy was primarily agricultural. Most historians, especially those with ready access to presses, lived in northern states, so they naturally focused on the war they saw, which was Boston, Lexington, etc., but they paid little attention to South Carolina.This is South Carolina's story: The first shots of the American Revolution were fired in April 1775 in Lexington, Massachusetts, and Concord, New Hampshire, and for the next few months the war was fought only in the North. But by early 1776, it was obvious to the world that the British would soon attack Charles Town. Not only was Charles Town England's richest possession in the New World, but it was also North America's fourth-largest city and an important port. Perhaps most important, though, Charles Town was completely vulnerable to attack. No forts protected it, and aside from South Carolina's small militia on Sullivan's Island, a barrier island that protects the mainland from the sea, no soldiers occupied it. George Washington couldn't spare any troops from the Continental Army because they were needed to fight the British in the North, so if the British were to attack Sullivan's Island, South Carolina's little militia would fall like a picket fence in a hurricane. The British plan was to easily overwhelm Charles Town, move quickly through South Carolina's sparsely populated and undefended Midlands, speed through the unprotected Upstate, North Carolina and Virginia, and attack Washington's army from the south. With Washington's troops trapped between British armies on their north and south, he would have no choice but to surrender. England would win the war, and the American dream would be dead. On May 31, 1776, the first British ships appeared on Charles Town's horizon. Desperate for help, South Carolinians in the Continental Congress pleaded for a general and troops. They got the general but not the troops. And the general who came, Charles Lee, was ordered to serve only as an adviser. When Lee arrived and inspected what was called Fort Sullivan's south end, which would defend Charles Town if attacked, he was appalled. There was no fort - only sand, sea oats and palmetto trees. There were 289 cannon, but with no walls to protect them they were naked to attack from the sea. When Lee inspected the troops he was even more appalled. Of the fort's 425 enlisted men, not one was a cannoneer. All of them had been trained as infantrymen for the South Carolina militia, but because there were no trained cannoneers in Charles Town - no Army troops at all - they had been pressed into service as cannoneers at the last moment. (There was another complement of 750 men on the north tip of Sullivan's Island, commanded by Lt. Col. Willliam Thompson, but it was there to prevent a ground attack via Long Island - now the Isle of Palms - which was separated from Sullivan's Island by the narrow Breach Inlet. However, Thompson's troops had no cannon or trained cannoneers, and therefore they would be useless should the British attack from the sea.) Lee immediately reported to South Carolina President (governor) John Rutledge that the so-called fort was untenable, "a slaughter pen" that should be abandoned. In reply, Rutledge sent word to Col. William Moultrie, commander of the fort: "General Lee wishes you to evacuate the fort. You will not without an order from me. I will sooner cut off my hand than write one." Part II will focus on the British Armada attacking Sullivan's Island. How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 2 Posted Saturday, February 14, 2026 6:00 am By Skip Johnson Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one at https://tinyurl.com/5ps7d9nk. With the order in hand to defend Charles Town at any cost, Col. Moultrie redoubled his effort to build a fort. But since there was no time to obtain the material he needed from the mainland, he had to use whatever he could find on the island. He had his soldiers cut down palmetto trees, trim their fronds and pile the trunks into a makeshift log-and-sand wall along the beachfront. He had little hope that the logs would stop an attack from the British warships, but they were all he had. And they were better than nothing. By mid-June, it was apparent that a British attack was imminent. There was no time to finish the beachfront wall, much less time to build any protection for its southern or western sides. Both sides remained easily vulnerable to any water-borne attack. To make matters worse, Gen. Lee was so certain that Fort Sullivan had no chance against the vastly superior British forces that he limited the amount of gunpowder it could have to a pittance of what it needed. Gunpowder was scarce in America, so why waste it on a hopeless mission? By late June, the fort's annihilation seemed inescapable. The odds seemed impossible: - The British Armada, led by Sir Peter Parker, carried nearly 3,000 officers and men, all thoroughly trained members of the British Army and Royal Marines. Fort Sullivan had 425 state