First in War: Laboring People and the American Revolution as an Agrarian Reform Movement in Amherst County, Va. and Sumter County, S.C.

            The "God and country" religion of American nationalism that we learn in school puts the focus of the American Revolution on the liberation from Britain. For the working people that actually did the fighting, however, the enemy was closer to home. Their fight was as much against the capitalists and landlords in the revolutionary camp as it was against the British imperialists.^[1] George Washington was not first in their hearts. They themselves were first in the line of fire and the first in their own hearts.

            This essay looks at the revolution from the view of labor, in particular that of William Jones (1761-1809), who served in the 7th Virginia regiment of the Continental Army in the late 1770s and then in the South Carolina militia (1780-1783). Jones did not have a contemporary biographer. But his views are suggested in the federal pension application, which his daughter filed, based on his service, and in the pension files of several others who served with him.^[2] These were John Bradford, Obediah Spears and William Vaughn.^[3] Also helpful is a "Memorandum Book" which he began in 1803, as well as state and county records in Amherst County, Va. and Sumter County, S.C.^[4]

            Cheap Land. At the beginning of the revolution in 1776 the Jones family was farming in Amherst County, Va. Europeans and Africans had been farming in the Amherst area of the Piedmont since the early 1700s.^[5] From the start there was a battle over land monopolization.^[6] Working people like the Joneses had come to the area seeking affordable land. They were confronted by capitalists who were seeking to impose a market system in land.

            The magnates constituted less than one percent of the population, but they often bought off for themselves the political offices, the military force, the court system, the sheriffs, and the clergy.^[7] They obtained patents on large tracts from the royal government, surveyed the land and chased off squatters, including Indians, and subdivided it into homesteads ranging from 50 to 400 acres. The land was sold for as much as £25 per 100 acres, which was as much as most farmers made in a good year. The magnates also brought in slave and wage laborers to work the best land, which they kept for themselves.^[8]

            It was a rotten system for laboring people. Illustrative of one of the Amherst landlords against whom the Joneses contended was Dr. William Cabell (1699-1774), who came to Virginia from Warminster, England in 1723.^[9] He surveyed and patented 26,000 acres (20 miles) of the best valley land along the county's rivers. He set up a store, warehouse and depot for produce at Warminster on the Fluvanna (now James) River near the mouth of the Swan River. He got the Williamsburg government to commission him as a justice of the peace, deputy sheriff, surveyor and Indian fighter. He helped oversee the collection of taxes, licensing of public utilities, supervision of charities and construction and maintenance of public works. Historian Emily Salmon summarized the 18th-century Piedmont from the view of the tobacco magnates such as Cabell:

As settlement edged toward the Blue Ridge Mountains, the formation of new counties beyond the fall line extended tidewater institutions into the west. The piedmont frontier was developed less by poor farmers in search of opportunity than by the colony's leading families, such as the Randolphs, Carters, Pages, and Nicholases, who acquired the best acreage along the rivers. The piedmont became an area of immense tobacco estates, some as large as thirteen thousand acres. Much of the colony's land was granted in huge parcels to speculators, such as Robert ("King") Carter, William Byrd II, and William Beverley, but non-Virginians, such as Jacob Stover, of Pennsylvania, and Benjamin Borden, of New Jersey, acquired extensive landholdings in the Valley of Virginia, that fertile region between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies explored in 1716 by Governor Alexander Spotswood and his Knights of the Golden Horseshoe.^[10]

            The Amherst landlords estimated they needed 50 acres for each field hand and at least twenty slaves before hiring an overseer.^[11] Slaves sold for £30, cost £6 yearly to maintain, and could net £14 in yearly profit in the 1760s and 1770s.^[12] Thus the smallest economic unit for capitalist agriculture complete with overseer and slaves was approximately 1,000 acres, considerably larger than the holdings of nearly all Amherst residents in the eighteenth century.^[13]

            Squatting was one of the tactics used by labor to undermine the attempt at land monopoly. Those such as the Joneses, willing to farm the poorest, least productive ridge land that rose from 200 to 2,000 feet, paid nothing in purchase money and avoided the £3 survey and recording fees.^[14] Having no recorded title meant having no taxes, tithes or rents.^[15] It also meant that the main information preserved about them was in the Revolutionary War pension files, not in the Amherst County Courthouse records. Living in 16 x 12 foot and 20 x 16 foot log homes, the mountaineers were self-sufficient and within a decade of settlement were producing cash crops of corn, wheat and pork that brought them £15 or £20 per year.^[16] Methodist preacher George Whitefield wrote of his admiration for the Piedmont Scots-Irish, "They raise little or no tobacco, but things that are useful for common life."^[17]

            Squatting was part of the common land tradition of both the English and Gaelic laboring people and of the American Indians.^[18] Their land belief was based on labor (usufruct), and rejection of land speculation or profit from buying and selling land.^[19] Deserted fields could be used by anyone who wanted to use them. What one authority said concerning Indian title applied equally to the Amherst mountaineers' title, "Indian title was originally one of aboriginal use and occupancy."^[20] Squatter occupancy was one of the reasons that half of Virginia's white population in the 1770s had no recorded land.^[21] Even working people who bought or rented, boycotted the magnate-dominated county courts.^[22]

            Albert Tillson in his study of the Virginia frontier described the frequent contention between the squatters and the magnates during the 1770s in Augusta County, which bordered Amherst to the west:

