Beaufort

Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Revolutionary War: Liberty, Slavery, and the Fight for the Sea Islands

Long before the first shots of the American Revolution echoed at Lexington and Concord, the town of Beaufort, South Carolina, had already earned its place as one of the most strategically and economically significant settlements in British North America. Chartered on January 17, 1711, and named for Henry Somerset, the second Duke of Beaufort — a proprietor of Carolina from 1700 to 1714 — Beaufort is the second-oldest town in South Carolina. Established at Port Royal, on one of the finest natural harbors along the Atlantic seaboard — Beaufort, above Port Royal Sound, was the second-deepest natural harbor on the east coast — the town grew into the heart of the South Carolina Sea Island plantation economy. By the eve of the Revolution, the district's enslaved Black majority — laboring on indigo and rice plantations under brutal conditions — vastly outnumbered the white planter class that had amassed extraordinary wealth from their toil. The regional economy based on rice plantations on the mainland and indigo plantations on the Sea Islands brought an economic boom to Beaufort in the years prior to the Revolutionary War.

Indigo, used to make blue dye, was one of the colony's most valuable commodities, accounting for about one-third of the total value of South Carolina's cash exports before the Revolutionary War.

Beaufort also became a shipbuilding center, utilizing local live oak trees for ship timbers.

At the time, Beaufort was the second largest city in South Carolina, and removing it from rebel control would become a strategic military objective for the British when they embarked on their strategy of southern subjugation.

When war came, Beaufort became a fulcrum on which some of the Revolution's most consequential and morally complex dramas turned: the disruption of plantation slavery, the contest for the loyalty of enslaved people, British amphibious strategy in the South, and the bitter guerrilla warfare that defined the conflict in the Carolina Lowcountry. Beaufort's Revolutionary War story is not simply a local footnote — it is a window into the questions of freedom, property, and power that the Revolution raised but never fully resolved.

Even before hostilities began, Beaufort played a singular role in the imperial crisis that led to independence. In October 1772, Royal Governor Lord Charles Greville Montagu ignored contrary advice and called the Commons House of Assembly to meet at Beaufort instead of Charleston , a transparent attempt to manipulate the legislature into passing a tax bill favorable to the Crown. Much to the surprise of the royal governor, a large legislative quorum of 32 representatives met in Beaufort on October 8.

But a belated cautionary note from London advised him to be conciliatory, so he met the assembly at Beaufort and sent it back to Charleston before it could proceed to business. "No Measure of any Governor," the South-Carolina Gazette reported, "was ever more freely and generally condemned."

For four days Beaufort was the colonial seat of government before the angry legislators forced Montagu to move the assembly back to Charleston.

Moving the meeting of the legislature to Beaufort alienated local leaders, and it — with a similar measure in Massachusetts — would appear in the Declaration of Independence as part of the evidence against King George III , whose representatives had, in the language of the Declaration, "called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."

The "Beaufort Assembly" helped inspire the fourth clause of the Declaration of Independence, which included Beaufort resident Thomas Heyward, Jr., among its signers.

Born to Daniel and Maria Heyward on July 28, 1746, in St. Helena's Parish, South Carolina, Thomas Heyward Jr. was the fifth generation of his family to be born in America. Daniel was a wealthy planter who owned thousands of acres between Beaufort and Savannah, Georgia.

Heyward helped to draft South Carolina's State Constitution and signed the Articles of Confederation. He would prove to be one of Beaufort's most consequential revolutionary figures — as signer, soldier, and prisoner of war.

The Indigo Embargo and Divided Loyalties

The Continental Association, adopted by the First Continental Congress in October 1774, imposed an embargo on exports to Britain — but the agreement struck unevenly in Beaufort. Indigo was the pillar of the Beaufort Sea Islands' economy in the three decades before the American Revolution, not rice. The Royal Navy used indigo cakes primarily imported from the Lowcountry in making their uniforms. The effort of the nascent American Revolutionary government to embargo indigo but not rice did not sit well in Beaufort — the decision was a blow to Beaufort's economy, and worse, none of the SC delegates who voted for the embargo were from the Beaufort District.

When the First Provincial Congress met the following year, representatives from Beaufort District were included, and the rice/indigo disparity was partially resolved.

As one might expect, smuggling indigo out of the Lowcountry quickly became problematic when the embargo set in. It was a distraction that bred distrust and impeded local patriotic efforts to resist the British.

The American Revolution split loyalties in the community, with several families supporting the Tories while others favored independence.

Beaufort had many ties to England through trade and society and many remained loyal to the Crown. But, when King George III's government greatly increased taxes and ignored their constitutional rights, many locals joined in the Revolution.

The First Shots: Bloody Point and the Capture of the HMS Philippa (July 1775)

The Beaufort District's earliest armed engagement of the Revolution came even before the Declaration of Independence. The Battle of Bloody Point, also known as the Philippa Affair, took place near Daufuskie Island on July 9–10, 1775. Local militia and Patriot forces captured 16,000 pounds of gunpowder and supplies from the British ship HMS Philippa.

The Old Sheldon Church Ruins — formally Prince William's Parish Church, built between 1745 and 1753 in northern Beaufort County — served as a muster point for the Beaufort District Militia and reportedly stored the gunpowder seized from the HMS Philippa. More than half of that gunpowder was sent to support George Washington during the Siege of Boston.

A political and military center for the area during the Revolutionary War, the church also served by concealing arms and ammunition in the Bull family vault and by providing a place for Continental troops to drill.

Fort Lyttleton and the Defense of Port Royal

The only major fortification defending the approach to Beaufort was Fort Lyttleton. Named for Royal Governor of South Carolina, William Henry Littleton, the fort was built by the British in 1758 to protect the river approach against the Spanish, situated on Spanish Point, Port Royal Island, two miles south of the settlement of Beaufort.

William Harden, elected captain of the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery Company on June 17, 1775 — which was later incorporated into the Fourth South Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line in January 1776 — was appointed to command Fort Lyttelton near Beaufort, a post he held until April 1777.

The Battle of Beaufort (February 3, 1779): South Carolina's First Land Victory

After the British captured Savannah, Georgia, on December 29, 1778, they turned their attention northward. Prévost sent a diversionary force to invade Beaufort, South Carolina, ostensibly to divert American forces away from Campbell's march to Augusta. An assault