Fish Dam Ford, South Carolina

FISH DAM FORD, SOUTH CAROLINA. 9 November 1780. Hearing that newly promoted General Thomas Sumter was camped with three hundred men at Moore's Mill, only thirty miles northwest of the main British army at Winnsboro, General Charles Cornwallis gave Major James Wemyss authority to go after him with his one hundred mounted infantry of the Sixty-third Regiment and forty horsemen from Tarleton's British Legion. The plan was to surprise the rebels in a night attack at Moore's Mill, but Sumter had unexpectedly moved five miles south to Fish Dam Ford. Finding the first camp empty, Wemyss pushed on, reaching the new encampment at dawn. The British dragoons charged into the camp with Wemyss at their head. The rebels responded quickly, opening fire. Wemyss was shot and fell from his saddle with a broken arm and a wounded knee. At this point the Sixty-third arrived in the camp, dismounted, and fired upon the Patriots, who fled into the nearby woods from where they returned fire on the British. Not knowing that Cornwallis had given Wemyss specific instructions not to misuse Tarleton's cavalry by employing them at night, young Lieutenant John Stark led a mounted charge down the road and into Sumter's bivouac, where they were silhouetted against the campfires and badly shot up. With the battle becoming ever more chaotic, both sides withdrew.

Meanwhile, five dragoons who had been given the mission of getting Sumter dead or alive were led to Sumter's tent by a Loyalist named Sealy. As two dragoons entered the front of his tent, Sumter slipped out the back and spent the night hiding under a bank of the nearby Broad River. Stark left Wemyss and the other twenty-two wounded British soldiers at the plantation's farmhouse under a flag of truce and returned to Winnsboro. When Sumter ventured back to his camp about noon—the British sergeant in charge of the wounded said no rebels were seen until two hours after sunrise—he took the paroles of the wounded. Major Wemyss had in his pocket a list of the men he had hanged and the houses he had burned in the punitive raid up the Peedee to Cheraw, but Sumter threw the list in the fire after glancing at it.

Although Cornwallis says Sumter had about three hundred militia and "banditti" (that is to say, noble partisans) at Moore's Mill, it is likely that the number at Fish Dam Ford was more like two hundred men. The unit commanders who rallied the Patriot militia in the absence of Sumter were Colonel Thomas Taylor and Colonel Richard Winn. The British attacked with 150 men, losing from ten to fifteen men killed and twenty-three wounded while the rebels lost five or six dead and a dozen wounded.

The rebels counted Fish Dam Ford a great success and morale soared. As Cornwallis reported to Sir Henry Clinton, "The enemy on this event cried 'Victory,' and the whole country came in fast to join Sumter." Alarmed for the safety of Ninety Six, the British commander recalled Tarleton and sent Major Archibald McArthur with his First Battalion of the Seventy-first Highlanders and the Sixty-third Regiment to guard Brierly's Ford on the Broad River. Tarleton reached this place on 18 November, and his efforts to trap Sumter led to the action at Blackstocks, South Carolina on 20 November 1780.

SEE ALSO Blackstock's, South Carolina.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Commager, Henry Steele, and Richard B. Morris, eds. The Spirit of 'Seventy-Six. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 1995.

                                revised by Michael Bellesiles