Cleveland, Benjamin

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Cleveland, Benjamin

CLEVELAND, BENJAMIN. (1738–1806). Patriot, militia leader. North Carolina. Born near Bull Run, Virginia, he moved with relatives to the portion of the North Carolina frontier that became Wilkes County. About twenty-one years old at this time, uneducated and with a fondness for gambling and horse racing, he developed into a frontiersman. On 1 September 1775 he became ensign in the Second North Carolina Line. He participated in the rout of Scottish Loyalists at Moores Creek Bridge in February 1776. The next summer he was a scout on the western frontier, and that fall he served under General Griffith Rutherford in the Cherokee War of 1776. He was promoted to captain after this campaign (23 November 1776) and saw the country where he was later to settle. In 1777 he served at Carter's Fort and the Long Island of Holston. The next year he retired from the Second North Carolina on 1 June and in August was made colonel of the militia; he also became justice of the Wilkes County court when the county was organized, having been chairman of the Surry County Committee of Safety. In 1778 he was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons.

In 1780 he turned out to crush the Tories at Ramseur's Mill on 20 June but apparently was with the force led by his old commander, General Rutherford, and therefore saw no actual fighting. Four months later, however, he led 350 men south to take part in the battle of Kings Mountain on 7 October 1780. Cleveland is said to have been the man most responsible for the decision to hang nine prisoners after the battle.

"Cleveland's Bull Dogs" had a reputation along the Upper Yadkin for brutality and inhumanity as Tory hunters that was unmatched by David Fanning on the other side. As a "justice" he was a fast man with the rope. Prisoners were convicted and executed by order of drumhead court-martials. In 1781 he was captured by Tories but soon rescued.

After a title dispute Cleveland lost his plantation, so he moved to what is now Oconee County at the western tip of South Carolina. He became a justice of the region. General Andrew Pickens is among those who have testified that the uneducated, grossly fat Patriot hero normally slept through the court proceedings—he became highly annoyed at legal arguments and technicalities. Having reached the incredible weight of 450 pounds, he died at the breakfast table when in his sixty-ninth year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Draper, Lyman. King's Mountain and Its Heroes. 1887. Reprint, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1983.

Waugh, Betty Linney. The Upper Yadkin Valley in the American Revolution: Benjamin Cleveland, Symbol of Continuity. Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1971

revised by Harry M. Ward

Encyclopedia of the American Revolution: Library of Military History