Popular resentment of the gentry appeared more conspicuously in connection with land disputes. Upper valley leaders often quarreled with squatters who had settled on their land without obtaining title. In 1772, when preparing to move his family to lands they had purchased in the southern valley, William Christian discovered two families already living there. He reported to his mother that one family "after wrangling a while, agreed to go off." Although the other family refused to leave, Christian hoped he would "be able in a little time to drive them off."^[23]

In at least one part of the frontier, squatting became so prevalent that land magnate Thomas Walker instructed his associate William Preston not to disturb such people unless necessary to facilitate a sale, noting that if squatters were removed from unsold property "others may settle on the land & make a second & third Ejectment necessary."^[24]

            The landlords attempted to use the courts and local officials against the squatters. In turn, the constables and other minor officials were defied, sometimes by armed force. As a result there was frequent turnover among these positions and it was difficult to keep them filled. Tillson remarked:

The authority of the gentry was also defied in the functioning of constables and other law enforcement efforts. Land disputes with prestigious leaders, especially with surveyors and major speculators, encouraged popular resentment of the elite in many communities.^[25]

            In the two decades prior to the Revolution, the Joneses both purchased land and squatted. Because of the squatting, they were subjected to a trespass and ejectment suit in 1772.^[26] The first mention of them as purchasers was on July 15, 1760. This was a year before Amherst was created as a result of the division of Albemarle County. James Jones, father of the revolutionary, obtained a grant that year of 110 acres of mountain land from the Virginia Land Office for 15 shillings.^[27] The patent for the land stated that it was located "on head branch of Piney River and a branch of Irish Creek."^[28] In addition to the initial cash payment, Jones had to pay a yearly quit rent of one shilling on the feast of St. Michael Archangel and to cultivate it within three years.^[29] Later, on July 20, 1768, James obtained two more grants to mountain land from the Virginia Land Office. One was for 320 acres on the north fork of the Piney River for 35 shillings and the requirement to cultivate and pay a quit rent.^[30] The other was for 204 acres "in the great mountains," on the "branches of the north fork of Piney River to the top of little Mount Pleasant." The cost was 20 shillings.^[31] These latter grants had been surveyed by William Cabell on Oct. 13, 1767.^[32] On May 5, 1777, ten years after patenting it, as the Revolution heated up, James Jones deeded away his 634 acres to Jno. Henderson, Jr., of Albemarle County for £63. The first Amherst census after the Revolution, taken in 1783, does not list James.^[33]

            Religion. The struggle between capital and labor played itself out across the board in the years prior to the Revolution. Not least among things contested was religion. The Joneses were part of the Methodist movement that was initially based within the established church and that gained a following among some of Amherst's working people beginning in the 1760s.^[34] Methodists adopted plain dress. They rejected capitalism's mindless consumerism and what they believed were its vices: sexual promiscuity, gambling, horse racing, alcoholism and "enslavement to the material."^[35] A student of their morality summarized:

Clearly sporting, indolence, laziness, taking time off, enjoying life, lack of ambition (all the words are loaded with values of one kind or another) had their origins in other things as well as a life outside the market economy. In particular, celebration and recreation had economic functions as well as social. They established connection and obligation. The effect of having relatively few needs was liberating of time as well as paid labor. Having relatively few needs that the market could satisfy meant that commoners could work less. Karl Polanyi might say that thrift spared commoners the "humiliating enslavement to the material, which all human culture is designed to mitigate." In other words: commoners had a life as well as a living.^[36]

            The "life" which Methodists offered as an alternative to the slavery of the market, emphasized ministry to their less fortunate neighbors. For example, they considered the market enslavement of blacks as theft and dismissed pro-slavery clergy.^[37] They called each other "brother" and "sister" in accord with their belief that they were all one family united with a "loving God" who watched over their lives. They made no distinction between clergy and laity. Slaves and women preached, exhorted and disciplined. They paid for and controlled their church.^[38] Methodists were condemned as Armenians for teaching "free grace" and universal salvation, and as antinomians for believing in the "inner light," for rejecting the doctrine of obedience to the established order, and for having "no respect of persons" (Acts 10:34).^[39]

            Amherst's Methodists had a low regard for those like Robert Rose (1704-1751), the local clerical landlord who headed the established church in its early years. Rose had been appointed minister of St. Anne's Parish when it was established in 1744.^[40] He was a large land and slave owner on the Tye and Piney Rivers. His ministry in the Methodist view was corrupted by the nature of capitalism into money grubbing. Richard Morton described these activities:

More than a decade before he became a minister in Albemarle County, Robert Rose, the surveyor and businessman, had acquired thousands of acres on the Tye and Rockfish rivers in the present Nelson County [Amherst in the 1760s], and later acquired other properties. In addition to his home plantation on Tye River he had several quarters managed by overseers, and lots in Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Westham. Like most large planters of his day, Rose had his mill, blacksmith's shop - for which he burned charcoal - carpenter's shop and a shop for making shoes.^[41]

            Revolution. The Amherst population at the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1775 consisted of 5,296 whites and 2,750 blacks.^[42] Most of these people were workers. The revolution for them centered on agrarian reform. They wanted cheap and better land. The blacks wanted emancipation. The revolution was an opportunity to demand land grants and revenue in exchange for military service, to expropriate land, to renege on debts and to strike against rent and mortgage payments.^[43]

            The value of property confiscated by the revolutionaries in Amherst amounted to half a million pounds sterling.^[44] Blacks "confiscated" themselves by joining the British forces. In their desperation to retain power, the British emancipated the blacks who would join them.^[45] Some of the whites also took the British side and many others remained neutral, finding the tyrants in London were less a menace than the ones in Amherst and Williamsburg. There were no British taxes but many Virginia taxes such as those on land, marriage licenses, liquor, glass windows, billiard tables and a general poll tax.^[46] Methodists, with their egalitarian notions, were indifferent to revolutionary appeals that promised no gain for labor.^[47]

