The Revolution

The Revolution



By 1776 there were nearly 15,000 Highland Scots living in the Upper Cape Fear making it the largest community of Scots in British North America. American colonials had been debating their representation and British Parliament’s oversight for nearly a decade, but concerns reached a fever pitch by 1775. Royal authority collapsed across North Carolina. Leadership in London believed that the Highland Scots community at Cross Creek (present day Fayetteville) might prove useful in quieting colonial discontent. The British Army sent Scottish officers to North America in hopes of recruiting their support. Brig. Gen. Donald MacDonald and Lt. Col. Donald MacLeod arrived in North Carolina in 1775 with the intention of creating a Scots Loyalist battalion. Royal Gov. Josiah Martin at Fort Johnston (present day Southport) believed that clan leadership among the Highlanders and “enthusiastic love for the country from which they descended” would still hold sway over the people. He estimated some 3,000 Scottish Highlanders might descend the Cape Fear River to meet up with 20,000 British troops under Gen. William Howe, who would soon arrive at the mouth of the Cape Fear. The governor called for a rendezvous of Loyalist at Cross Creek in early February 1776. About 1,100 men mustered into a makeshift militia. Patriot forces under Richard Caswell had assembled to cut the Loyalists from Wilmington. The Highlanders went on the offensive. They left Campbelltown (present day Fayetteville) on 20 February 1776. The patriots had dug in on the eastern side of Widow Moore’s Creek in Pender County. In the cold hours before dawn of 27 February the Scottish officers led their Loyalist militia toward the Patriots. The battle was short. All the men who managed to cross the greased logs of the bridge were mowed down by musket and cannon fire. There were 50 Loyalist casualties and 850 captured. The Loyalists’ defeat at Moore’s Creek effectively subdued organized resistance in North Carolina for the coming years.[1]



The Stewarts were Highland Scots but residing in the lower Cape Fear area in Bladen County. The Battle of Moore’s Creek was but a few miles from their home but there is no definite record of their participation. Patrick Stewart, Duncan’s elder half brother, may have fought with the militia. Duncan was only 13.



Duncan joined the Revolutionary war as a private and was a colonel by the war’s conclusion.  One written source, Memoirs of Mississippi, said “Duncan was brave and fearless but decided against a career in the service before his undoubted military genius had time to develop.[2] Since militia leaders were elected, Duncan could possibly have been elected. He was to be elected to several positions as the years passed. “Noting set the seal on a man’s gentility like a military title, and all those militia captains, majors, colonels, and generals were addressed by their titles for the rest of their lives, however short or undistinguished their service may have been.”[3]



When troops were initially called for in 1775, Duncan was twelve. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown is October 1781 and major hostilities were over but the populace was not aware of this event as troops did not leave Wilmington until November 1781. The British did not leave Charleston until late 1782 and did not leave New York until 1783. As one historian noted, “The war was over, but neither George Washington nor George III knew it, so different does lived experience look from history crystallized in books. Almost two more years passed before the Paris peace treaty was signed in September 1783.”[4]



In 1781 Duncan Stewart was only eighteen but the first General Assembly of the new state of North Carolina passed an act in 1777 to establish a militia under which all free, white males, sixteen to fifty inclusive were subject to militia service. He may have joined the militia at 16 (1779) and because the prominence of his family he may have been an officer, even rising in the next 3-4 years to colonel.  We have no definite evidence.



In August 1775 when the convention assembled at Hillsborough its chief concern was preparations for war. Two regiments were authorized for the Continental Line, each of five hundred men, to be commanded by Colonel James Moore of New Hanover County and Colonel Robert Howe of Brunswick.  Six battalions of “minutemen” were also authorized, each at five hundred men.  They were to come from the six military districts.  Alexander Lillington of Wilmington was appointed a field officer for his regiment.



North Carolina was not prepared for war and public opinion was divided.  Three groups: the Whigs, about half the people were willing to fight for a redress of grievances and even for independence, if necessary; the loyalists; and the neutrals.  The Whigs were mostly small farmers and artisans but some large landholders.  The loyalists included many of the wealthy merchants, some wealthy planters and also a large number of Scottish Highlanders.  The neutrals were the Moravians, Quakers and German settlers in the Piedmont.



In November 1775 Virginia asked North Carolina for aid and in December North Carolina also aided the South Carolinians.  Meanwhile Governor Martin worked out a grandiose scheme for the British conquest of North Carolina.  Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies thought well of the plan and it was approved by the Privy Council.  There was to be 1. a North Carolina army of three thousand Highlanders, three thousand Regulators, and three thousand other Tories; 2. Lord Charles Cornwallis with seven regiments of British regulars; 3. Sir Peter Parker with a fleet of fifty-four ships; 4. Sir Henry Clinton with two thousand British soldiers from Boston.  All were to concentrate at Brunswick by February 15, 1776.  In July 1775 General Gage ordered Lt. Col. Donald McDonald and Capt. Alexander McLeod to North Carolina to recruit a Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment.  Most of the Highlanders who “turned Tory” were those who had arrived in the colony since 1770.  The Stewarts of Bladen County had been in America for over thirty years.



