Blackstock, November 20, 1780 | And Then There Were Thirteen (1976) | ETV Classics

And Then There Were Thirteen with Dr. Henry Lumpkin was an instructional series debuted by SCETV in the mid-1970s. The 20-episode series featured lectures by Dr. Henry Lumpkin of the University of South Carolina Department of History filmed on actual battle sites and campaign areas of the American Revolution in South Carolina. 

In this stirring ETV Classic, Professor Lumpkin takes us to the area of the battle at Blackstock, enhancing his story with geographic models of the terrain and what would be military assets consisting of unchinked log buildings used as cover while firing at Banastre Tarleton's dragoons. The professor describes the decisions and actions of Thomas Sumter, who led his militia to a rout over Banastre Tarleton's forces. Along the way, we meet Revolutionary War heroine, Mary Dillard. To learn more about Mary Dillard and others, see Side Notes below.

Aware that there was a contingent of British troops nearby, Sumter’s militia slipped away. When Tarleton and his men returned to deal with his fallen troops, he proclaimed victory at Blackstock to Cornwallis.

Side Notes

• Thomas Sumter (1734 – 1832) was an American military officer, planter, and politician who served in the Continental Army as a brigadier-general during the Revolutionary War. After the war, Sumter was elected to the House of Representatives and to the Senate, where he served from 1801 to 1810, when he retired. Sumter was nicknamed the "Fighting Gamecock" for his military tactics during the Revolutionary War. Sumter acquired the nickname "Carolina Gamecock" during the American Revolution, for his fierce fighting tactics. After the Battle of Blackstock's Farm, British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton commented that Sumter "fought like a gamecock", and Cornwallis described the Gamecock as his "greatest plague".
• Banastre Tarleton - Nicknamed "Bloody Ban" by Patriots, Banastre Tarleton became infamous in the southern states during the American Revolution. His conduct illustrated and exacerbated the problems the British faced in pacifying the population of the Carolinas. As the commander of a cavalry and mounted infantry unit, his unit became the eyes and ears of Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis' southern army, winning battlefield glories until a decisive day at Cowpens on January 17, 1781.
• Elijah Clarke (1742 – 1799) was an American military officer and Georgia legislator. Clarke and his actions served as one of the sources for the fictional character of Benjamin Martin in The Patriot, a film released in 2000. He is also a major character in the historical novel The Hornet's Nest by Jimmy Carter.
• Samuel Hammond - After the battle of Kings Mountain he was joined by some from Ninety-Six, and with all the men under his command he marched into North Carolina, where he acted a short while under Colonel Davis. He was at the battle of Blackstock with Sumter - he had a fight at Long Canes, near Ninety-Six. In the battle of Cowpens, on the 17th of January of 1781, he commanded, as Major, the left of the front line. From this time till the battle of Eutaw, he was actively engaged as a partisan. At the battle of Eutaw, on the 8th of September, he had the good fortune to distinguish himself.
• Patrick Carr - Petition of Patrick Carr, a former soldier in the service of the state of Georgia, dated January 10, 1798. Carr asserts that he is owed for services and expenses incurred as commandant of three independent militia companies from May 25, 1782 to June 25, 1784.
• James Jackson (1757 – 1806) During the American Revolutionary War, he served in the 1st Brigade Georgia Militia at the defense of Savannah, the Battle of Cowpens, and the recapture of Augusta and Savannah. was an early British-born Georgia politician of the Democratic-Republican Party. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1789 until 1791. He was also a U.S. senator from Georgia from 1793 to 1795, and from 1801 until his death in 1806. In 1797 he was elected 23rd governor of Georgia, serving from 1798 to 1801 before returning to the senate.
• Thomas Taylor (1743 - 1833) Thomas Taylor was one of the most influential men in this section of the State. He was a member of the first and second provincial congresses, one of those appointed to receive signatures to the association and was appointed in 1776 a justice of the peace for the Camden District. He and his brother, John, joined Col. Thomas Sumter as captains after the fall of Charlestown.
• Archibald McArthur - British officer. Promoted to captain of the Fifty-fourth Foot on 1 September 1771 and to major of the Seventy-first Foot on 16 November 1777, he was captured at Cowpens on 17 January 1781. On 24 April 1781 he was made lieutenant of the Third Battalion of the Sixtieth (Royal Americans) (Ford, British Officers).
• Edward Lacey - Bio of Edward Lacey, Livingston County.
• William Hill - Mary Long's Yesteryear | William Hill: Forgotten Patriot. (Watch on Passport.)
• Thomas Brandon rose in 1780 to command a militia regiment in which he saw most of his early service under Sumter. After resigning his post of colonel, he took a position under Col. James Williams. He was in the battles at Musgrove’s Mill, Kings Mountain (as a company commander), Blackstock’s Plantation, and Cowpens.
• John Money - Sumter placed Colonel Henry Hampton and his South Carolina riflemen in the farm outbuildings. Some units he stationed behind stout fences and others he screened in the surrounding woods.Tarleton came up late in the fall afternoon and chose to make a frontal attack against a numerically superior force, not waiting for his infantry and artillery to catch up. At first he was successful. The Patriot militia fired at too great a distance, and before they could reload, Major John Money, commanding the 63d Regiment, hit them with the bayonet. Nevertheless, in doing so, the 63d advanced too close to the farm buildings and came under fire from Hampton's men inside. Money and two of his lieutenants were killed, and perhaps a third of the privates as well. Meanwhile, other partisans worked their way around their right flank and attacked Tarleton's dragoons who were in their saddles but only watching the action.
• John Twiggs (1750-1816) A prominent militia leader during the Revolutionary War (1775-83), John Twiggs led Georgia forces against both the British and the Cherokee Indians in the backcountry. After the war he remained active on a variety of political and military fronts, statewide and in and around Augusta, including involvement in the Yazoo land fraud. Twiggs County, created in 1809, was named in his honor.
• Henry Hampton (1750-1832)He was a colonel in the Revolutionary Army. Henry was a founder of Hamptonville, donated the site for church and graveyard.
• Richard Winn -Winnsboro, the present seat of justice of Fairfield District, was so named in his honor, when he was colonel of that district in 1780.
• Mary Dillard is considered a Revolutionary Heroine because of her midnight ride to warn the American Patriots of an impending attack. It seems that her husband, Capt James Dillard, was away from home at the time serving in the American Army. A group of British and Tory soldiers came to Mary's home and ordered Mary to prepare them a meal. While serving the meal, Mary overheard them discussing that they would attack the American Army. After they left, Mary mounted a horse, not even taking time to saddle it, and carried the information to the American Patriots.
• Mary Blackstock - Runs to Thomas Sumter noting that she was not going to tolerate any fighting on her property.
• Sons of the American Revolutionary War