The British Evacuate Charleston, December, 1782

On December 14, 1782, British forces evacuated Charleston, South Carolina after an occupation that had lasted two and a half years. The day later became a local holiday: Victory Day. 

Sir Henry Clinton's capture of the city two and a half years before was the greatest British victory of the War for American Independence.  [Image: Siege of Charleston, 1780, by Alonzo Chappel, 1862]

The British and their Loyalist allies had gone on to gain nearly complete control of the state. Lord Cornwallis' decisive victory at the Battle of Camden in August seemed to solidify their conquest. [Image: Battle of Camden, by Granger]

At the height of their success, things began to sour for the British. In fact, the seeds of their ultimate defeat had already been sown. The army's strength was depleted by malarial fevers, dysentery, and possibly yellow fever. A smallpox epidemic was raging as well, although that hurt both sides. 

South Carolinians had an advantage over the British when it came to the local fevers: differential immunity. People who had been born in or lived in the state for years had often developed some immunity or resistance to the fevers. They might get ill, but they were less likely to be prostrated or die than the "unseasoned" British soldiers, and they would generally recover the ability to function more quickly. 

The British commanders knew that the lowcountry was an unhealthy place. But they expected to find relief from the fevers as they moved farther inland. The upcountry had was reputedly much healthier than the lowcountry. 

That may have been true before the region become thickly settled. But it had filled rapidly with white and enslaved black settlers following the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Lowcountry fevers migrated along with them, in their bodies. The British were caught by surprise. 

The consequences were dire. The fate of the 71st Highlanders provides an example. Cornwallis had posted them to Cheraw in June because he had been informed that it was a healthy location. By late July, fevers had incapacitated two-thirds of the regiment. Their commander removed them to another location. The Patriots  interpreted the move as a retreat, and they soon received many new recruits to their ranks.

When Cornwallis arrived at Camden to confront the approaching army of General Gates, he found that a third of his army was too ill to fight. Overall, he had only 2000 effectives, and the Patriot army numbered at least 3000. In spite of this, the British achieved a crushing victory.

But Cornwallis' problems had just begun. He moved his healthy men from Camden to the Waxhaws because it was reputedly healthy, only to find that it was just as sickly. Everywhere he went, fevers followed him. 

Cornwallis himself succumbed, and was virtually incapacitated during the crucial time in early October when the "Over Mountain Men" annihilated Major Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist detachment at King's Mountain. 

The experience of the summer and autumn weighed heavily on Cornwallis. In the spring of 1781, he decided to march his army north to Virginia, and gave as one of his reasons that it was the only way "to preserve the troops, from the fatal sickness, which so nearly ruined the army last autumn." Thus began the fatal road that would end at Yorktown in October. 

From many histories of the Revolutionary War, one could easily conclude that Cornwallis' surrender to Washington and the French at Yorktown ended the conflict. That was true for many parts of the old thirteen colonies, but in South Carolina it was far from the case.

Although the British now recognized the need to make peace, negotiations in Paris dragged on for more than a year. In the meantime, the war in South Carolina continued. 

Local resistance to British control had strengthened after Camden. Partisan bands constantly harassed isolated British detachments and posts, then vanished into the swamps and forests.

When Cornwallis marched North in April 1781, the Southern Continental Army under General Nathanael Greene moved into South Carolina. In September, they fought a British force to a standstill at Eutaw Springs. Both sides claimed victory, but the British retreated to Charleston and soon abandoned nearly all their posts outside of the city. [Image: Battle of Eutaw Springs, by Granger]

Eutaw Springs was the last major battle of the war in South Carolina, although skirmishes continued for nearly a year. In August, 1782, Colonel John Laurens, a firm opponent of slavery, was killed in a skirmish at the Combahee. 

Greene moved his army ever closer to Charleston. The British expected an attack, but Greene waited. At his camps along the Ashley River, his men, especially those from the North, suffered terribly from malaria and other diseases.      

At the end of November 1782, British and American negotiators in Paris agreed on preliminary articles of peace. The British commanders in Charleston did not yet know that, but they had been preparing for an evacuation for some time. The British had already evacuated Savannah, which they had seized in December 1778. 

In early December they began loading transport ships for departure from Charleston. This was not an ordinary military evacuation. In addition to the British soldiers, the fleet removed over three thousand Loyalists and their families. The transports were also loaded with  five thousand Africans who had fled to British lines in return for promises of freedom from General Clinton. 

Some of the ships were bound for the West Indies or St. Augustine in British Florida. Some were headed directly to England. The rest, especially those carrying the liberated Africans, were to the last British stronghold in the former thirteen colonies, New York. 

The evacuation was remarkably peaceful, even dignified. By prior agreement between the commanders on both sides, Greene's soldiers did not enter the city  until the ships were ready to depart. The last to board the transports were British and Loyalist soldiers, who marched from their lines at Boundary Street (now Calhoun) to the wharves, closely followed by Greene's men. The two forces were separated by only a few hundred yards, but not a shot was fired. 

