The ban annoyed the settlers, who had hoped for just the opposite result upon the end of the French and Indian War. The expulsion of the French opened the way to additional settlements—or should have, if the British government had had the interests of Americans in mind. The ban suggested it did not.
So did measures that followed shortly. The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed the Americans as they had never been taxed before. Strong American opposition—amounting to riots in several colonies—forced the repeal of the act, but the Townshend duties of 1767 imposed new taxes in other forms. Americans again resisted, with boycotts of British products. The boycotts didn’t produce repeal but they did foster fellow thinking among the Americans, who increasingly viewed the British—or at least the British government—as hostile. When British troops fired on a crowd in Boston in 1770, the incident was quickly dubbed a “massacre.” When another Boston crowd in 1773 protested a London-imposed monopoly on tea by dumping a cargo of leaves into the harbor, and the British government responded by closing the harbor and passing other punitive measures, the Americans convened a “continental congress” to coordinate the defense of American rights against British encroachment. When fighting between British regulars and American militiamen broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the Continental Congress raised an army, and in 1776 it declared the American colonies to be free and independent states.
J
acksonian mythology later asserted that young Andrew was chosen to read the Declaration of Independence when a copy of that document first reached the Waxhaw in the summer of 1776. Perhaps he was, but it seems odd that such an important task should be assigned to a boy not yet ten. On the other hand, considering the division of opinion in the Carolinas regarding independence, Jackson’s seniors may have been happy to let him do the honors. If the independence project turned out badly, the British would be less likely to punish a child.
For years after the fighting began, a bad outcome appeared entirely possible. The problem wasn’t simply the inexperience and poor provisioning of the Continental Army, although that didn’t help matters. The deeper problem was that for all the brave words and unanimous declarations of the Continental Congress, the Americans were far from united in their desire to separate from Britain. Wherever British troops landed, they were greeted by grateful Tories, or Loyalists. When they occupied New York, they found many Tories eager to supply them. After they drove to Philadelphia and settled into what had been the American capital till their approach scattered the Continental Congress, they spent a pleasant winter among friends (while General George Washington and the Continental Army shivered and starved at Valley Forge). Before 1780 the rebels won only a single major battle—at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777—and though this earned them an alliance with France, it hardly guaranteed them victory.
Yet Washington enjoyed the advantage of time. He didn’t so much have to win the war as avoid losing. For the rebels, the struggle against Britain was an essential affair, a battle for their homeland. For the British government, it was a discretionary matter. America was but a part of the British empire, and if that part became too expensive to maintain and defend, the imperial government could cut its losses and withdraw.
British commanders understood the situation and in 1780 determined to bring the war to a swift conclusion. Their strategy was to exploit the divisions among the Americans: to make the revolutionary war a civil war. Against a united America the British knew they stood no chance. Their troops were too far from home, too far from safe harbor and reprovision. But against a divided America their prospects were good. A divided America might be worn down, won over, and wooed back village by village, county by county, province by province. The ringleaders of the rebellion would flee or be captured, and the populace would accept what everyone in England accepted: that the Crown and Parliament were supreme. No doubt political adjustments would be made: the Americans could be granted seats in Parliament, dulling their complaint about being taxed without being represented. But the empire would stand secure.
The strategy would begin in the South. Tory sentiments were strongest there, especially among the planters of the tidewater districts, whose ties of family, finance, and sentiment to the mother country were broad and deep. The royal navy would deliver an army to the Carolinas, where Lord Cornwallis, the army’s commander, would launch a dual offensive: with regular British troops against fixed positions and with American Tory regiments against the rebels in the field.
L
ieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton cut a figure that made men envious and women swoon. “A picture of a man he was!” remarked one (male) admirer among many. “Rather below the middle height, and with a face almost femininely beautiful, Tarleton possessed a form that was a perfect model of manly strength and vigor. Without a particle of superfluous flesh, his rounded limbs and full broad chest seemed molded from iron, yet, at the same time, displaying all the elasticity which usually accompanies elegance of proportion.” Tarleton appreciated his physical gifts and took pains to show them off. His cavalry jacket was tailored smartly and his white riding breeches clutched his thighs. He wore the plumed helmet of the king’s dragoons, and his saber danced jauntily as he rode.
