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.
Professor Henry Lumpkin sets the stage for the era of partisan warfare in the American Revolution in this episode of And Now There Were Thirteen. The Battle of Camden had been fought and lost, with the American Army scattered and routed. Its commanding general, Horatio Gates, had left the field before the battle was over. This was the second American Army to fall in the South, the first captured at Charleston, the second, routed at Camden. The men ragged, and without support or any kind of logistical backing, kept the war going in the South, striking savagely out of thicket and forest and swamp. Professor Lumpkin noted that Francis Marion was one of the greatest of these partisan leaders.
The forty-eight year old Francis Marion who had lead the assault with the Second South Carolina Regiment at Savannah, was to escape the fall of Charleston by a lucky accident. He leaped from a second story window, the teetotaler, to escape an all-night bash set up by one of his fellow officers and was recuperating from the injuries resulting from the fall at a plantation outside of the city. Francis Marion was a natural guerilla leader, had an instinctive knowledge of timing and terrain.
During the course of the lecture, Professor Lumpkin displays an eighteenth century calvary pistol, as well as a calvary sword, short sword and long gun which were the sort of weapons used by Francis Marion and his men in their mounted forays. They would move sometimes fifty miles in a night to strike the British line of communication. The professor observed that Francis Marion belonged to that steadfast, valiant French protestant Huguenot immigrants who came to South Carolina after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by King Louis XIV of France in 1685. Marion’s grandfather settled with other Huguenot families on the lower Santee, in what in some places, remains today, a real wilderness. He hunted, fished, rode and boated with his brothers and cousins, the life of rod and gun that was a natural training for the partisan fighting that he was to excel in later.
With the Southern states in disarray, Governor John Rutledge, governing his state from an enforced exile in North Carolina, sent one of the few regular officers left uncaptured, Lieutenant Colonel Frances Marion, to take command and organize resistance in the Santee - PeeDee country. Francis Marion's stomping grounds would be his battleground. Professor Lumpkin noted that Marion rode at the head of his army, rarely taking part in the battle, but directing the troops with calm brilliance. After all of the losses to the British, and the occupation of newly constructed forts throughout South Carolina and Georgia, the era of partisans fought the war with the likes of Frances Marion, Thomas Sumter, Elijah Clarke of Georgia, William Davey of North Carolina, who unpaid and unsupported, kept the field with their men somehow and harried the British and their loyalist supporters, night and day throughout the war. Under Nathanael Greene, Partisan Light Horse Henry Lee and Francis Marion would support each other in various battles.
This ETV Classic is a South Carolina Who's Who of patriots and a genealogists delight. We hope that you will enjoy Professor Lumpkin's stirring retelling of history as much as we did! Visit Part Two of Francis Marion's segment in the series of lectures. Learn more about Frances Marion and the people and places in his life in Side Notes.
Side Notes
- Revolutionary War Generals - History in a Nutshell. Exploring the lives and contributions of Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter, and Francis Marion.
- Estherville Plantation - Location – Sampit River, Georgetown, Georgetown County. Origin of name – Named by Andrew Johnston in honor of his mother Esther Allston Johnston or perhaps his daughter Esther Ainslie Johnston Withers
- Edict of Nantes - law promulgated at Nantes in Brittany on April 13, 1598, by Henry IV of France, which granted a large measure of religious liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots. The edict was accompanied by Henry IV’s own conversion from Huguenot Calvinism to Roman Catholicism and brought an end to the violent Wars of Religion that began in 1562. The controversial edict was one of the first decrees of religious tolerance in Europe and granted unheard-of religious rights to the French Protestant minority.
- The Period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes - The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 led to the suppression of the Reformed Church in France and forced Protestants into exile or hiding. As a result they lost all social identity.
- Ambush: Francis Marion and the Art of Guerilla Warfare.
- William Moultrie - Born in Charleston, South Carolina, William Moultrie (1785-1787) is known for his leadership during the American Revolutionary War. He defended the city of Charleston from British attack in 1776, and Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island was named for him. He contributed the element of the crescent to the South Carolina State Flag. Moultrie also served as 35th Governor of South Carolina.