militiamen, most of them young South Carolinian farmers, only hurriedly trained as cannoneers. - The armada had 262 big guns and a bombship. Fort Sullivan had 28 cannon, all of them behind make-do cover. - The armada carried enormous amounts of gunpowder. Fort Sullivan had so little gunpowder that Moultrie ordered his cannoneers to fire no more than one round every 10 minutes, and then only if ships were nearby. Each cannoneer had enough powder to fire 27 cannonballs, no more. On June 28, 1776, six days before the Declaration of Independence was signed, the full British Armada unfurled its sails and attacked Fort Sullivan. Sir Parker planned to bring the first ships to anchorage, then send three ships around the island's southern tip so that a bomb ketch could lob large mortar rounds into the fort's exposed and unarmed side and rear. With Fort Sullivan out of the way, defenseless Charles Town would fall easily. After that, the British would follow the rest of the plan, easily win the war and go home. As soon as the attack began, however, everything began to unravel for the British. First, the local harbor pilots who had been pressed into British service refused to take the warships as close to shore as the British demanded because they feared running aground. Then the three ships that were supposed to attack the exposed sides of the fort got caught in a tide change and ran aground on a shoal in the harbor (where Fort Sumter now stands). But perhaps most amazing of all, the palmetto logs held. Instead of splintering when cannonballs hit them, the softwood logs absorbed the shock, and the balls bounced off. The walls remained standing, and the men and cannon remained protected. In the meantime, the inexperienced Patriot cannoneers rained down death and destruction on the British ships. They killed or wounded every person on the British flagship H.M.S. Bristol's quarterdeck, including Commodore Parker, whose injuries rendered him unable to walk without help. All the other ships sustained varying degrees of damage, and a number of their officers and men died. The South Carolina militia's defeat of the British Armada was total, but Sir Parker would not give up. He immediately planned a new attack. He would land troops on Long Island (now the Isle of Palms), send them in small boats across the narrow Breach Inlet to Sullivan's Island and mount a ground attack on Fort Sullivan's exposed and defenseless north side. An armed British schooner would provide them cover. But Lt. Col. Thompson and his 750 men on Sullivan Island's north tip were ready. As the boats made their way across the inlet, Thompson ordered his men to hold their fire until the lead boats had almost reached land. When the first boats were within a few feet of land, the militiamen opened up from point-blank range, and the result was slaughter. Direct gunfire killed many of the British soldiers, and many others, unaware of the inlet's treacherous undercurrents, dived into the water and drowned. It was no contest. The surviving British soldiers, not one of whom ever set foot on Sullivan's Island, limped back to their ships, and, for the next three years, the British gave up trying to enter South Carolina. Part III will focus on the Midlands and Upstate South Carolinians thwarting the British. How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 3 Posted Sunday, February 22, 2026 6:00 am BY SKIP JOHNSON Editor's note: Skip Johnson is a retired, award-winning newspaperman, author of five books and writes a current-events newsletter, Skip Johnson Online. His series about South Carolina's part in winning the Revolutionary War is an edited version of the story as told in one of his books, "A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent." Johnson writes, "Although South Carolina's new license plates claim that South Carolina was 'Where the Revolutionary War Was Won,' historians are hotly debating the claim. Further, my experience is that many, if not most, South Carolinians are only vaguely aware of the part the state played." This is part two of a three-part series. Read part one at https://tinyurl.com/5ps7d9nk and part two at https://tinyurl.com/pz6y7hsn. Three years after England's humiliating defeat at Sullivan's Island, they came again, but this time from land. On Feb. 11, 1780, 8,000 British troops landed on Johns Island, just south of Charleston, made their way across James Island, then crossed the Ashley River to Charles Town's neck area, thus cutting the Charles Town peninsula's only land connection to the rest of the world. From there, beginning April 13, they unleashed a nonstop artillery attack on civilian-occupied Charles Town that rained down fire and death on civilians and militia members alike. After a month of unrelenting bombardment, Charles Town's residents asked to surrender. Once the British established control of Charles Town they began to execute the rest of the plan, which still was to move rapidly through undefended South