Eutaw Springs

The Blood-Soaked Springs: Eutaw Springs and the Last Great Battle of the Southern Campaign

On the morning of September 8, 1781, in the sweltering backcountry of South Carolina, roughly four thousand men collided in what would become one of the fiercest and most tactically complex engagements of the entire American Revolution. At Eutaw Springs some 2,200 Americans — Continental regulars from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware; state troops from South Carolina; and militia from North and South Carolina — faced a British camp of 2,300 under Colonel Alexander Stewart. The Battle of Eutaw Springs was the last major open-field battle of the Revolutionary War and perhaps its most savage. The close-quarter fighting that occurred there ranks among the bloodiest and most intensely contested military encounters in young America's quest for independence. In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, both armies sustained heavy casualties with each side losing nearly 20 percent of its soldiers.

Fought along the west bank of the Santee River approximately sixty miles northwest of Charleston, it did not produce a clean victory for either side — both sides claimed a victory . Perhaps the stone marker erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution at the Battleground Park in 1912 provides the most succinct assessment: "Neither side was victorious, but the fight was beneficial to the American cause." Yet its consequences were enormous. It effectively ended British control of the South Carolina interior, confined the King's forces to the Charleston perimeter, and set in motion the strategic isolation that would contribute to the final collapse of British military ambitions in America. With nearly half of his army killed, wounded, or missing, Stewart was forced to retreat to Charleston, where he would remain for the duration of the war. Stewart buried his dead, destroyed supplies, including 1,000 muskets, and retreated from Eutaw Springs toward Charleston, leaving behind many of his dead unburied and seventy of his seriously wounded.

Unable to regain numbers or momentum, Stewart's forces could not join British General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown the following month. His lack of reinforcements contributed to British surrender. Despite winning a tactical victory, the British lost strategically. Their inability to stop Greene's continuing operations forced them to abandon most of their conquests in the South, leaving them in control of a small number of isolated enclaves at Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah. The British attempt to pacify the South with Loyalist support had failed even before Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. Yet it has been eclipsed in historical memory by the climactic military event of the conflict — the siege at Yorktown, Virginia, and subsequent surrender of a British army that overshadowed the struggle in South Carolina. For a place that most Americans today could not locate on a map, Eutaw Springs occupies a surprisingly pivotal position in the story of how the Revolution was won.

To understand the battle, one must first understand the extraordinary campaign that preceded it. Major General Nathanael Greene, the Rhode Island-born Quaker who had been appointed commander of the Continental Army's Southern Department in December 1780, had spent the better part of a year waging one of the most audacious strategic campaigns in American military history. He had inherited a shattered army and a theater of war that seemed all but lost. The British controlled Charleston, Camden, Ninety-Six, and a network of fortified outposts across the Carolina backcountry. Greene's genius lay not in winning battles — indeed, he lost nearly every major engagement he fought — but in so relentlessly maneuvering, striking, and withdrawing that the British were compelled to abandon one post after another. By the late summer of 1781, the Crown's grip on South Carolina had contracted drastically. On 16 July, Greene moved his army, exhausted by many days of marching and combat, to a campsite on the High Hills of Santee, allowing his main force to rest while awaiting reinforcements. Greene spent over a month in the High Hills of the Santee resting his army while drilling Continental and militia infantry in battalion-level firing.

His cavalry augmented partisan activity as the British were kept off balance and denied current knowledge of American movement and intentions.

Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter continued to harass the British throughout, and among the American unit commanders were many notable patriots, including Francis Marion; Otho Williams; William Washington; Henry Lee; Andrew Pickens; and Wade Hampton.

Greene spent a little over a month recuperating and broke camp on August 23.

Marching over land, Greene headed toward a British force under Lt. Col. Alexander Stewart, encamped near Eutaw Springs.

Stewart had established his camp in a wooded area along the banks of Eutaw Creek near the plantation of Loyalist Patrick Roche. Roche's plantation consisted of a two-story brick house with outbuildings and walled gardens.

On September 7th, Greene camped his force of 2,092 men along the River Road at Burdell's Plantation, seven miles from Eutaw Springs.

Stewart was not aware that the Americans were so close, and he had that morning sent out foragers to collect sweet potatoes.

Four miles from Eutaw Springs, the vanguard of the American army ran into the British escort protecting the rooting party. Many of the unarmed foragers were captured.

Greene used a formation that had seen success at the Battle of Cowpens.

The Continental commander deployed into three successive battle lines to engage the British.

Greene deployed his infantry in three lines, militia in front of regulars, and advanced towards the camp.

It was an intense battle, opening with the American militia units attacking and firing up to seventeen volleys before falling back after two hours.

Greene's Continentals attacked next, pushing British forces back into their own camp.

Stewart's forces included John Marjoribanks' 300-man flank battalion, made up of the converged flank companies of the 3rd, 19th, and 30th Foot — elite light infantry and grenadiers who would prove pivotal to the battle's outcome. Reacting quickly, Stewart sent forward additional troops to delay the Americans and formed his main army in a single line about two hundred yards west of his Eutaw Springs campgrounds. He anchored his right flank on Eutaw Creek with the brick house, occupied by a covering force, behind the line.

As the American attack drove the British back through their own camp, the tide began to turn in unexpected ways. Attempts to capture the house failed, and Majoribanks was able to restore some order to the rest of the British force