North Carolina Whig leaders were aware of Martin’s plan and the recruiting of soldiers and report of Tory activity.  Two regiments of the Continental Line under Col. James Moore and Col. Robert Howe were already being organized.  Local minutemen and militia units were hastily formed.



Patrick Stewart, the elder half brother of Duncan, was a son of William Stewart born in Scotland.[5]  He was therefore at least thirty-six years old.  He may have been older since his father was born in 1700.[6]  He is though to have been a captain in the minutemen of North Carolina—one of those authorized in 1775 by the general assembly in Hillsborough.



About the middle of February 1776, some sixteen hundred Highlanders met at their rendezvous at Cross Creek and under Gen. Donald McDonald began their march toward Wilmington.   Col. James Moore, the director of all the Whig Forces, was determined to keep the enemy from reaching Wilmington.  Moore marched his own forces to Elizabeth Town in Bladen County; Caswell was to take possession of Corbett’s Ferry on Black river; Col. James Martin and James Thackston to occupy Cross Creek; Col Alexander Lillington and James Ashe were to reinforce Caswell and if a junction could not be effected, to secure Moore’s Creek Bridge, some eighteen miles above Wilmington.



The bulk of the Whig forces under Caswell reached Moore’s Creek Bridge on the evening of February 26.  The creek flows into the Black river about ten miles above the Black’s confluence with the Cape Fear.  This is in Bladen County very near the home of the Stewarts.  The Highlanders, about sixteen hundred, marched all night through swamps and dense underbrush and reached the bridge about sunrise on February 27.  The Whigs had removed much of the flooring of the bridge and had greased the log sleepers with soft soap and tallow.  The Highlanders attacked.  Falling into the neatly set trap of Caswell and Lillington, they were faced with devastating fire as they attempted to cross the bridge.  McLeod was killed and the survivors hastily left.  The Whigs lost only one killed and one wounded; the Tories, fifty killed and wounded.  Moore reached the scene soon after and pursued the Tories, capturing 350 guns, 1500 rifles, 150 swords and dirks, 13 wagons, ₤15,000 in gold, 850 soldiers and several officers, including Gen. McDonald.  This overwhelming victory for the Whigs has been called the “Lexington and Concord of the South.”  It was applauded throughout the colonies. 



One source says the patriots had two artillery pieces, a cannon called Old Mother Covington and a swivel gun dubbed Mother Covington’s Daughter. There were probably more. The Wilmington minutemen brought three cannons. So there were probably 3-5 artillery pieces. Some sources say the battle was over within minutes. A Loyalist diary from a soldier at Moores Creek said they attacked and were repelled. They fell back and regrouped, and then they tried to come over the bridge again. They did this three times but did not succeed.[7]



Less than two months later, on April 12, the Fourth Provincial Congress of North Carolina met at Halifax and adopted a resolution calling for independence.[8]



Clinton, Cornwallis and Parker arrived in North Carolina in May but found no one to welcome them and a beaten and dispirited governor.  Cornwallis sailed away to Charleston and the tide of war turned away from North Carolina and during the next four years the state was free from invasion.[9]



Patrick Stewart is said to have fought as a minuteman at Moore’s Creek but is not listed in the participants.  What makes less sense is his joining the British army after taking some offence and resigning his commission in the minutemen.  He is said to have been a captain in the Queens Rangers.[10]  He died a little over a year later in December 1777.  But the story is told that Duncan refused to spell his name Stuart as did Patrick and thereafter Duncan spelled his name S-t-e-w-a-r-t.[11]



Tories stole cattle and property from patriots and sold to the British in Wilmington.  Bladen County was a greater target because the Tories greatly outnumbered Patriots.[12]



Sometime during the Revolution, William Stewart offered aid to the patriots.  A story was printed nearly a century later in “The Wilmington Journal” on December 27, 1866:



“There were in Bladen and several of the surrounding counties, many people, particularly among the Scottish population, whose conduct as Tories was very embarrassing to the state authorities.  It was thought necessary to suppress this spirit, specially those helping the British officer, Col. David Flanning of Chatham County (in the upper Cape Fear valley).  An American officer, General Griffith Rutherford, was sent to question the local population.



One morning, there was brought before the general in his camp at Elizabethtown, the county seat, a tall and venerable old man, who, though plainly clad, had an air of superiority in his bearing that struck all present.  General Rutherford inquired who he was and why his soldiers had brought him into camp.  The old man’s reply was as follows: ‘My name is Stewart and I am from Scotland.  The fortunes of my family were cloven down in the disastrous Battle of Culloden in which I and all who were loyal to the king (of Scotland) were engaged, and you know the issue of that fatal day.  (Scotland lost to England.)  Being very allied by blood to my king, and so known to the usurpers who were then and are now in possession of the crown, I had no hope of safety to life or property, if I remained in Scotland. Therefore me and my family left to come to this province of North Carolina.  All of my feelings are with the Colonies in their resistance…but as you see by my age, I can do no more than wish them success.’



