John Hood: Do Sternly Worded Letters Win Wars?
RALEIGH — It was 250 years ago this week that a displaced governor issued a proclamation intended to restore him to power in North Carolina. Instead, it led to the first major engagement of the Revolutionary War in the Southern colonies — and a decisive defeat for his cause.
The governor in question was Josiah Martin, a Dublin native and British army officer appointed in 1771 to replace William Tryon as the king’s top magistrate in the future Tar Heel State. As resistance to illegal British taxes and sympathy with the residents of Boston spread across North Carolina, Martin catastrophically mishandled his relationship with the provincial legislature and was essentially chased out of the capital, New Bern, in April 1775.
Taking refuge in a British sloop anchored off shore, Martin spent the early months of the Revolutionary War concocting various schemes to regain power. All came to naught. Then he received word the British government wanted to pursue a Southern strategy to win the war, beginning with the capture of Charleston, South Carolina in early 1776.
An emboldened Governor Martin instructed his emissary Alexander Shaw to propose an alternative: first capturing Wilmington. Taking the smaller but strategic valuable city, then reasserting royal control over the rest of North Carolina, would weaken Patriot manpower, supplies, and resolve, Shaw argued, making it easier to seize Charleston and Savannah. With the Carolinas and Georgia back in the fold, British regulars and Tory militia could then move north against the largest province in revolt, Virginia, in late 1776 or 1777.
Shaw proved persuasive. British leaders agreed to converge on Wilmington — Gen. Henry Clinton sailing south from New York with one army, Gen. Charles Cornwallis west from Ireland with another. As for Governor Martin, he promised to raise many thousands of Loyalists, most either Scottish Highlanders from the Sandhills or ex-Regulators from the Piedmont with longstanding grievances against the coastal elites now running North Carolina’s revolutionary government.
Another part of the plan, at least in the minds of some British agents, was to draw Carolina militiamen away from coastal defense by inciting and arming the Cherokees to open a second front in the backcountry.
Martin threw himself wholeheartedly into the plan. On January 10, 1776, he issued a proclamation calling for Loyalists to muster into militia companies for the impending conflict. He also promised “every aid, encouragement, and support to all such as shall come to vindicate and support the violated laws and Constitution of their country,” while fuming that “a most daring, horrid and unnatural Rebellion has been exerted in the Province against His Majesty's Government, by the base and insidious artifice of certain traitorous, wicked and designing men.”
This was his public proclamation. Also on January 10, Governor Martin dispatched messengers to Loyalist militia commanders in Anson, Cumberland, Chatham, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Rowan, Surry, and Bute counties to march their forces to a central location by February 15. They soon settled on Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, as their initial destination, with the intention of then heading down the Cape Fear River to Wilmington to meet up with the incoming British regulars.
Because you know how the Revolutionary War turned out, I won’t worry about spoilers here. Britain’s first Southern strategy had too many moving pieces and was based on the faulty intelligence — much of it from Josiah Martin himself — that most Carolinians sided with the king. Nothing went according to plan. General Clinton showed up late. General Cornwallis was even later. The Cherokee attacks came too late, as well, and converted more than a few previously neutral frontiersmen into passionate Patriots.
As for the Loyalists, many fewer took arms than Martin predicted. And they never made it to Wilmington. To learn more about the resulting battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge (February 27, 1776), please consider attending North Carolina’s First in Freedom Festival. It will be held on and around the Pender County battlefield this coming February 21 to February 28. Visit NCFirstInFreedomFestival.com for more details.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
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