By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
It’s a battle Britain claimed to have won, and yet it sent the Redcoats to Charleston and back to Britan ending their presence in the Carolina backcountry.
I have visited six battlefields: Civil War battlefields Gettysburg and North Carolina’s Bentonville, Kettle Creek in Georgia of Revolutionary War fame along with Camden, clouds Creek, and now Eutaw Springs.
With the exception of Gettysburg and Bentonville, battlefields give me a strange feeling. They’re quiet and peaceful, more like parks. Preserved and possessing monuments, they possess an air of dignity. Maybe that’s what makes imagining the acrid smell of gunpowder, cannon fire, and cries of the wounded difficult. I find myself scanning the ground for a button, a projectile, something. Of course there’s nothing left after all these years of archaeologists and visitors.
With 51,000 casualties Gettysburg’s reputation serves it well and as Bentonville goes, I have a memory hard to erase: a bloody outline on longleaf flooring where a soldier bled out in a home turned hospital. You get a feeling for war when you see something like that.
It was a cool spring morning when I set out for the Eutaw Springs Battlefield, another parklike and peaceful place. It was the last major battle fought on South Carolina soil for independence, and it was a bloody, curious battle. The battle raged for four hours on a blistering hot day.
When the ragged, hungry American troops captured the fleeing Redcoats’ food and liquor they stopped their attack to eat and drink. That’s when the British prepared to repulse the Americans. British Maj. Majoribanks spearheaded the counterattack and saved the day for the British. He saved something else. He turned aside a British soldier’s sword, thus saving the life of Patriot Col. William Washington, George Washington’s nephew.
Here’s a summary of the battle from the American Battlefield Trust. September 8, 1781, an American force under Nathanael Greene’s command attacked a British force commanded by Alexander Stewart in the Battle of Eutaw Springs. Despite the initial success, Greene retreated from the field. After staving off repeated American attacks, Stewart realized that his force needed to fall back towards Charleston. The engagement was one of the final battles in South Carolina.
The significance of the battle is that it hastened the retreat of the Redcoats from the South Carolina backcountry. I’ve seen the battle classified as a tactical victory for the British and a strategic victory for the good guys. It was the Redcoats’ last stand.
Win, lose, or draw, it was a bloody battle. The American side suffered 119 killed, 382 wounded, and 78 missing and captured. The Redcoats suffered 85 killed, 297 wounded, and 500 missing and captured, all told 1,461 casualties.
It was a curious battle. By 1781, late in the conflict as it was, the British were fighting with Continental Army deserters and the Americans were fighting with British deserters. “At the close of the war we fought the enemy with British soldiers and they fought us with American.” Gen. Nathaniel Greene said that.
I spent an hour at the battlefield walking from monument to marker. Several people were there, one of whom had season tickets at the University of Georgia close by where I sit. He told me his 4G grandfather fought here when he was just sixteen.
Maj. Majoribanks is buried at the battle site. His grave was relocated there in 1941 before the dam’s floodwaters covered his grave.
I didn’t see any springs from which the site takes its name. The Santee-Cooper Dam drowned them, but I read that when the lake is at a certain level you can spot their swirling movement offshore.