The whites who remained cheered the entering American army as heroes. Many of them had also cheered the British when they arrived two and half years before. Such is war. 

The definitive peace treaty was signed in Paris in September 1783. The British evacuated New York two months later. Most of the Africans there were taken to Nova Scotia. Some of them later helped to found the British freedmen's colony of Sierra Leone in the 1790s. [See History and Other Stuff: Boston King: Black Loyalist, Minister, African Colonial Leader (mycandles.blogspot.com)]

[Image: The Evacuation of Charleston by the British, by Howard Pyle, 1898, Delaware Art Museum]

 

Most of the sources for this post come from Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011/2014.

Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston, South Carolina, Part Two: 1760

In January 1760 a major smallpox epidemic struck Charleston, the first one in twenty-two years. The long time between epidemics meant that a new generation had been born who had no immunity to the disease. The population had also grown by immigration of both Europeans and Africans -- in the latter case not by choice). The city was now home to about 10,000 people of all hues.

During the previous epidemic in 1738 local doctors had employed inoculation for the first time in the city, with considerable success. [See Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston, South Carolina, Part One]

In this case, the disease did not arrive by sea but by land, from the backcountry. A smallpox epidemic had been spreading through Eastern North America for several years. War once again aided the transmission of the disease, in this case, the French and Indian War. Both sides enlisted Native American allies, whose movements helped to spread smallpox. 

Late in 1759, a punitive expedition from Charleston against the Cherokees led by Royal Governor Lyttleton coincided with a virulent smallpox outbreak among that nation. Soldiers returning to the city from it carried the infection back to the city. Efforts to contain it failed. 

In 1760, the inhabitants were much less reluctant to undergo the procedure than in 1738. No one opposed it upon religious or medical grounds in this instance. The people were now more familiar with it, and some residents recalled its effectiveness in the earlier epidemic. (It seems they had better memories than 21st Century Americans facing the Covid Pandemic). 

For the same reasons, most of Charleston's doctors were prepared to inoculate in 1760, and the numbers inoculated were much higher than in 1738. Mass inoculations took place almost immediately after the outbreak of the disease. Eliza Pinckney commented that the doctors had no choice: "The people would not be said nay." 

The demand for inoculation overwhelmed the doctors, who worked constantly to meet it. (It was also quite profitable.) Dr. Alexander Garden, who was in high demand, wrote that "many more people were inoculated than could be attended by the practitioners of physic." He recorded that he had inoculated more than 500 people himself, and the effort had left him completely exhausted. [Image: Alexander Garden. Garden was also a highly competent naturalist for whom Linnaeus named the gardenia.  History and Other Stuff: How the Gardenia Got its Name (mycandles.blogspot.com)

Garden estimated that 2400 to 2800 people were inoculated in less than two weeks. Another doctor, Lionel Chalmers, later estimated that more 3500 had been inoculated during the entire epidemic, while about 2500 contracted smallpox naturally. 

Deaths from smallpox numbered 940, or about 16 percent of infections and close to 10 percent of the population.  Of those infected naturally, 848 died -- about 33 percent. Of those inoculated, deaths numbered 92 -- between 2 and 3 percent. 

Other sources claimed that deaths among the inoculated were higher -- 140 to 160 -- but Chalmers thought that an exaggeration. An exact count was extremely difficult due to the chaos the epidemic produced. Total deaths in South Carolina in 1759-1760 are unknown, but must have numbered in the thousands. Native Americans, the Cherokee and Catawba, had the greatest losses. [Image: Lionel Chalmers]

Among the dead were French Acadians (exiled from today's Nova Scotia at the start of the war with France) interned in South Carolina during the war. One third of the 300 who were still alive died during the epidemic. Poor whites and enslaved Africans also suffered disproportionately, due to lack of necessities and care.

It is impossible to know how many Africans were inoculated, though letters and other documents show that some certainly were. Household slaves were most likely to be inoculated, plantation workers less so. The expense plus the problem of having all the work force inoculated at one time held down the numbers inoculated. 

The lack of care for those inoculated was another problem. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, famed for introducing indigo cultivation into South Carolina, reported that "the poor blacks have died very fast even by inoculation." She attributed the outcome to a lack of proper nursing.

Some masters compromised by having a few of their slaves inoculated so they could travel to town to deliver goods and obtain supplies. In that way, they hoped that the disease would not spread to their workplace. 

Several months into the epidemic, in April, some prominent Charlestonians began to call for an end to inoculation within the city. They did not oppose the procedure itself, but they feared that it was prolonging the epidemic and hurting the economy through continued quarantine. Many rural people white and black were coming to town to be inoculated. 

The Assembly revived the act of 1738 restricting inoculation, with minor revisions. It banned inoculation within two miles of Charleston. The main innovation was the creation of a commission to enforce the law and report on cases of smallpox until the town and its environs were free from the disease. Despite the ban, the city was not declared smallpox free until December.  

Despite the chaos and uneven allocation of its benefits, in 1760 inoculation had once again proven its value.  

 

Sources: 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)