            Virginia's Military Defense. The initial enlistment of William Jones and of Amherst's other farmers in the Virginia Continentals came about only after Virginia had been forced to make agrarian concessions. There had been a militia in the Amherst area since before the county had been established. At the neighborhood level, the militia mustered semi-annually. A county muster was held annually.^[48] Working people tended to control the militias and used them for their own benefit. The officers were chosen by the troops themselves and got no extra pay.^[49]

            For decades the rank-and-file had been negative about efforts to send the companies outside their neighborhoods to make the western frontier safe for capital investment.^[50] For example, it had been no concern of labor whether the French or the English won the French and Indian War (1754-1760). Washington commented about the conflict having been unnecessary, precipitated by the expansionist lustings of the royal governor and the Ohio Land Company.^[51] Albert Tillson described the problem of militia recruitment in Amherst's neighbor, Augusta County:

In 1754 Augusta leaders were unable to raise even fifty men for an expedition to expel the French from the Ohio Valley, and William Preston reported in 1757 that he could not keep the men in his command on duty for more than a week or two at a time.^[52]

Mass desertions of Virginia militia companies were common.^[53]

            As the hostility between the English and North American heated up in 1774 and early 1775, Virginia's landlords worked to enlist the local militias in the struggle. The push for the revolution against Britain did not come from the subsistence farmers. They did not see themselves as being hurt by the Navigation Acts, Stamp Act (1765) and Townshend Act of 1767 (taxation), Indian treaties (Hard Labor Treaty of 1768), and Quebec Act (1774).^[54] It was not their concern that the western land investments of those like Patrick Henry and George Washington were worthless as long as the British set foreign policy. The British took the Iroquois side against the land speculators because they did not want to fund another Indian war, for which the speculators refused to pay taxes.

            Farming people such as the Joneses grew and made what they needed.^[55] They had little participation in the market, little in tithable property and paid little in taxes, especially to London.^[56] Patriotism meant nothing. The province literally belonged to the magnates and was not something labor would defend.

            The first scheme attempted by the magnates to enlist the militias against the British was an enactment in August 1775 by the Virginia Revolutionary Convention. This legislation purported to establish 16 regional military districts and to take over the county militias and replace them with "minute companies" containing 8,000 troops and a regular army with 1,000 troops.^[57] The minute officers were not to be chosen by the troops but by landlord-controlled district committees.^[58] In order to preserve class distinctions, top officers were to be paid 11 times more than the rank-and-file.^[59] While promoting compulsory minute service for working people, the landlords exempted themselves.^[60] Those with three or more slaves or other workers did not have to enlist. Amherst County was put in the Buckingham Military District, which also included Albemarle, Augusta and Buckingham Counties.^[61] A barracks was located in Albemarle County.

            The magnates were immediately confronted with farmers all over the province who refused to join the "compulsory" minute battalions or take oaths of loyalty to the Williamsburg government. Many boycotted the prescribed 20-day-long training session. Those who did go to the training, mutinied. Typically, a minute company of rifle in Amherst's military district set fire to the ferry house where they were stationed and committed "seditious and mutinous" acts against their appointed leader, Lieutenant Hugh Mercer.^[62] The rank-and-file religion, as reflected by one young soldier, was St. Paul's (2 Th 3:10) version of the labor theory of value: "the laborers are worthy of their meat."^[63] They did not respect army chaplains who preached John the Baptist's (Lk 3:14) program of obedience: "be content with your wages."^[64] For the Virginia Methodists who took the command against killing seriously, it was more than a matter of wages. A contemporary wrote:

They were bound in conscience not to fight: and no threatenings could compel them to bear arms or hire a man to take their places. In consequence of this, some of them were whipped, some were fined, and some imprisoned; others were sent home, and many were persecuted.^[65]

            Land Bounty and Pre-Emption Rights. Because of the militancy, the Virginia convention was forced to abolish the minute companies in January 1776, six months after their attempted establishment.^[66] They were replaced by increasing the regular army four times in size. To obtain enlistees, the army had to be transformed into an agrarian reform program. Each soldier received a land bounty warrant of one hundred acres, $20 in cash and substantial wages.^[67] Another concession made by the Virginia Revolutionary Convention and later by the Virginia Assembly to gain the help of the militias, was to reduce the prerogatives of the speculators by granting pre-emption rights to squatters.^[68] The courts were no longer able to summarily eject working people who set up farms without paying tribute to the magnates.

            Historian Woody Holton commented, "The regular army was filled quickly for the army promised poor farmers a living wage."^[69] The capitalists hated the working-class agrarian reform. Landon Carter, complained of having "to kiss the asses of the people and very servilely accommodate to them."^[70] The reform hurt not only monopolists on the frontier but made land prices in eastern Virginia decline.^[71] To reduce their costs, the magnates turned to the Continental Congress, which took the regulars into the Continental Army and paid them.^[72] Six Continental regiments took the place of the minute battalions.

