Fishing Creek, North Carolina

FISHING CREEK, NORTH CAROLINA. 18 August 1780. After the defeat of General Horatio Gates at Camden on 16 August, Captain Nathaniel Martin and two dragoons rode to warn Colonel Thomas Sumter of the disaster and to arrange a rendezvous near Charlotte. Loaded down with the booty and prisoners taken around Wateree Ferry on 15 August, Sumter and Captain Stevens Woolford's detachment marched day and night in an effort to escape. Cornwallis, meanwhile, had moved with his main body to Rugeley's Mill (Clermont). By the time Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton returned to this place late on the 16th from his pursuit to Hanging Rock, Cornwallis had picked up information of Sumter's location and ordered Tarleton to pursue him the next morning.

With 350 men and one cannon, Tarleton started up the east side of the Wateree early on 17 August. By late afternoon he had learned that his quarry was across the river on a parallel course. Reaching the ferry at Rocky Mount around dusk, Tarleton saw enemy campfires about a mile west of the river, and he bivouacked without fires in the hope that Sumter intended to cross the river and could be attacked while in this vulnerable position. When his scouts reported the next morning that the Americans were continuing up the west side, Tarleton crossed the Wateree and followed Sumter, undetected, to Fishing Creek. Reaching this point, some forty miles from Camden, at about noon, Tarleton's foot troops said they were unable to continue. Tarleton pushed forward with one hundred dragoons and sixty infantry, the latter riding double with the horsemen. After another five miles, two of Sumter's scouts were cut down after they had fired and killed one man of the enemy advance guard. Pressing forward, Tarleton found Sumter's troops resting with their arms stacked, unaware they were being pursued. Tarleton reported that some of the rebel militia were bathing in the creek and that many were drunk from alcohol they had seized from the British. Tarleton made a hasty deployment and charged. When Sumter, who had been sleeping, woke up in the scene of general confusion, he indulged in no heroics but, rather, saved his own skin by leaping coatless astride an unsaddled horse; two days later he rode into Major Davie's camp. Some of his men rallied to defend themselves from behind the wagons, killing Captain Charles Campbell, who had burned Sumter's house and launched the latter on his not always glorious career.

With a loss of 16 killed and wounded, Tarleton killed or wounded 150 Americans, captured 300, released 200 British and Loyalist prisoners, and recaptured 44 wagons full of supplies. Tarleton's reputation soared with reports of this coup. Only 350 of Sumter's 800 troops escaped. In writing of this battle, Colonel Henry Lee thought that it again proved that no reliance could be placed on the militia, which demonstrated a "fatal neglect of duty…. The pursuance of that system [militia] must weaken the best resources of the state, by throwing away the lives of its citizens" (Smith, vol. 2, p. 1420).

SEE ALSO Wateree Ferry, South Carolina.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Smith, Page. A New Age Now Begins. 2 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

                           revised by Michael Bellesiles