#84: Siege of Charleston (1780), SC Female Collegiate Institute, and a Revolutionary War Siege Lines Walking Tour
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Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 20th, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #84 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
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Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Thursday, May 9th from 6:00-7:30 pm | “Revolutionary War Siege Lines Walking Tour” | The Charleston Museum | Charleston, SC | $40 Museum Members, $55 Non-Members
“Join Carl P. Borick, Director of The Charleston Museum and author of A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780, as he leads a tour to some of the key points related to the Revolutionary War Siege of Charleston, the longest siege of the war and largest battle fought in South Carolina. The area to be toured, now an urban landscape interspersed with pleasant city parks was once the site of vicious fighting between besieging British troops and Patriot defenders during April – May 1780. Although the fortifications have long since disappeared, Borick will highlight notable features of the terrain that serve as reminders of this momentous battle.
The tour will begin at 6 pm, leaving from the Museum, for a walking tour lasting 1 – 1.5 hours. Comfortable footwear is recommended. Participants are invited to arrive early to purchase A Gallant Defense: The Siege of Charleston, 1780 or are welcome to bring previously purchased books to have signed.”
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that the Siege of Charleston in 1780 was a huge victory for the British in the Revolutionary War?
The 1780 siege of Charleston was a decisive success for the British during the War of the American Revolution as they shifted their strategy to focus on the “southern theater.”
The capture of Charleston its harbor gave the British a vital base from which to conduct operations as they attempted “to rally the support of American Loyalists and reconquer the southern states.”
Conversely, the loss of Charleston was a painful blow to the American cause, made even worse by the capture of over 2,500 Continentals and numerous vital weapons and supplies.
The stalemate in the northern theater of the war after 1778-1779 led the British leadership to renew its interest in the southern theater. The British remained convinced that the erstwhile southern colonies were “full of American Loyalists waiting for British authorities to liberate them from Patriot rule.”
Patriot forces had repelled attempts to gain a foothold in the southern colonies at Moore’s Creek Bridge and Charleston in 1776, but the successful capture of Savannah, Georgia, at the end of 1778 restored British hopes that Charleston could be captured.
The Americans knew that Charleston was a likely target for the British following the capture of Savannah.
Major General Benjamin Lincoln was given command of the defense of Charleston in September 1779.
In his initial instructions to Lincoln, General George Washington warned him of the impending British attack, but expressed his regrets that he could not offer any military assistance because of the need to maintain adequate Continental forces around the northern British stronghold in New York City.
When Lincoln arrived, many of the fortresses defending Charleston’s harbor “were in disrepair, and the fortifications on its western and southern sides (the sides facing the city’s landward approaches) were unfinished.”
Lincoln and his subordinates worked diligently to repair the fortifications around the city and the Continental Army leadership urgently requested the southern states to provide men and materiel to defend Charleston.
On the British side, Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton’s expeditionary force of some 13,500 British and German soldiers departed New York just after Christmas in 1779 and made its way through stormy winter weather to the Savannah River by the end of January 1780. The force “then maneuvered up the coast and over land routes to approach Charleston from its weaker southern and western sides, bypassing the seaward defenses at Fort Moultrie that had rebuffed the 1776 British assault.”
American forces under commanders like Francis Marion harassed the British forces along the way, and Lincoln dispatched a force of 350 dragoons (mounted cavalry) and militia under Brigadier General Isaac Huger to the crossroads at Monck’s Corner 30 miles north of Charleston to keep his lines of communication open. There was “little else the American forces could do.”
General Washington had advised to Lincoln to abandon Charleston to save his force of Continentals if necessary, but the civilian leadership of Charleston convinced Lincoln to stay.
At the end of March, British forces under Earl Charles Cornwallis crossed over the Ashley River about 14 miles northwest of Charleston and on April 1, 1780 British forces began digging siege lines across the neck of the Charleston peninsula. Clinton hoped “that a methodical siege would capture Charleston and its harbor intact, earning the loyalty of the civilian population and facilitating British use as a base of operations.”
American defenders fought the encroaching British siege works, even resorting to “loading cannon with metal refuse and broken glass to conserve meager ammunition stocks.”
On April 9, the British ships supporting the siege forced their way into the harbor past Fort Moultrie and began shelling the city.
At the urging of Charleston’s civilian leaders, Lincoln refused British demands to surrender, but a few days later the South Carolina government secretly fled the city.
On the evening of April 13, “a British cavalry raid led by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton routed Huger’s forces at Monck’s Corner, capturing 400 horses and tightening the British stranglehold on the city. The next day, British siege guns began firing on Charleston from the north.”