            Even within the Continental service, the rank-and-file took the law into their own hands when necessary to serve their agrarian needs. For example, Samuel Jordan Cabell, captain of the 6th Virginia Regiment, recorded the desertion of 4 Amherst troops who went home for the harvest in Sept. 1776:

Deep Springs Camp, Sept. 17, 1776. Deserted last night from my company of riflemen, the following soldiers, viz., Josiah Jones . . . carried away with him a hunting shirt trimmed with red, a pair of leather breeches, several new shirts, and other things which I cannot recollect at present. David Barnett . . . carried with him a hunting shirt trimmed with red, a pair of leather breeches, a pair of new shoes, and several yards of linen, which I had delivered to him about two days before he deserted. They . . . were raised and enlisted in Amherst, where I expect they will endeavor to get.^[73]

The rate of desertion in the Continental army was 20%.^[74] General Charles Lee complained, "The spirit of desertion in the back country troops is alarmingly great."^[75] Along with desertion, mutiny was used to redress needs, with 10 major ones before the famous Pennsylvania line mutiny of 1781.^[76]

            At the same time the regulars were being increased, the neighborhood militias continued to exist, but the enlargement lessened the attempts to use the militias against the British.^[77] Nevertheless, when they were called out, the militias engaged in mass desertions and mutiny if the magnates neglected to pay for their services or extended their services beyond the contractual period.

            Joneses' Continental Service. By August 1777 most of the militia-age males in Amherst County had been sufficiently accommodated by Revolutionary Convention that they took the oath of allegiance and enrolled in the militia or Continental Army. Besides William Jones, his father, James, probably served.^[78] Lenora Sweeney in her study, summarized the revolutionary history of the Amherst militia:

The Militia of Amherst, from January 1776 to January 1781, numbered about 1,200 troops. Of these, about 350 had entered Continental service, and about 200 of the remainder had seen actual service as Militia in the state service. But between January 4 and October 19th, 1781, probably every able male remaining in the county was employed in one way or another in the defense of the state. Old Amherst sent her troops North and South, East and West.^[79]

            Depending on the source, William Jones was 14 or 17-years-old at the time he enlisted.^[80] His experience illustrates how working people turned the war into a program for agrarian reform. Like many of his neighbors, his service started with a term in the 7th Virginia Continentals.^[81] For enlisting from one to three years, they received a cash bounty of £40, a warrant for 100 acres of land, a monthly wage of $6 2/3 dollars (£2.10 or 40 shillings), clothes and sustenance.^[82] For young farming people without land, this was a revolution not unlike that experienced by the blacks, who emancipated themselves as a result of the disruption. It helped William Jones to marry, have a child and establish a 40-acre farm in the Providence (now Dalzell) section of what became Sumter County, S.C. before the war ended. A survey of 419 Virginia pension records indicated that 90% of the Virginia line were, like William Jones, from the Piedmont and Shenandoah Valley with no land. Their median age was 20. Twenty-one were 14 or 15-years old.^[83]

            Joneses' fellow soldier, William Vaughn (1764-1857), summarized what he knew of Joneses' Continental service:

Although deponent was very young [aged 14 years] at the period when or sometime after the period that William Jones came [to South Carolina] with other Continental soldiers, [including] names Joshua Stafford, John Pollard, John Peek and many others whose names he cannot now recollect without having their names called; that said persons came with General Greene from Virginia to the aid of South Carolina, that said Jones married one Ann Freeman, one or two years before the deponent joined the army in 1780 and came to reside with his family within 1 1/2 miles of where deponent's father resided in Sumter District; that said Jones was in the company of Capt. Long and others whose names he does not recollect. After his term expired in the Continental service, said Jones joined the South Carolina militia with many others of the Continental soldiers and before the deponent mustered into the service in Oct. 1780 under Capt. Malone in which company he found William Jones.^[84]

            Vaughn noted that Jones served in a Continental company commanded by "Capt. Long." The only Virginia staff officers of this name was Capt. Gabriel Long (1751-1821), who headed the 4th company in the 7th Virginia Regiment Continental Line under Captain-Lieutenant Philip Slaughter.^[85] Continental companies had 60 troops on paper and about half that number at any particular time. There were from 6 to 10 companies in a regiment or 400 to 600 troops.^[86] When Col. Daniel Morgan's regiment of riflemen was organized in June 1777, Long's Company was attached to it.^[87] Morgan's regiment was composed of troops from the army at large but with a majority from Virginia. The troops were mainly Scotch, Irish, German and Welsh farming people from the Piedmont and frontier.

            As their name indicated, Morgan's troops used rifles, not the muskets favored by the English who served in the line regiments. They worked as scouts, flankers and light infantry. Line troops provided the backbone of the army and were trained to fire well-directed volleys and use the bayonet as promoted by Baron Von Steuben in his manual. The rifle troops wore leggings, leather shoes or moccasins and loose fitting, long-sleeved, inexpensive homespun hunting shirts that were belted at the waist. Some wore round wool hats with two-inch brims and cocked on one side. Besides their rifles they carried tomahawks, knapsacks, blankets, soap, wooden canteens with the regimental number VII painted on the side and sometimes tents.^[88]

            Long's company became detached from Morgan's regiment in May 1778. The locations in which the 7th Regiment served are summarized in Table I:

 Table I
Seventh Va. Regiment Service Locations.

The 7th Regiment in 1778 typically sat in the hills behind White Plains, N.Y., where they could menace British supply lines and thus block any overland incursions into New England.^[90] Each autumn many of the Virginia troops marched home for the harvest and returned from the "furlough" in the spring.^[91]

            The Southern War and Cheap Land. From 1776 to 1780 the revolution was fought mainly in the North. As indicated in Table I, toward the end of Joneses' Continental service in 1779, his regiment went to South Carolina. Even before the Declaration of Independence, 500 revolutionaries representing the South Carolina Provincial Congress, had dug themselves in behind a sand and palmetto log fort on Sullivan's Island in the Charleston harbor. On June 28, 1776 they defeated a British fleet and 2000 troops, which were attempting to land and establish a military base.^[92] As a result, Charles Cornwallis took the war North. South Carolina was peaceful for the next three years.

