Memoirs of the Revolution in South Carolina
An image of Sgt. Jasper raising the battle flag of the colonial forces over present-day Fort Moultrie on June 28, 1776 during the Battle of Sullivan's Island by Johannes Oertel (1858).
South Carolina was a pivotal site of conflict during the Revolutionary War. Although the state’s leaders joined the Continental Congress in its fight against the British, many of the battles in South Carolina were between the state’s large loyalist forces and the Continental troops. Many of these engagements took place in Charleston, then known as Charles Town, which was a key port city during this period and also played a major role in the slave trade. Memoirs written about the Revolutionary War in South Carolina, from both loyalists and patriots, describe the violence of a conflict that was—on the ground—often a civil war between neighbours and communities.
This page features a selection of sources we are using for the research project, War Stories: The Meaning of the American Revolution. This is an ongoing project, and we will add content periodically. To learn more about this project, click here.
To return to the central list of memoirs used in this project, click here.
Teaching with Memoirs
I use these sources in the first year workshop I teach at the University of Sydney, called ‘Charleston, South Carolina, 1780 (HSTY1001)’. In this workshop, we focus on one place and one moment in time in order to explore the really big questions about the American Revolution. Charleston, South Carolina, was one of the most important and leading towns in the Revolutionary movement. But in 1780, the British invaded the fledgling state, and inflicted one of the worst defeats of the War on the rebels, or “patriots,” as some of the colonists called themselves. As the British occupied Charleston, those patriots fought with loyalists who wanted to stay in the British empire, while African American slaves and Native Americans took advantage of the conflict to make their own bids for independence. Families turned on each other, as sons and fathers, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters fought each other, and the American Revolution seemed on the brink of collapse. How does this chaotic scene fit with our understanding of the Revolution?
In this workshop, we try to understand what happened, but also how our understanding of this moment in time has evolved and come to be known in the myriad different ways it now is. We learn to examine the minutiae of everyday life in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780, and think big about how all this is connected. In other words, we think and act like historians. To learn more about this workshop, click here.
This page has been created and narrated by my collaborator Dr Marama Whyte.
Boston King, “Memoirs of the Life of Boston King, a Black Preacher. Written by Himself, during his Residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, March-June 1798.
Boston King was born a slave on a plantation in South Carolina c. 1760. He joined the British forces in Charleston. He later travelled to New York where he married his wife Violet, an enslaved woman from North Carolina. The Kings were eventually granted their freedom, and were resettled by the British in Nova Scotia. There, King became a Methodist minister. In 1792, the Kings immigrated to Sierra Leone, however Violet died soon after arrival. King continued to preach, went on to open a school, and was eventually sent to England to study at the Kingswood School. He died in Sierra Leone in 1802.
King wrote his account in 1796 while he was a resident at the Kingswood School in London, and it was published in instalments in the Methodist Magazine in London. King’s narrative offers a prominent and well-documented example of a Black loyalist in this period. His memoir is also a kind of conversion narrative, which details his spiritual—as well as physical—journey to freedom.
Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston, Recollections of a Georgia Loyalist, New York: M.F. Mansfield & Co., 1901.
Elizabeth Lichtenstein was born in 1764. She was the daughter of a Russian immigrant, who was employed by the royal government in Georgia. In 1779 she married Captain William Martin Johnston, and went on to have ten children, although many did not survive infancy. During the War, the Johnstons moved to New York, then Savannah, and eventually Charleston, S.C., leaving only when the British evacuated the town. In 1784 they immigrated to Scotland where William completed his medical studies, and then moved to Jamaica. Following William’s death in 1806, Elizabeth moved to Nova Scotia. She died in 1848.
Lichtenstein Johnston wrote her narrative for her grandchildren in 1836, when she was seventy-two years old. Despite the distance to the events she described, she recalled the fear and betrayal of the Revolution vividly. Her memoir, which describes at one point how an old family friend headed the gang that came looking for her loyalist father, makes plain how the War tore apart communities, friendships, and families.
Thomas Young, “Memoir of Major Thomas Young,” Orion Magazine, October-November 1843.
Thomas Young was born in Lawrence [Laurens] District, S.C. in 1764. In 1780, his brother John Young was murdered by “Bloody Bill” Cunningham, a loyalist now infamous for his South Carolina massacres. Young swore vengeance, and at seventeen he joined the patriot army. He participated in battles in South and North Carolina, served under various “Whig” colonels, and presumably rose to the rank of Major over the course of the War. Following the Revolution, Young married and settled in Union District, S.C. He died in 1848.
Young’s memoir was first published in Orion Magazine five years before his death. After dramatically beginning with his brother’s murder, the short account continues as a memoir which focused on battle with Tories, killings, and betrayals. Young’s account focuses entirely on his experiences during the Revolution, and he chose not to include details of his life before the War broke out, or after the peace of 1783.
James Potter Collins, Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, Clinton LA: Feliciana Democrat, Print, 1859.