His temperament matched his appearance and military calling. He was dashingly brave; a fellow officer described him as “full of enterprise and spirit, and anxious of every opportunity of distinguishing himself.” And he was still very young: twenty-three when he received command of the British Legion, a regiment of Tories known for their green jackets (which distinguished them from the red-coated regulars and helped them blend into the forest), their familiarity with the local terrain and folkways, and their fierce opposition to the rebels, who threatened the way of life they had learned to cherish.
But none of the legionnaires was as fierce as their commander. Tarleton’s very name became a curse among the rebels, and a caution even among the Tories, on account of his utter ruthlessness in prosecuting the war. In theory, the rebels were all traitors to the Crown and liable to summary execution. In practice, most British commanders treated men under American arms as soldiers subject to the practices of civilized warfare. Tarleton preferred theory to practice. To some degree his ruthlessness reflected arrogance. With other British officers, he considered the Americans—even his own—beneath him. They were crude, unlettered, and indifferent to most of what made life fine for a man of the imperial metropolis. But to a greater degree his ruthlessness was calculated. He and his Tories would sow terror among the rebels and thereby compel them to abandon their cause. In the war behind the war—in the struggle for the allegiance of the American people—terror was Tarleton’s weapon of choice.
In the spring of 1780, while British regulars under General Henry Clinton besieged Charleston, Lieutenant Colonel Tarleton launched a series of raids inland. Moving stealthily, marching all night, the green-clad Legion surprised a rebel force at Monck’s Corner and won a stunning victory. In their defeat the rebels discovered what kind of man they were dealing with. Several members of the British Legion assaulted a group of American women who had taken shelter in a nearby plantation house. Whether the assailants understood that the women were in fact Tories—that is, on their own side—is unclear; what registered on all who heard of the incident was that Tarleton’s men were brutes with no sense of decency, shame, or even simple humanity. Nor did the green-jackets recognize any rules on the field of combat itself. Attacking with swords and bayonets, they continued hacking and thrusting even after the rebels indicated a will to surrender. A Frenchman fighting on the rebel side saw he was surrounded and asked quarter. Tarleton’s men kept hacking until the French officer was “mangled in the most shocking manner,” in the words of an eyewitness. He lingered in agony for several hours before dying. Until the end the Legionnaires taunted him and laughed at his pain.
In May Clinton captured Charleston, and Tarleton drove deeper inland. Chasing a rebel force that was retreating toward North Carolina, Tarleton caught the rebels on the border between North and South Carolina, in the Waxhaw district. Tarleton was badly outnumbered, and his men were staggering from having marched a hundred miles without pause, but he prepared to attack at once. He offered the rebels the chance to surrender and warned of the consequences if they didn’t. “If any persons attempt to fly after this flag is received,” he said, “rest assured that their rank shall not protect them, if taken, from rigorous treatment.”
The rebel commander, Abraham Buford, refused to surrender to the much smaller force, and Tarleton ordered a charge. He threw one column of his dragoons against the rebel left and another against their center, while he personally led a third column against the right. Buford, apparently unable to believe that Tarleton could move so decisively, ordered his men to hold their fire till the Tories were almost upon the rebel lines. Such patience might have worked against infantry or even cavalry showing the ordinary effects of fifty hours on the march, but it failed against Tarleton’s dragoons, who easily absorbed the shock of the single volley the rebels were able to get off before being overwhelmed by the charging horses and their saber-swinging riders.