            The British strategy and the South's isolation changed after the English were defeated at Saratoga on Oct. 7-17, 1777. British General William Howe was replaced by Henry Clinton, who retreated from Philadelphia to New York. He was cautious. He did not make a determined effort to drive Washington's troops, which included the 7th Virginia regiment, away from the New York area. Instead he sought to wear down revolutionary resistance by ruining the shipping of the Americans, ravaging their shores, bribing their leaders, enlisting the services of the loyalists, and, most importantly for South Carolina and the Virginia Continentals, by occupying strategic points along the coast.^[93]

            When the British moved to occupy Charleston in 1779, the revolutionary forces were not well prepared. In 1775 the South Carolina Provincial Congress had authorized 10 Continental regiments. But with the British quickly abandoning their attempt to conquer the province, the regiments had never been fully staffed. They soon became skeletons because of low funding, idleness, disease and desertion.^[94] There was still the militia system, which included several thousand up-country farmers. But the farmers were no more concerned with the plight of the low-country rice landlords than were the low-country blacks who ran off to the British.^[95] Few up-country whites left their fields in the spring of 1779 when Governor John Rutledge (1730-1800), supposedly given dictatorial powers by the provincial congress, called for their help.^[96] Those that did respond did so on their own terms.

            An example of the limited allegiance given by the South Carolina farmers can be seen in the pension file of William Joneses' comrade, Joseph Spears.^[97] In February 1779 the provincial congress passed a law giving land bounties to militia recruits and imposing stiff penalties for those who did not report.^[98] Later that month Spears was drafted for 3 months militia service under Capt. Joseph Hill, Col. Matthew Singleton and General Andrew Williamson. His unit marched to Georgia, where they skirmished with the Tories at Brian Creek on Apr. 1, 1779.^[99] When their 3 months term of service expired, Col. Singleton went to General Williamson to request a discharge for his militia. But instead of a discharge, Williamson had Singleton arrested and his "sword taken." Spears stated that General Williamson was "odious" to the soldiers and that the regiment was "irate" and "marched off without a discharge, as our term had expired."^[100]

            As its main defense, Charleston was left with its local militia, which was too weak to fight from anywhere but within the city's forts. This meant the British ships were able to bombard and level the town. The landlords feared losing their businesses and mansions. As a result on May 11, 1779 they offered to compromise. If the English Army would withdraw, South Carolina would remain neutral during the rest of the war and give its allegiance afterwards to the winning side. British General Augustine Prevost, who was a high-living New York land speculator before the war, rejected the offer.^[101] He did not want neutrality. Historians have criticized the landlords for having put "property before patriotism."^[102] But from the beginning, patriotism was about property, including taxation, western land and tariffs. For working people too, disembodied notions of "freedom," "human rights," and "justice" meant little. Agrarian reform was their concern.

            Unable to make a compromise, the Provincial Congress appealed to George Washington, who ordered the Virginia and North Carolina Continental regiments to march as rapidly as possible to South Carolina.^[103] Most of these troops, including the 7th Virginia regiment, got to Charleston by December 1779. Despite the reinforcements, which numbered 5,500, Charleston fell on May 12, 1780, after a siege that started on Mar. 12, 1780.^[104] Resistance to British arms in South Carolina then vanished for several months. Detachments of cavalry and Tory regiments sent out by Henry Clinton overran the state. British garrisons occupied a chain of posts running from Cheraw to Ninety-Six, and also Georgetown. South Carolina loyalists came forth by the hundreds to take oaths of allegiance to the crown, and many took up arms.

            The surrendered Continental troops considered their enlistment contracts as terminated. If Jones joined the army for a three-year tour in 1777, like many others from the Piedmont, then his enlistment would have expired in a short period even without the surrender. Some of the troops returned to Virginia; others, including Jones and his Virginia comrades, John Pollard, Joshua Stafford and John Peek, took up farming in South Carolina. The presence of the British forces was not an inhibitor. It protected them against having to serve the unexpired time remaining on their Virginia enlistments. One account stated that in June 1780, "Men of military age throughout the state, thinking that the war was over, came into the various posts and took the oath of allegiance to the king."^[105]

            Those who stayed in South Carolina to avoid further Virginia service had good reason. The Virginia magnates reduced their taxes and attempted to make labor fight without compensation. The surrendered Virginia line had been the province's only effective military unit. To replace it, the assembly established a cavalry regiment and authorized that its Continental quota was to be filled by militia drafts of 20,000 of the state's 40,000 available farmers.^[106] At the same time the assembly emitted more paper money, which had ever-decreasing value. On May 20, 1780 16 of the 60 Virginia counties had not paid taxes due in the fall of 1779, while 9 had returned no assessments, but had paid in part and 8 had returned no assessments and had paid nothing. As a result, by early 1781 Virginia's troops in the Southern department had not received wages for two years.^[107] Staying in South Carolina was only one form of resistance. Those in Virginia resisted by refusing to be drafted, as described by H. J. Eckenrode:

The draughts were especially resented and met with frequent resistance. In Augusta and Rockingham the people gathered for the drawings and seized the lists and destroyed them.^[108]

Those that went into the service mutinied as on May 9, 1791 at Rockbridge. When Richmond was under attack by Cornwallis, they refused to go to its aid.^[109]

