William Richardson Davie

By Brig. Gen. John S. Brown, U.S. Army retired

June 20 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of William Richardson Davie, a hero of the American Revolution and a founding father of the United States. He is renowned enough to appear in Webster’s American Military Biographies, but unfortunately not much remembered outside the Carolinas. This is a shame, both because of what Davie’s experiences tell us about the American Revolution in the South and of revolutionary warfare in general.

Davie was born in Cumberland, England, and emigrated with his father to South Carolina in 1763. While a student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) he became involved with the Patriot cause. He served briefly in the Continental Army during the New York Campaign before returning to the Carolinas. When the British shifted the focus of their war effort into the southern colonies, he secured a commission as a lieutenant of dragoons in April 1779 and served with Pulaski’s Legion during combat operations around Charleston, S.C. Here he was seriously wounded during the battle of Stono Ferry on June 20, 1779.

Early in 1780 Davie raised and equipped a cavalry troop, largely with his own money, and assumed command of it. He soon gained a reputation as a daring and capable commander in the fierce fighting that convulsed the Carolina back country. The British campaign depended upon the support of loyalists—Tories—to succeed, and the Patriots directed a major fraction of their efforts towards discouraging loyalist participation. On August 1, 1780, Davie attacked and defeated three companies of Tories in a ragged action, and a few days later joined Gen. Thomas Sumter to inflict yet another stinging defeat upon the Tories at Hanging Rock, S.C. As the Patriots gained the upper hand over the Tories, regular British units operating in the area found it increasingly difficult to secure supplies and intelligence. Much of the action was guerrilla in nature: skirmishes, ambushes and raids, with an embarrassing frequency of arson, robbery, murder and atrocity on both sides.

The newly arrived American commander in the South, Gen. Horatio Gates, committed to a pitched battle with the British regulars at Camden, S.C., on August 16, 1780. This resulted in a complete defeat of the Americans on the field. Interestingly enough, the British were not able to translate their tactical victory into strategic success because American cavalry, partisans, irregulars and militia continued to control the countryside around them. Davie, now a colonel, particularly distinguished himself during this period. On September 21 and again on September 26, he soundly defeated the so-called Tory Legion that was serving as an advance guard for the British commander, Lord Charles Cornwallis, near Charlotte, N. C. The first engagement was an audacious attack on overconfident troops who had let their guard down, and the second, a brilliantly conceived ambush. A few days later another large party of Tories was annihilated at King’s Mountain. Cornwallis found himself in control of little except the ground his regulars actually stood on. Loyalists, now thoroughly cowed, provided increasingly less useful assistance.

The new American commander in the theater, Gen. Nathanael Greene, prevailed upon Davie to serve as his commissary general. Greene recognized that the success of his campaign had now come to turn on logistics. As long as he could sustain his modest force of regulars in the field, intimidate the loyalists with irregulars and interrupt supplies en route to the British regulars, he could force an eventual British withdrawal to coastal enclaves. Davie’s service as commissary general proved invaluable in sustaining Greene, whereas the tactical precedents he had set proved invaluable in isolating the British. Disease, a sharp American victory at Cowpens and British pyrrhic victories at Guilford Courthouse and Hobkirk’s Hill furthered the exhaustion of the British. Eventually, Cornwallis did decide to withdraw to a coastal enclave—Yorktown, Va.

After the Revolutionary War, Davie continued a distinguished career as a lawyer, legislator, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and advocate of the Constitution through its ratification process. He was appointed major general of militia, elected governor and proved principally responsible for chartering the University of North Carolina. He also served as a peace commissioner to France and negotiated a treaty with the Tuscorora Indians before finally retiring to a plantation in Lancaster County, S.C.

Davie illustrates the youth, initiative and entrepreneurial spirit of so many in the revolutionary generation. He was 19 when the war began, and in his mid-20s during his most significant period of battlefield leadership. He contrived to raise, equip and pay for his own units and employed them in such a manner that loyalists bore much of their expense. In a chaotic environment he set convention aside when he could conceive of solutions more likely to succeed. Successful revolutionaries are often young and innovative.

As a revolutionary, Davie recognized that the center of gravity for the campaign in the South was the willingness of loyalists to actively support the British. As much as any single man, he broke their will to resist and created an operational environment wherein British regulars were isolated in a hostile countryside without reliable means of sustainment. It was difficult, if not impossible, for the Patriots to beat British regulars in a stand-up battle—but they did not have to. Revolutionaries do not have to defeat a conventional opponent if they can outlast him.


Recommended Reading:

Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)

Webster’s American Military Biographies (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1978)

Wright, Robert K. Jr. The Continental Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1983)