Huck’s Defeat

Huck's Defeat
Part of the American Revolutionary War
Date July 12, 1780 Location near present-day McConnells, York County, South Carolina 34°51′54.82″N 81°10′32.23″W / 34.8652278°N 81.1756194°W / 34.8652278; -81.1756194Coordinates: 34°51′54.82″N 81°10′32.23″W / 34.8652278°N 81.1756194°W / 34.8652278; -81.1756194 Result Patriot victory
Belligerents
Patriot militia	Loyalist militia
Commanders and leaders
William Bratton	Christian Huck †
Strength
About 250 militia	35 dragoons, 20 New York Volunteers and about 60 militia
Casualties and losses
1 killed and 1 wounded	Majority killed, wounded, or captured

Huck's Defeat or the Battle of Williamson's Plantation was an engagement of the American Revolutionary War that occurred in present York County, South Carolina on July 12, 1780, and was one of the first battles of the southern campaign to be won by Patriot militia.

In May 1780, the British captured the only significant American army in the South at Charleston, South Carolina and quickly occupied four vital courthouse towns: Camden, Cheraw, Georgetown, and Ninety Six. Believing the Whigs had been crushed in South Carolina, Sir Henry Clinton abrogated the terms of surrender, which had allowed parolees to remain neutral for the remainder of the war. Under terms of the proclamation of June 3, 1780, Patriots or Whigs (as they were commonly known) were compelled to either take an oath of loyalty to the king or be regarded as "rebels and enemies of their country." Clinton then departed for New York, leaving Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis in command of the British army in the South.

In the absence of civil government in South Carolina (Governor John Rutledge had fled to North Carolina when Charleston fell), backcountry Whigs selected their own leaders to continue the fight against the "senseless cruelty of the Tory militia" and the "cruel and contemptuous treatment of the populace" by British Legion commander Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

Around the first of June 1780, the British army established a fortified outpost at Rocky Mount on the upper Catawba River, near the North Carolina border, and placed a garrison there under Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull, a career British officer who commanded a British Provincial regiment called the New York Volunteers. In early July, Turnbull ordered Christian Huck, a Philadelphia lawyer and a captain in Tarleton's British Legion, to find the rebel leaders and persuade other area residents to swear allegiance to the king. A native of Germany, Huck was one of many Pennsylvania Loyalists whose property was confiscated after the British evacuated Philadelphia. He was then banished from the state and joined the British army at New York. Huck was a remarkably poor choice for this assignment because he held a great deal of bitterness toward the Whigs in general, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in particular. During an earlier incursion into what was then called the Upper District between the Broad and Catawba Rivers (modern Chester County, South Carolina), his troops had murdered an unarmed boy, reportedly while he was reading a Bible, and burnt the home and library of Rev. John Simpson, a Whig leader and influential Presbyterian minister. A week later, Huck and his men invaded the New Acquisition District (roughly modern York County, South Carolina), and destroyed the ironworks of William Hill, another influential Whig. Residents who had only wanted to be left alone had then joined the Patriots.

...
Wikipedia