The confusion among the rebels turned to rout. Some tried to surrender, others to flee; a few fought desperately on. Tarleton’s dragoons treated all alike: with unbridled ferocity. Their sabers and bayonets slashed and stabbed long after the outcome of the battle had been decided. Tarleton, who personally cut down the rebel standard bearer even as his own horse was being shot from under him, allowed the killing to continue unabated. A rebel surgeon, after treating the victims of the massacre, remarked, “Not a man was spared; and it was the concurrent testimony of all the survivors that for fifteen minutes after every man was prostrate they”—Tarleton’s dragoons—“went over the ground plunging their bayonets into everyone that exhibited any signs of life, and in some instances, where several had fallen over the other, these monsters were seen to throw off on the point of the bayonet the uppermost, to come at those beneath.” Tarleton himself, reporting the victory to his British superiors, declared laconically, “I have cut 170 officers and men to pieces.”
A
ndrew Jackson was thirteen years old that brutal summer, at home in the Waxhaw district with his widowed mother and his two older brothers. Elizabeth was an ardent rebel, and Hugh rode with the rebel militia. Robert and Andrew were too young for military service, but they weren’t too young to look after Elizabeth as Tarleton’s dragoons approached the Waxhaw. The Tories slowed to burn barns and crops and houses throughout the predominantly rebel district, allowing the Jacksons to escape. After the raiders moved on, Elizabeth and the boys returned to their ravaged neighborhood—only to have to flee once more when the Tories came back. For several months the Waxhaw was in constant turmoil.
Several months is a long time in the life of a thirteen-year-old, and when those months include the stern lessons of war, a boy grows up quickly. Andrew ached to join the rebel militia and avenge the losses his family suffered. When word arrived that Hugh had died on campaign, not even Elizabeth’s fears for her youngest could keep him out of the contest. The militia leaders judged him still too young to fight, but they let him serve as scout and courier, galloping the back roads of the Waxhaw with dispatches and the latest news of armed action. He observed a rebel assault on British forces at Hanging Rock, an attack that started promisingly and might have finished so but for the heat of the day and the attackers’ thirst, which they assuaged with captured rum. As their thirst diminished, so did their interest in fighting, and what might have been a decisive victory turned out to be merely a morale booster.
The following fortnight brought word of a calamitous rebel defeat at Camden, south of the Waxhaw, where Cornwallis routed Horatio Gates, the rebel hero of Saratoga. Gates’s defeat left the backcountry helpless, and as Cornwallis and his redcoats pushed north, the Waxhaw once more emptied. Elizabeth had kin near Charlotte, some forty miles over the border in North Carolina. To Charlotte she and Robert and Andrew fled. Through the end of 1780 they remained in the north, while Cornwallis and the British had their way in the Waxhaw, destroying what little remained of the property of the rebels, seizing what cattle and horses hadn’t already been eaten or driven off, and installing Tories in positions of prominence and power.
The Tory presence didn’t prevent the return of most of the refugees, including Elizabeth Jackson and her surviving sons. But it did prevent the return of peace, and for several months the ugliest kind of partisan warfare raged throughout the Waxhaw. Neighbor hunted neighbor; friends by day became foes by night. Beyond the patent horrors of the fratricidal campaign, the guerrilla character of the fighting strained the nerves of all and broke the spirit of some. One man, without warning, began striking murderously at those around him, killing everyone within reach until the madness passed and he discovered, to his own shock as much as anyone else’s, some twenty corpses in various states of dismemberment. Others, more courageous than crazy, yet still self-destructive, burned their homesteads rather than let them fall into the hands of the enemy.
Andrew Jackson rode with the rebels, now as an irregular soldier. One night he and Robert, who had also enlisted, were assigned with several others to guard the house of a well-known rebel, which came under attack from a large group of Tories. The attackers fired into the house, and fourteen-year-old Andrew and the other defenders returned the fire. One young man, Andrew’s cousin, was killed at his side. The position of the defenders grew increasingly grim, until a bugle calling the cavalry charge pierced the darkness. The Tory attackers, assuming the gunfire had attracted rebel reinforcements, abandoned the assault and fled into the night. Shortly after they left, a lone, unmounted rebel, with bugle in hand, appeared from the trees, chuckling to himself at the gullibility of the Tories.