Thursday, September 26, 2019

They all to a man refused to have anything to do with him or his commission

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 217.
In September Colonel Williams rode into Sumter’s camp on the Catawba, had his new commission read to the militia, and ordered them to form “under his immediate command.” William Hill wrote that “much to his well deserved mortification they all to a man knowing his recent conduct in deserting his post and embezzling the public property as before mentioned refused to have anything to do with him or his commission and if he had not immediately left the camp he would have been stoned out of it.” But a commission issued by Governor Rutledge could not be lightly dismissed, and the host assembled in the woods as a convention, as they had done when Sumter was chosen their leader, and voted to send a delegation to Governor Rutledge with a very simple message: they would serve only under Thomas Sumter. That canny politician made sure that the officers who constituted the delegation were his most loyal followers, and to further ensure his continued command he went with them to Hillsborough and gained a private meeting with the governor. Until the matter was settled, Colonel William Hill and Colonel Edward Lacey, both staunch Sumter men, were left in command.

The delegation left the Catawba on or about 30 September, the day the Over Mountain Men and the North Carolina militia rendezvoused at Quaker Meadows; they arrived at Hillsborough on 4 October. Two days later Governor Rutledge commissioned Sumter a brigadier general and gave him command of all militia in South Carolina.

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