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Indian Settlement Saved With Land Trust Purchase - HISTORY

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Bianca
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« on: October 22, 2008, 11:57:45 am »










The Siege of Ninety Six



After May 15, 1781, the only British outposts that remained in the high country were Augusta and Ninety Six. General Greene decided to attack both simultaneously and dispatched Colonels Henry Lee and Andrew Pickens to attack Augusta while he marched to Ninety Six. The patriot army, led by General Greene, and accompanied by military engineer Count Thaddeus Kosciusko arrived at Ninety Six on May 22, 1781, encamping in four areas around the fort. At first, Greene was daunted by the strong fortifications that lay before him at Ninety Six, but set aside his doubts and immediately began the siege.

With only 974 men at his disposal, Greene followed the advice of his military engineer, Colonel Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and concentrated his attack on the Star Fort (Image 5), the strongest point of the fortifications (Greene 1979:126-127). Initially, siege trenches to attack the fort were imprudently begun a mere 70 yards from the stronghold, but a barrage of cannon and musket fire followed by a Loyalist bayonet charge forced the Americans to abandon their trenches and begin again further back at a distance of some 200 yards. In support of the siege operations, Kosciuszko, directed the construction of two earthen cannon batteries approximately 350 yards north of the Star Redoubt “on the other side of a broad ravine” (Greene 1979:129). Slowed by the nearly rockhard soil, the first section or parallel of the siege trench was completed on May 27, and the second parallel on May 30. With only 70 yards to go to reach the Star Fort parapet, the construction of a third parallel was made more difficult by constant gunfire from the Star Fort. This impediment was soon silenced by the placing of snipers atop a log tower built near the third parallel. From their high vantage point, the American snipers pinned down the British defenders inside the Star Fort, immediately shooting anyone who attempted to raise their head above the parapet wall. With this advantage, Greene formally demanded the British surrender on June 3, but the commander of the fort, Lieutenant-Colonel John Cruger, having suffered few casualties was not disposed to accept.

To counter the vantage point provided by the tower, Cruger’s men added three feet to the Star Fort parapet using sandbags, leaving openings at intervals as portals for musket fire. Despite these measures, the sniper fire from the tower still made it perilous to man the cannon from the Star Fort, so they were dismounted and used only at night. Meanwhile, the Patriot forces continued to extend the siege trenches toward the Star Fort.

On June 8, Colonel Henry Lee arrived at Ninety Six from Augusta, having successfully taken the Georgia outpost. He almost immediately set his men to digging siege trenches approaching Holmes Fort, the redoubt protecting Spring Branch and the stockaded village’s western approach. Meanwhile, beginning from the third parallel, Kosciusko undertook the construction of a tunnel that was to extend under the parapet of the Star Redoubt with the intention of blasting a large breach in the earthwork using several barrels of powder placed in the tunnel under the parapet.

While the Patriots patiently tunneled and dug closer to their respective objectives, the British responded by sending out sorties at night to destroy segments of the siegeworks and attack the guard parties located near the trenches. Despite these minor setbacks, the trenches were advanced to within a few feet of the Star Fort by June 12th, and Lee had succeeded in moving his cannon into a commanding position of Spring Branch from which the British got their water. With access cut off to their only water source, the British defenders attempted to dig a well within the Star Fort, but failed to reach water.

While Greene waited patiently for the siege trenches and the tunnel to reach their objectives, news of the siege of Ninety Six had reached Charleston, and on June 7th a British force of over 2000 left Charleston to relieve the beleaguered fort. Patriot spies in Charleston sent word of the British relief column to General Greene, who realized that if Ninety Six was not taken before the relief column arrived, he would have to retreat without achieving the military victory that was so close to being within his grasp. Thus, on June 18, even though the tunnel was incomplete, Greene ordered a simultaneous attack on the Star Fort and Holmes Fort. In the brief but bloody battle, the British repulsed the frontal assault that was launched from the siege trenches facing the Star Fort. Henry Lee and his men, on the otherhand, had succeeded in taking Holmes Fort. Because of the large amount of casualties suffered in the assault on the Star Fort and news that the British relief force was but two or three day’s march from Ninety Six, Greene decided to end the siege and to prepare for withdrawal toward the northeast. A temporary truce was arranged for the exchange of prisoner’s and burial of the dead. During the 28 day siege, the British had losses of 27 killed and 58 wounded (Cann 1974:85); the Continental Army under Greene’s command suffered 58 dead, 70 wounded and 20 missing (Greene 1979:167). These figures do not include, however, the casualties that were suffered by the Patriot militia. In his memoirs, Henry Lee (1822:256) reports that total American losses amounted to 185 killed and wounded, which, if accurate, would indicate a total of 51 casualities were suffered by the Patriot militia.

After Greene’s retreat, the British reasoned that keeping the isolated outpost garrisoned would be too difficult, and decided instead to evacuate Ninety Six. The fortifications were dismantled and the town was destroyed. The British then withdrew from the backcountry, back to Charleston where they remained an isolated enclave for the remainder of the war. Although Greene’s siege of Ninety Six had failed, his summer 1781 campaign through the south had forced the British to abandon plans of controlling the Carolina backcountry, and prompted Cornwallis’ decision to invade Virginia instead, where he and his army were later captured at Yorktown. Nathanael Greene’s southern campaign was vital in turning the Revolutionary War in America’s favor, and proved to be a key to the British capitulation at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
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