            There was both a push and a pull to stay in South Carolina. The pull was the agrarian revolution then taking place. Working people in large numbers in the 1780s were moving into the abundant and sparsely settled wilderness of middle and upper country. Between 1781 and 1790 Camden district, where Jones and his comrades put down roots, grew from 300 to 30,000 whites.^[110] Some purchased 40 acre plots at £2 per acre, but in the early years most set up farming without benefit of survey, registration, grant, capitalists, fees or patent. Initially, it was not possible to record titles even for the magnates. The courthouse for the Camden district was burnt down in 1781. This happened when the British set fire to their military stores as they evacuated; it spread to the houses, courthouse and jail.^[111] Then between 1783 and 1800, Providence Springs (now Dalzell), where Jones settled, was made part of Claremont County by the state assembly. But not until 1785 was a log courthouse built at Stateburg, the county seat. The records there including wills and mesne conveyances were destroyed by fire in 1801.^[112]

            As in Virginia, squatting in South Carolina had a lengthy history. Calling themselves "regulators," landlords had campaigned for several decades prior to the Revolution against what they called "vagrants, squatters and criminals."^[113] During the Revolution it was the squatters who became the "regulators." Both loyalist and revolutionary landlords were subjected to lynching, arson, "taxation" and impressment of goods. Claims to land monopolies were not enforceable.^[114] By the time of the British surrender at Yorktown, Va. on Oct. 19, 1781, the imperial enemy had for the most part been eradicated from the South. But as indicated by Joneses' pay receipts, the warfare continued against the local loyalist landlords who had been run off. Even after the Treaty of Paris, which was signed on Apr. 19, 1783, loyalist magnates who returned faced trouble. For example, in April 1784 the militia gave a dozen loyalists who came back to the upcountry 20 days to get out. At the end of the grace period, 8 were killed and the remaining were sent back to warn the others.^[115]

            A similar incident involving William Jones was remembered by his comrade, William Vaughn:

William Jones continued to serve in the war with the exception of a few days leave of absence occasionally until the hostilities ceased in June 1782 after which said Jones was appointed to take the lead of scouting parties against robbers and thieves and Tories and on one occasion Jones was with about 20 others. They surprised a large group of the enemy, killing two and captured 10 whom they delivered to Col. [James] Postell. Jones and the deponent and the other soldiers were not on a regular basis on duty to the cessation of the hostilities, yet they held themselves in readiness to join the service again whenever called for but were not again called into service.^[116]

            In the decade after the war the revolutionary landlords worked to secure large tracts. They used "purposely vague and inaccurate plats" which overlooked the squatters already there or listed them as "persons unknown."^[117] Nevertheless, during their lifetimes, the Joneses and many other working people did not record a title to or pay for their farms.^[118] Some have expressed surprise that squatters were never or taken to court:

The very absence of more widespread protest is surprising. That the situation did not provoke "the alarms of the people" suggests that many large-scale owners worked out acceptable arrangements with prior settlers.^[119]

            However, the squatters did not find their unchallenged agrarian reform surprising. Jones and his militia comrades were the military power, not the magnates. An example was the landlord general and politician, Thomas Sumter. Initially Sumter patented a 14,000-acre tract that covered much of present-day Sumter and Stateburg.^[120] By 1794 he had 150,000 acres.^[121] Like many other magnates he went bankrupt and ended up in debtors' prison during a period when the working people were prospering from their agrarian reform. The problem was that the squatters were organized and armed. "Acceptable arrangements" could not be worked out, although the landlord-controlled state assembly enacted measures to encourage the squatters to obtain "legal title." For example, the Land Act of 1784 fixed the price of vacant land at $10 per 100 acres.^[122] In 1790 the assembly fixed a "nominal" fee for vacant land.^[123] But many squatters were not interested. The law of occupancy and usufruct, not that of the assembly, prevailed.

            Besides cheap land, another of the attractions of the South Carolina revolution for young William Jones was his new neighbor, 17-year-old Ann Beth Freeman (1764-1847) and the Methodist society to which both belonged. William and Ann married on Jan. 24, 1781.^[124] Ann's family had recently taken up land at Providence Springs and were members of the Methodist meeting there, which became part of the Santee Circuit that was established in 1786.^[125] Ann's father, James F. Freeman, died about the time she married. William and Ann helped the widow, who was also named Ann, and Ann's two brothers (Eli and Joseph) to run the Freeman farm.

            The South Carolina middle country where the Joneses settled was flatter than the Virginia Piedmont. They had a stream on one side and on another the Methodist meeting grounds.^[126] Over the years a secession of meeting houses were built on the Methodist grounds, which also served as a cemetery and parade ground on militia training days. During the summers the Methodists and neighboring denominations, both black and white, held an annual weeklong campout there, where they prayed, sang, educated, fished, courted, politicked, did business and socialized.^[127] In 1788 the Joneses and their neighbors met Francis Asbury and heard him preach when he visited Rembert, which was a neighboring Methodist chapel about 10 miles distant.^[128]

            At Providence Ann and William had 9 children, the first of which, James F. Jones, was born on Oct. 17, 1782, before the formal end of the Revolution.^[129] They raised subsistence crops of wheat, corn, hogs, sweet potatoes and vegetables. A contemporary described the self-sufficiency of the people:

In the middle, and especially in the upper country, the people are obliged to manufacture their own cotton and woolen clothes, and most of their husbandry tools; but in the lower country the inhabitants for these articles depend almost entirely on the merchants. Late accounts inform us, that the inhabitants manufacture entirely in the family way as much as they have occasion for.^[130]