James Potter Collins was born in South Carolina in 1763. As a child, he attended school and helped his father on their farm. His father hope he might attend divinity school, but Collins objected, and took up work as a tailor. When the Revolution came to the South, Collins was at first sent to Charlotte, N.C. for college, but was quickly recalled home. His older brother was enlisted, and soon after, the British pressed on Charleston. Following the burning of William Hill’s Iron Works, both Collins and his father volunteered to join the mounted Minute Men, to seek vengeance for the destruction. He participated in many battles in S.C., including at Fishing Creek. Collins left the service in 1783, but continued to join militias when they were called up to guard the Cherokee and Creek Indians. He died c. 1838 in Texas.
Collins originally wrote his memoir in 1836, although it was not published for another two decades. His account ends abruptly, as Collins was unable to finish it due to his failing health. Collins explained at the time that he wrote the memoir from memory, as he had lost his papers and records in the course of the various moves he undertook after the War.
William Hill, Col. William Hill’s Memoirs of the Revolution, Columbia SC: The State Company, 1921.
William Hill was born in 1741 in North Ireland. His family emigrated to York County in the late 1740s, and Hill grew up and became a cutler (knife maker). He married Jane McCall c. 1764, and a few years later the Hills moved to South Carolina. There, Hill established himself as an iron mill owner. He received a loan from the S.C. government to build an Iron Furnace, and produced war materials, guns, and cannon for the Revolutionary War. In response, the British burned the Iron Works and Hill’s home. Hill was elected as a commander of a Scots-Irish militia, and he fought in battles from 1780-1782. After the Revolution, Hill became a York County Court Judge and later a member of the S.C. legislature. He died in 1816.
Hill completed his memoir in 1815, just before his death. He intended his account to correct the facts about the civil war in South Carolina following the fall of Charleston. According to the editor A. S. Salley, Jr. (Secretary of the Historical Commission of South Carolina), Hill entrusted his manuscript to General Thomas Sumter, and it was held within that family until it was later presented to the Library of Congress.
William Moultrie, Memoirs of the American Revolution, so far as it related to the States of North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Compiled from the most authentic materials; the author’s personal knowledge of the various events, and including an epistolary correspondence on public affairs, with civil and military officers, at that period, Vol. II, New York: Printed by David Longworth for the author, 1802.
William Moultrie was born in Charleston, S.C. in 1730. He fought in the Anglo-Cherokee War of 1761, and was elected to the colonial assembly before the War. In 1775 he was commissioned as colonel of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, and in 1776 he helped prevent the British from taking Charleston. He was later captured when Charleston did surrender to the British in 1780, and was eventually exchanged for British prisoners of war. Moultrie was promoted to major general in 1782. Following the War, he was elected as Governor of South Carolina, and later returned to his plantation. He died in 1805.
Moultrie wrote and published two volumes of memoir in the years before his death. Unlike many of the other memoirs published by ordinary participants in the War, as a result of Moultrie’s status and position, his narrative has become a common and classic source on the Revolution.
Tarleton Brown, Memoirs of Tarleton Brown, A Captain in the Revolutionary Army, Written by Himself, New York: Privately Printed, 1862.
Tarleton Brown was born in 1757 in Virginia, and moved with his family to South Carolina in 1769. Brown was drafted into military service against the British when the war broke out. He served in Georgia and South Carolina, and was present for the siege of Savannah. During the Revolutionary War, Brown was eventually promoted from private to captain, and also served as a scout. Following the War, he married and had at least four children. He built several mills at Fork Mills in North Carolina, and died in 1846, at age 92.
Brown appears to have written his memoir in 1843, a few years before his death. His narrative was first published in the Charleston Rambler, and then reprinted with accompanying historical notes and preface by Charles I. Bushnell, a little-known figure who was responsible for publishing multiple Revolutionary memoirs during the 1800s. Bushnell argued for the importance of Brown’s memoir because of the lack of writing on the Southern States in the literature of Revolutionary history. Linked to this sentiment was the resurgence of interest in Revolutionary memoirs as the Civil War broke out, of which Brown’s was only one of many.
David Fanning, The Narrative of Colonel David Fanning (A Tory in the Revolutionary War with Great Britain): Giving an account of his Adventures in North Carolina from 1775 to 1783, as written by himself, New York: Reprinted for Joseph Sabin, 1865.
David Fanning was born c. 1755 in Virginia. He grew up in North Carolina, but moved to South Carolina in 1773. He initially joined the loyalist cause, and served in campaigns in South Carolina. In 1777 he was arrested, and subsequently acquitted, for treason. In 1778, Fanning accepted a pardon from the Governor of South Carolina and agreed to serve in the patriot militia. However following the British victory at the siege of Charleston, he again joined the loyalists in South and North Carolina, where he served for a time with “Bloody Bill” Cunningham. Following the War, he married and settled in New Brunswick. He was a member of the Kings County House of Assembly, and died in 1825.
