Down the Wild Cape Fear: A River Journey through the Heart of North Carolina

Chapter 7

108 About eighteen miles above Wilmington, on a tributary of the Black (and therefore of the Cape Fear), a replica wooden bridge across Widow Elizabeth Moore’s Creek commemorates an important battle of the American Revolution, fought at daybreak on February 27, 1776. It was not a battle that ever found its way into the history books I studied in grammar school, not like Concord or Lexington, Saratoga or Yorktown. Yet, for a couple of reasons, it was important far out of proportion to the number of troops who fought there. First, early in the war, it was one of the only Patriot victories in a long string of defeats. Second, it helped foil a grand scheme of the British to stamp out the rebellion in the South and split the colonies, which would almost surely lead to their surrender. Sir Henry Clinton, in command of a fleet of more than thirty warships and transports, had sailed up the Cape Fear to aid Royal Governor Josiah Martin. Martin believed that the Piedmont was swarming with loyal Tories, and that if he could just incite them to rise up against their radical cousins on the coast, he could easily pacify the Carolinas. Then the British and their Tory allies could move up into Virginia and press the Continental Army from both north and south. And with the help of the MacDonalds, he succeeded at least in inspiring a band of Scots in Cross Creek and Campbellton (both now combined into Fayetteville) to organize into a regiment and march onWilmington. Moore’s Creek flows into the Black River. It might be more accurate to say that it disappears into the Black, a maze of twisting channels with no easy take-out. If you paddle Moore’s Creek, you start at the battlefield and paddle five or six miles, then retrace your route back to the battlefield. It’s a deep creek with sheer banks.The ScotsTories, led by General Donald MacDonald, found the Patriots at Moore’s Creek. The stage for the battle had been set days before as a series of maneuvers by the Scots to get into position to attack the Colonial militia, and of the Colonials, under Richard Caswell and Alexander Lillington, to get the drop on the British. The Colonials succeeded. About a thousand of them waited across Moore’s Creek.They had removed the planks from the bridge 7 Chapter 7 109 and greased the stringers, making it a difficult crossing for the Scots. MacDonald fell ill, so Lieutenant Colonel Donald MacLeod led the charge. His men carried Claymores, large heavy swords more suited to medieval tournaments than a battle in which your opponent’s weapon could drop you from a hundred yards away. “King George and broadswords!” they shouted three times into the dawn mist and gamely splashed across the deep creek into the mouth of massed musket fire and small cannon shot. According to Colonel James Moore, who was in overall command of the various Colonial units engaged,“The loss of the enemy in this action, from the best accounts we have been able to learn, is about thirty killed and wounded, but as numbers of them must have fallen into the creek, besides many more that were carried off, I suppose their loss may be estimated at about fifty.”Eight hundred fifty more were captured. Captain MacLeod made it almost to the Colonials’breastworks and fell dead with“upward of twenty balls in his body.” Just as important for the Colonials’war chest, they captured 1,500 muskets, 350 shotguns, 150 swords and dirks, 2 medicine chests, 13 wagons and teams, and a cache of gold.With all that firepower, it is a mystery why the brave Scots relied on swords, which they never got close enough to use. The bloody defeat marked the end of British ambitions to subdue North Carolina until a second invasion five years later. Cornwallis, Clinton’s battlefield commander, took out his fury on General Robert Howe, a Patriot who had already served the Continental Army in a variety of campaigns before returning to his home on the Cape Fear at Sunny Point. Cornwallis and a force of about 900 soldiers landed at Howe’s plantation and burned it. Then Cornwallis , his boss Sir Henry Clinton, and all British troops in the Cape Fear region sailed away to try their hand at capturing Charleston. They took with them Martin, the last royal governor of North Carolina. The new governor...