            Before cotton took off in the 1790s, tobacco was grown by the Virginia veterans who knew the process. During the war, farmers sold their surplus to the military at Charleston and Camden at good prices.^[131] This allowed them to pay for necessities, such as salt, nails, medicine, gun power and schooling for their children.^[132] There were no public schools and instruction was sometimes provided by preachers supplementing their income. Because of the cost, much of the schooling was informal, home-based and practical, as indicated by William Joneses' "Memorandum Book." It consisted of reading, writing and arithmetic, along with "practical surveying," cloth and soap making, brewing, and baking.^[133]

            Farm housing for those like the Joneses was plain and adequate, as one contemporary put it:

The houses of the poorest sort of people, are made of logs. . . their interstices filled up with moss, straw, and clay; and are only of one or two rooms; and the manners of their tenants are equally plain. But, it is here, that health, and independence dwell. And a crop of a hogshead of tobacco, or a bag or two of cotton, forms an income, which pays the taxes and expenses of the farm; and makes a family happy and contented.^[134]

Years later a black federal soldier camped out toward the end of the Civil War on the night of Apr. 15-16, 1865 at the Methodist grounds, which was 400 yards from the Joneses' farm. He described the area as "hilly and rolling country sparsely settled with poor whites."^[135]

            South Carolina Militia. British control in South Carolina and the setback for the revolution in May 1780 turned out to be only temporary. Had the farmers been left alone, they would have remained neutral.^[136] But the brutality of the imperial forces against the civilian population made it impossible to be neutral.^[137] The people had to join the militia to defend their produce and livestock from confiscation, their homes from arson and their families from murder by the British and their local supporters. They also got indents for land and wages from the South Carolina Provincial Congress for their service.^[138] The benefits received by William Jones are summarized in Table II.^[139]

Table II
William Joneses' Compensation for South Carolina Militia Service.

            By October 1780, the upcountry laboring people were easily recruited to militia units under Francis Marion (1732-1795), Thomas Sumter (1734-1832) and Andrew Pickens. Historian Edward McCrady summarized how these people came over to the revolutionary side:

The people of the section in which most of these battles had taken place, and in which it now was most ruthlessly waged, had been opposed to the Revolution. But the victorious British army in the year 1780 had converted to the case of America thousands who would not follow the leaders in the Revolution. The people who stood listless and indifferent to the appeals of Tennent in 1775, had left their fair fields in the Waxhaws on the Catawba and on the Broad and were now following Sumter. Those who had resented Drayton's proclamation, were now coming out under Pickens.^[145]

            William Jones and about 20 of his neighbors around Providence including John Bradford, John Bradford, Jr., William Broadway, John Peek, John Pollard, Abraham Richards, Obediah Spears and Joshua Stafford, joined a militia company that sometimes served as part of Marion's regiment.^[146] The farmers in this regiment won repeated victories. One authority has counted 137 battles and engagements in South Carolina, more than in any other of the original states.^[147] Of these, 103 were fought without the help of the Continentals. The largest battles, including a few in North Carolina and with Continental support, are summarized in Table III.

Table III^[148]
Major Southern Battles.

            While they could not successfully attack the major British posts or engage large imperial forces in open battle, the militias were good at harassing guerrilla warfare, interrupting communications, intercepting British supplies, and smashing Tory detachments.^[149] Help also came from the north in the form of several Continental regiments and of the North Carolina and Virginia militias, which periodically moved southward.^[150]

            The South Carolina revolutionary success was in spite of getting little economic support from the Continental Congress. As the war progressed, the funding for the Continentals got steadily worse and their size got smaller. It was because the Continental forces were so poorly supported that the militias operated in larger units and on a more important scale and had a greater role in South Carolina than in the North. The rank-and-file in the Pennsylvania line protested in 1780 that their main enemy was the system that promoted the war but wanted to pay nothing for it. Instead of a 10% tax on property, as they demanded, the Continental Congress and state legislatures issued worthless paper money and borrowed. By December 1780 Congress owed $400,000,000 dollars.^[151]

            Typically, after his appointment in Oct. 1780 to lead the Southern Department, Nathaniel Greene on his way South went through Philadelphia, where he asked the Continental Congress to fund a "flying camp" of 800 light horse and 1000 infantry.^[152] The Congress did not respond. Going through Richmond, Va., Governor Thomas Jefferson was no more helpful. Virginia at that time had only 1,500 of its 3,500 troop quota for Continental service.^[153] The Continental troops that Virginia did have in South Carolina starting in the summer of 1780, as already noted, were half-starved, nearly naked and lived in make-shift huts because there were no tents.^[154] They went often without horses, wagons and firearms.^[155] During the winter of 1780-1781 many deserted and even the officers, including Major General John Peter Muhlenberg (1746-1807) and George Weedon, went on "furloughs" back to Virginia because they were not paid.^[156] The chronic mutiny against this included Greene's personal servant who sought to turn him over to the British.^[157]

            In the instances where the Americans suffered defeats, the lack of economic support was a factor. The main example of this was the battle on Aug. 16, 1780 at Camden, which was only 15 miles from where the Joneses settled. General Horatio Gates (1728-1806), who preceded Greene as head of the Southern Dept., had just been appointed on July 25, 1780. The battle began with the Virginia militia going forward in the hope of attacking the British right wing before it was effectively formed. But the Virginians faltered in their advance. The British regulars charged in solid formation, and the Virginians fled, firing only a few shots. Panic-stricken, most of the North Carolina militia also ran without firing. Only the Continentals and a few North Carolinians put up a fight, but they eventually had to retreat.^[158] Those who fled included the 10th Division of Amherst County's militia, in which were William Joneses' old neighbors. As a result of their flight, the 10th Division was penalized by having their term of service extended 8 months without pay. In November 1780 they filed a petition with the Virginia state legislature protesting the extension. They acknowledged "their bad behavior" but explained, "They were untrained, half-fed, with inexperienced officers, and overcome with heat and fatigue."^[159]