Carolina's Midlands and Upstate, then head north through defenseless North Carolina and Virginia and attack Washington's troops from below, squeezing them between northern and southern fronts and therefore forcing Washington to surrender. But once again the British underestimated South Carolinians - Francis Marion, for example. Marion, a wealthy planter from what is now Berkeley County, just west of Charles Town, became a militia officer before the war and served with honor during the Battle of Sullivan's Island. He was still in Charles Town when the British attacked the second time, but he escaped to his home a few miles inland. There he organized troops to fight the British by embellishing a tactic he had learned from America's Indigenous people. He and his troops would lay in wait for the British to appear, then gallop out of the swamps, strike quickly and fiercely and just as quickly disappear back into the swamps. It was the first time anyone had employed guerrilla tactics in a war. The ploy worked. British troops chased Marion and his men but could not find them once they disappeared into the deep, dark Lowcountry South Carolina swamps that Marion knew so well. And then, as the British began to move again, Marion struck again - and again and again and again, always using the same method. The British chased him every time but never caught him. Marion thus slowed the British Army's advance through South Carolina to a crawl and earned for himself an honored place in American Revolutionary War history as "The Swamp Fox." But Marion wasn't the only problem the British faced in South Carolina. They met strong resistance everywhere. In all, they fought 207 battles with South Carolina militia, more battles than they fought in any other state. Not all the battles were militia successes. On Aug. 16, 1780, 2,200 British soldiers bayonet-attacked a patriot force in Camden, near Columbia in South Carolina's Midlands. The Patriot force was larger but exhausted, and the result was slaughter. More than 1,800 Patriots were killed, wounded or captured. The British won other battles as well, and the victories encouraged and emboldened them as they made their way through the state. But when they reached Kings Mountain, N.C., just a few miles from the South Carolina border, their good fortunes ended. Unknown to them, more than 900 mountain men from North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, enraged by threats from British Maj. Patrick Ferguson, had come to Kings Mountain to confront him. When Ferguson arrived at Kings Mountain on Oct. 7, 1780, the ad hoc army killed him and annihilated his thousand-man army. The slaughter set in motion events that would lead to the British surrender at Yorktown a year later. Primary among these was the Battle of Cowpens in Upstate South Carolina, which many credit with winning the war for America. In mid-December 1780, Patriot Gen. Daniel Morgan positioned his "Flying Army" near the British stronghold of Ninety-Six in Upstate South Carolina. In reply, British Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton was ordered to protect Ninety-Six and drive Morgan out of South Carolina. Once Tarleton decided Ninety-Six was secure he led a 1,250-man detachment on his mission to chase Morgan into North Carolina. Morgan fled across the Upcountry until, on Jan. 17, 1781, he let Tarleton catch him at Cowpens, near the North Carolina border, where he had set a trap that sucked the British into a major, humiliating defeat. Two dozen Americans were killed, but the British lost more than 800 men and were forced into full retreat. The battle set in motion events that soon compelled the British to abandon their stronghold in Ninety-Six and retreat all the way to Charles Town, forcing the British to delay their planned movement through South Carolina again, thus giving Gen. Washington more time to prepare. By the time the British finally did fight their way through South Carolina and reach Yorktown, more than four years behind schedule, they were limping badly. The troops were cold, exhausted, dispirited and outnumbered. Troop morale was gone. That was their condition on Sept. 28, 1781, when they engaged Gen. Washington's Army at Yorktown. Three weeks later, on Oct. 19, 1781, they went down to their final ground war-ending defeat. The war continued at sea for several months, but eventually the British gave up. On Sept. 14, 1783, they signed the Treaty of Paris, the United States Congress of the Confederation ratified it on Jan. 14, 1784, and after more than eight years of fighting, the war was over. And the American dream became a reality.
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  Family	American REVOLUTION PARTS 1, 2, & 3
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  [S33183] How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 1. [S33184] How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 2. [S33185] How South Carolina won the American Revolution: Part 3.