- Sir Henry Clinton (1730 – 1795) was a British Army officer and politician who sat in the House of Commons of Great Britain between 1772 and 1795. He is best known for his service as a general during the American War of Independence. He arrived in Boston in May 1775 and was the British Commander-in-Chief in America from 1778 to 1782. He was a Member of Parliament for many years due to the influence of his cousin Henry Pelham-Clinton, 2nd Duke of Newcastle. Late in life, he was named Governor of Gibraltar, but he died before assuming the post.
- John Rutledge - Rutledge resigned as governor in March 1778 to protest adoption of a new state constitution of which he disapproved, but he was elected governor under that constitution in February 1779. When the British captured Charleston and established posts throughout South Carolina in 1780, Rutledge escaped and functioned as a one-man government in exile.
- Cherokee Wars 1759 and 1761. Also known as the Chickamauga Wars, were a series of raids, campaigns, ambushes, minor skirmishes, and several full-scale frontier battles in the Old Southwest from 1776 to 1794 between the Cherokee and American settlers on the frontier. Most of the events took place in the Upper South region. While the fighting stretched across the entire period, there were extended periods with little or no action.
- Battle of Eutaw Springs Description.
- Henry Lee - (1756–1818) also known as Light-Horse Harry Lee or Henry Lee III, was an officer in the Continental and U.S. armies, a representative from Virginia to the Confederation Congress (1786–1788) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1799–1801), a member of the House of Delegates (1789–1791), the (1791–1794), and the master of Born in Prince William County and educated at Princeton, he was the father of eight children who survived to adulthood, including Henry Lee IV, Charles Carter Lee, and Robert E. Lee. A gifted cavalryman, Lee distinguished himself in the American Revolution (1775–1783), fighting under generals George Washington and Nathanael Greene.
- Nathanael Greene - Greene’s most notable appointment came in October 1780 when the Continental Congress granted Washington with the power to appoint a new southern commander. Washington selected Greene. Up to that point, Congress struggled to select the right commanders in the South: Robert Howe lost Savannah, Benjamin Lincoln lost Charleston, and Horatio Gates was defeated at Camden, South Carolina. Greene’s martial skills shone brightest as commander of the southern theater. Soon after he took command, the tide of war began to turn in favor of the Patriots.
- Elijah Clarke - During the Revolutionary War era he commanded Georgian partisan force, fighting against not only the British, but Creek and Cherokee Indians on whose land white settlers were encroaching. On February 14, 1779, Clarke led a part of the American force that surprised and defeated a loyalist militia at the Battle of Kettle Creek. After the British capture of Charleston in 1780, Clarke and his Georgians participated in the guerilla campaign against the British and their supporters in the South Carolina Backcountry. He was one of three American commanders at the Battle of Musgrove’s Mill, during which he was wounded.
- William Richardson Davie - From 1777 to 1778, Davie served in the militia and in early 1779 he organized his own cavalry unit. He was severely wounded in June, 1779, at the Battle of Stono Ferry in South Carolina. After recuperating, he organized a new unit to harass the British forces that had invaded and occupied South Carolina.
- Thomas Sumter (1734—1832, South Mount, South Carolina, U.S.) was a legislator and officer in the American Revolution, remembered for his leadership of troops against British forces in North and South Carolina, where he earned the sobriquet “the Carolina Gamecock.”
- Learn more about Hezekiah Maham, Peter Horry, John and James Postell as well as others serving under Francis Marion during the partisan period. Francis Marion's Brigade.
- South Carolina Military Patriots in American Revolutionary War.
- Snow's Island is an area of swampy lowlands along the Pee Dee River in Florence County, South Carolina. The area is historically significant as the headquarters during the American Revolutionary War for forces led by Francis Marion (1732-1795), a South Carolina militia officer who is celebrated as the "Swamp Fox." Employing guerrilla war tactics, Marion significantly contributed to the American war effort by conducting numerous raids on British outposts. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