            Unlike the Continentals and the out-of-state militias, the South Carolina militias supplied themselves from their own farming and were used to going barefoot. They also looked out for themselves by capturing ammunition and goods from the enemy and confiscating or impressing the horses and produce of the lowland magnates.^[160] General Nathaniel Greene, criticized them for this:

You cannot treat the inhabitants with too much delicacy, nor should the least encouragement be given to the soldiers, either to invade the property of the people, or offer any personal insults. This conduct it is which has made the British so very odious.^[161]

Their biggest prize was the capture, led by Capt. Joseph Eggleston, of an enemy supply train in July 1781 on the way from Charleston to Orangeburg. Another was at the Battle of Eutaw Springs (Orangeburg) on Sept. 8, 1781. The troops pillaged the captured British camp, rather than continue fighting for a total victory.

            Marion's corps numbered from 20 to 200, depending on the season, as the troops wandered into camp in small groups, spent a few weeks campaigning and then went back home. They wore no uniforms and could march 10 to 20 miles per day and up to 40 miles in 24 hours, if the area was not mountainous or they were not encumbered with artillery, baggage, cattle, muddy roads or wilderness.^[162]

            Even before Greene and his Continentals arrived in the South, the militias at King's Mountain on Oct. 7, 1780 had reversed the loss at Camden. Mounted farmers from South Carolina and the hills of Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia had trailed Major Patrick Ferguson with his force of 1,000 Loyalists and 100 Regulars to King's Mountain. In a savage battle Ferguson was slain and all but 400 of the enemy were killed, wounded or captured. More victories rapidly followed.

            Soon after he arrived at Charlotte, N.C. on Dec. 2, 1780, General Greene determined that the revolutionaries could not remain there.^[163] He sent Brigadier General Daniel Morgan with the best troops to annoy General Charles Cornwallis’s' left flank. Along with the mounted militia troops led by Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, Morgan had 320 Maryland and Delaware Continentals, 200 Virginia riflemen and 100 dragoons under William Washington. Despite the odds being against them, they beat the British on Jan. 17, 1781 at Cowpens, S.C. along the Catawba River.^[164]

            A week after the victory at Cowpens, William and Ann were married at Providence on Jan. 24, 1781. Six weeks later on Mar. 15, 1781, Joneses' militia unit was at Guilford Courthouse where it had a leading part in the battle. Technically, the British won the victory, since they compelled Greene to seek safety in flight and held the field. But almost half of the imperial Guards were killed or wounded, and the total of the enemy injured or slain reached 532, about 28 percent of the army. Greene's losses, except for some vanished militia, most of which could be expected to return to service, were much smaller, 261 dead or wounded. It was impossible for the enemy to resume the offensive. As it was said, another such "victory" would mean the end of their army.^[165]

            In the months after Guilford Courthouse the Americans kept up the pressure. At Eutaw Springs in Sept. 1781, which was the bloodiest battle of the Southern campaign, the militia began the battle by capturing 100 British troops who had been sent out without arms to gather sweet potatoes. Joneses' neighbor, John Pollard, who was formerly a Virginian, was wounded at Eutaw Springs, as his son recounted in 1854:

[My] father was a revolutionary soldier and at the Battle of Eutaw Springs where he was wounded, he was with William Jones. William Jones stood side-by-side with him, as he (the deponent) has often heard his father and the said William Jones in frequent conversation about the battle as well as about the Battle of Guilford Courthouse in N.C.^[166]

            The English army could have kept Charleston indefinitely, but on December 14, 1782 a British fleet carried them away. About 4,000 loyalists who preferred exile also went, along with 5,000 Blacks.^[167] British General Cornwallis, following a familiar pattern among capitalist military heroes, devoted the rest of his life to plundering other peoples for the glory of the Empire as viceroy of Ireland and then governor-general India. He seldom varied his old methods. He was praised for personal acts of kindness and never hesitated to send large numbers of rebels to their doom with a blend of ferocity and righteousness.^[168]

            Conclusion. The services of George Washington, Nathaniel Greene and the other generals were appreciated by the magnates and the legislatures of the various states gave them presents. The rank-and-file, however, believed that these officers received too much acclaim and rewards, and that the working people in the militia, the regular army and the partisans were valued too slightly. John Alden remarks that a continuing debate sprang up over the question:

            Who clipped the lion's wings

            And flea'd his rump and pared his claws?^[169]

Along the same lines and subject to debate was the legend that the capitalists such as Robert Morris "financed the Revolution." Many thought it was the reverse: the revolution financed the magnates. The working people in their crop production and on the battlefield bought the victory.^[170]

            Whatever the merits of these arguments, the real victory for the rank-and-file was in defeating the nationalism that was voiced by capital to conceal greed. Capital loved to talk about liberty, but not about liberty for whom and for what. Jones and his comrades turned the dispute between the American and English magnates into an agrarian reform. In a similar manner the working people in the Civil War forced the landlords to enact the Homestead and Morrill Act along with the 13th and 14th Amendments.^[171] In World War II they got the G.I. Bill of 1944, which got them low interest home loans and free higher education.^[172] As a result of Viet Nam, they got the Volunteer Army. The capitalist religion of patriotism that equated itself and its military with the divine order was blasphemous to the 18th-century Joneses and the other working people and has been to their descendants for 200 years.