Fanning’s memoir was written c. 1790, and was first published for “private distribution” in 1861 before being reprinted. It is likely that he wrote in order to gain some compensation from the British for his services during the War. He seems to have become a notorious figure during his life, and his memoir offers insight into the different ways loyalists and patriots function in historical memory.
Henry Holcombe, The First Fruits, in a Series of Letters, Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, by Ann Cochran, 1812.
Henry Holcombe was born in 1762 in Virginia, and moved with his family to South Carolina during his youth. He served in the War as a commissioned officer, beginning when he was roughly 17 years old. During the war he rose to a captain’s commission. He later resigned his commission and was ordained in 1785. Holcombe was married in 1786. He was later a delegate to the South Carolina Convention to ratify the Constitution, and founded Beaufort College in South Carolina. He organised the Pennsylvania Peace Society in 1822, and continued to be a pacifist until his death in 1824.
Holcombe wrote his memoir—divided into a series of letters—in 1812, when he was already on the path to pacifism. Likely because of his new perspective, and the context of writing on the eve of the War of 1812, he significantly downplays his military career in his writing. Instead, he offers a narrative of religious conversion and of his later career. In reflecting on the War, Holcombe wrote that while he once venerated Washington’s piety, he now thought a Christian would be ridiculed in an army camp, which offers a new perspective on how soldiers reframed their military experiences later in life.
Eliza Wilkinson, Letters of Eliza Wilkinson, During the Invasion and Possession of Charlestown, S.C. by the British in the Revolutionary War, New York: Published by Samuel Colman, 1839.
Eliza Yonge was born in 1757 on Yonge’s Island, roughly thirty miles south of Charleston in South Carolina. She married John Wilkerson c. 1774, but both her husband and their son, born in 1775, died shortly thereafter. Eliza returned to Yonge’s Island and her father put her in charge of one of his plantations. She remained in South Carolina during the War, where she supported the patriot troops and experienced looting at the hands of the British forces in Charleston. Following the War, Eliza remarried in 1786 and had four children. Her date of death is undocumented, but is dated c. 1812-1820.
Wilkinson’s letters were first published in 1833 in serialised form in Southern Rose Bud, a periodical for children created by Caroline Gilman. Gilman then arranged the letter into a manuscript, published in 1839. Wilkinson’s narrative offers insight into the ways Revolutionary memoirs were mediated in the years following the War, by editors, family members, and publishers. Wilkinson’s original letters are not available anywhere, but instead seem to have been passed down within her family, eventually ending up with Gilman. Without the originals, it is impossible to know how Gilman may have edited the narrative to fit her own politics or worldview.
James Hodge Saye, Memoirs of Major Joseph McJunkin, Revolutionary Patriot, Richmond, VA: Watchman and Observer, 1847 (reprinted by A Press, Inc., 1977).
Joseph McJunkin was born in Pennsylvania in 1755. He volunteered to join the patriot militia in 1776, served in South and North Carolina, and eventually rose to the rank of major. McJunkin was taken as a captive to the loyalist stronghold at Ninety Six near Greenville, South Carolina, where he was later paroled. He went on to assist in the unsuccessful patriot siege of Ninety-Six. He married Anne Jane Thomas in 1779, and after the war they settled in Union County, South Carolina, where McJunkin eventually died in 1846.
…But is this biography reliable?McJunkin’s narrative offers a useful and interesting example of the difficulty of using memoirs as primary sources. As you can read about at this link, rather than being written and published by McJunkin, the memoir was prepared and authored by Reverend James Hodge Saye. Saye did base the memoir on a manuscript written by McJunkin c. 1837, but he combined it with material found in other published sources, as well as letters, and interviews with veterans of the War. McJunkin’s memoir has been used by historians since its publication, but in fact only roughly half of the narrative has been taken directly from McJunkin’s manuscript, making this a compromised account of the Revolution.
Andrew Sherburne, Memoirs of Andrew Sherburne: A Pensioner of the Navy of the Revolution, Written by himself. Utica: William Williams, 1828.
Andrew Sherburne was born in Rye, New Hampshire in 1765. He was nine years old when the British took Boston, and by age 13 had joined the navy. He worked first as a waiter, and was given a share of the goods captured by the privateer. In February 1780, he was caught in the British blockade of Charleston. Sherburne helped with efforts to defend the city, but was eventually captured by the British in May 1780. Under the terms of the capitulation, the officers and their waiters were paroled. They eventually travelled back to Newport, Rhode Island, although the men suffered from disease and malnutrition during the journey. After the war he became a Baptist preacher, and married twice, with six children total. He died c. 1831.
Sherburne wrote his narrative in 1828, at age 63. He joined the War effort as a child, and therefore only half of his memoir is concerned with the Revolution. Despite this focus on his post-war years, Sherburne wrote that his intention was to offer a “plain, unvarnished tale” of the Revolution, and to convey the “price” of the freedom Americans had since enjoyed. Sherburne may also have been motivated to write by his difficult financial situation. He noted that his children would inherit any sales from his book.