The British Caught by Surprise

On September 8, 1781, British Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart and his force of approximately 2,000 men were camped here at Eutaw Springs. Stewart commanded the British tactical army in the Carolinas. Just six months earlier, British Lieutenant General Charles, Lord Cornwallis had defeated Major General Nathanael Green’s Patriots in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Now Cornwallis was in Virginia with a substantially weakened army and Greene was conducting a campaign of reconquest in South Carolina, attacking rural British military outpost in an often successful attempt to drive Royal and Loyalist forces from the Backcountry. Stewart’s location at Eutaw Springs compelled Greene to march his troops, which numbered about 2,100, from Burdell’s Plantation, seven miles away, to assault the British camp. The Patriots started their march from Burdell’s at 4:00 a.m., before the heat of the sun beat down on the dusty road. By 8:00 a.m., Greene’s troops had assembled on what is now Moncks Corner Road, approximately half a mile west of where you now stand. Imagine the anxious soldiers and eager commanders gazing ahead towards their unknown fate. Meanwhile, the men in Stewart’s camp were going about their morning routine when Stewart, acting on a tip from Patriot deserters, realized Greene’s forces were close by. In the following hours, this rural landscape became the scene of horrific violence. The Battle of Eutaw Springs would prove to be the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War to be fought in the South. The Patriot effort here freed South Carolina of her British occupiers and brought America closer to earning independence.