On April 22, Clinton refused Lincoln’s proposal to surrender Charleston in exchange for allowing the Continental forces defending it to go free.
Well aware that Charleston’s capture was imminent, Lincoln requested permission from Charleston’s remaining civilian leadership to evacuate his force of Continentals. The city’s leaders responded by threatening to destroy any boats used in an evacuation attempt.
As April turned to May, Fort Moultrie and its garrison of 200 defenders surrendered to the British. On May 11, the British began firing upon Charleston with heated shells, resulting in several fires, and Charleston’s civilian authorities at last urged Lincoln to surrender to the British, regardless of the terms.
The surrender terms were indeed harsh by the standards of the day.
Lincoln and his command were “refused the honors of war, and many of the 2,500 Continentals who surrendered would not survive their imprisonment.” The British captured over 300 cannons and about 6,000 muskets, along with vast stores of gunpowder. Overall, the casualties in the siege were relatively light, with fewer than 300 killed and wounded on either side; an accidental explosion in a magazine (gunpowder storage building) after the surrender killed twice as many as died in the actual siege.
The results of the British victory, though, were decisive. The British had captured Charleston, the largest city and best harbor in the southern theater and proceeded to follow up this triumph with victories over other American forces at the Waxhaws and Camden.
Washington and the Americans struggled to find an effective way to counter these setbacks, and “it would take over a year of bitter partisan warfare and hard campaigning by Major General Nathanael Greene and others to thwart the British campaign in the south.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
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II.
Did you know that the SC Female Collegiate Institute in Columbia was one of the finest schools for women in the South during the antebellum period — and graduated many notable alumni?
Founded in 1828, Barhamsville Academy was the common name used for the South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute, an institution for the higher education of women that was located outside of Columbia.
It was founded by Dr. Elias Marks (1790–1886), a physician and educator who served as principal of the Columbia Female Academy from 1817 to 1828.
Born into a Jewish family, Dr. Marks was influenced by his childhood nurse, an African American Methodist woman, and converted to Christianity at a young age.
The school was located on property northeast of Columbia that Marks called “Barhamville” to honor his late wife, Jane Barham, a teacher who shared his commitment to the development of women’s intellectual abilities.
The school opened in 1828 as the South Carolina Female Institute, but in 1835 it added “Collegiate” to its name, reflecting the institution’s provision of a rigorous four-year classical curriculum.
Marks was joined in his work by his second wife, Julia Warne, a graduate of Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary in New York and a former teacher.
The school attracted boarding and day students, with a total enrollment of more than 120 students in 1855.
The renowned surgeon J. Marion Sims recalled in his memoir that “it was the first and only school of its character in the South.”
Courses for the young women included “mathematics, chemistry, history, drawing, modern languages, music and dance.”
The campus also included a chapel for weekly services to help round out a curriculum that fostered intellectual, moral and physical well-being.
The curriculum’s holistic approach was intended to establish students as “well-rounded individuals who could carry out the duties of Southern gentlewomen during the antebellum period.”
Among its most notable graduates were Ann Pamela Cunningham, who led the efforts to preserve Mount Vernon; Anna Calhoun, daughter of John C. Calhoun; and Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Dr. and Mrs. Marks retired from the school in 1861. In 1862 it continued under the leadership of Madame Acelie Togno, who had run a successful girls’ school in Charleston, and in 1863 Madame Sophie Sosnowski was in charge.
The institution closed after the Civil War. The buildings were unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1869.
A historic marker on Two Notch Road in northeast Columbia marks the school’s location.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“It is the King's intention that an attack should be made against the Southern Colonies with a view to the conquest and possession of Georgia and South Carolina."
— Lord George Germain in a letter to Sir Henry Clinton.”
The Siege of Charleston article sources:
“Charleston Battle Facts and Summary.” American Battlefield Trust, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/revolutionary-war/battles/charleston. Accessed 4 May 2024.
“Siege of Charleston 1780.” NPS.Gov Homepage (U.S. National Park Service), https://www.nps.gov/articles/siege-of-charleston-1780.htm. Accessed 4 May 2024.
“Siege of Charleston - 1780.” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/siege-of-charleston--1780/. Accessed 4 May 2024.
SC Female Collegiate Institute article source:
Gergel, Belinda F. “Barhamville Academy.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, University of South Carolina, Institute for Southern Studies, 17 May 2016, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/barhamville-academy/. Accessed 4 May 2024.
https://www.historiccolumbia.org/online-tours/barhamville-kendalltown-0/2600-barhamville-road
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