Much interested by his history and appearance, General Rutherford apologized to him for the mistake of his men, and directed one of his officers to accompany Mr. Stewart to his home and see that he was treated with proper respect.  He asked Mr. Stewart to show the officer where he could obtain such supply of provisions as was needed.



This officer, Alfred Moore, a captain in the Continental Army, then began a journey with Mr. Stewart.  While on the road back to Stewart’s home, Captain Moore and Stewart engaged in conversation relating to Stewart’s family back in Europe.  While talking, the officer noticed that they passed several well-stocked farms, but did not stop for the needed supplies.



After riding several more miles, Stewart stopped in front of his dwelling, where the appearance was unpromising for a supply of what they needed.  Struck with the contrast between this and other farms they had passed, the officer asked Stewart why he had brought him so far and to so meager a looking place when he might have supplied himself amply without traveling a third of the distance.



Stewart’s reply deserves to be written in letters of gold.  It was, ‘The farms you passed, Sir, belonged to my neighbors—this is my own, and I bid you welcome to whatever is here.” [13]



There are a couple of questions that arise from this record.  Why the emphasis on the Battle of Culloden when we know William Stewart had immigrated to America in 1739 and the battle occurred in 1746?  And from William Stewart’s will we also know he was a man of some means: three plantations, Negroes, cattle, horses, tools and furniture plus mills in New Hanover and Bladen County.[14]  The Bladen County tax lists of 1779 list William Stewart with 1200 acres, the fifth largest holding listed.[15]



There had been talk of reconciliation before 1776 but the military events of 1775 and 1776 caused a shift in colonial opinion.  The battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill in New England, in the spring of 1775, the fighting in Virginia in the winter and the Snow Campaign in South Carolina in early 76 and finally the battle of Moore’s Creek in February 1776 gave momentum to the movement for independence.  The Fourth Provincial Congress assembled at Halifax in April 1776 and sent delegates to the Continental Congress to concur with the delegates of the other colonies in declaring Independence.  In July William Hooper of New Hanover County, Joseph Hews and John Penn signed the Declaration in Philadelphia for North Carolina.



North Carolina was not the scene of active military operations again for four years.  When North Carolina was threatened with invasion next in 1780, the General Assembly resolved that it would defend the state to the last extremity and on February 7, 1780, appointed Richard Caswell major general of the entire state militia and directed him to raise a regiment of Light Horse from the Wilmington and New Bern districts while General Butler was to raise a regiment of Light Horse from the Hillsborough District.  Duncan was seventeen and may well have been inclined to join. His older brother Charles, age nineteen[16] probably also joined.  He is referred to as Colonel also in later years.[17]  Nothing is said of his twin brother James but these teenage boys would likely be eager to serve.



Having failed to conquer Washington’s army in the North, and encouraged by reports of strong loyalism in the South, Sir Henry Clinton, who in 1778 had replaced General Howe in command of all British forces in America, transferred the seat of war to the South.  The British launched their new offensive against Georgia, the weakest of the states.  Col. Archibald Campbell captured Savannah in December 1778.  Clinton was eager to take Charleston.  He sailed from Savannah in December 1779 accompanied by the new British Commander in the South, Lord Cornwallis.  They reached Charleston in February 1780.  On 12 May 1780 Charleston (under General Lincoln) capitulated to the British.[18]  The British took among the 5,000 prisoners some 815 North Carolina Continental soldiers and 600 North Carolina militia.  Clinton sailed to New York leaving Cornwallis in command to complete the conquest of South Carolina.



North Carolina, with its organized forces sacrificed in defense of its southern neighbors, its resources exhausted, and its people dispirited and alarmed, would have been powerless to resist invasion but Cornwallis delayed the invasion of North Carolina until summer and then again until the fall of 1780.  He enjoyed his comfortable headquarters at Charleston.  Gen. Caswell, in command of the North Carolina militia, concentrated the eastern militia at Cross Creek.  In the west many small daring bands waged partisan warfare.  Cornwallis planned to invade North Carolina as soon as South Carolina was quiet and obedient but was delayed all summer by partisan bands in South Carolina led by Francis Marion and others. Groups of partisans from South and North Carolina won many small battles: Ramsour’s Mill in June, Hanging Rock, South Carolina in July, and Colson’s Mill on the Pee Dee also in July.



But Cornwallis marched to Camden and defeated the Americans (under Gen. Horatio Gates, hero of the decisive victory at Saratoga in 1777 who had replaced Gen. Lincoln, a prisoner at Charleston) on August 16, 1780.  The defeat of the Americans at Camden caused panic in North Carolina.  But Cornwallis moved slowly as he usually did.  He left Camden on September 8 and reached Charlotte September 26.  He was harassed going there and while there by partisans.  When Cornwallis received the news of the overwhelming victory of the Americans at Kings Mountain on October 7, he retreated back to South Carolina.  Some months earlier before he left Camden for Charleston he devised a plan: first, Major James Craig was to capture Wilmington to provide a port to insure supplies and Craig did capture Wilmington in January 1781.  Second, Cornwallis with the main army was to drive up through the state to Hillsborough.  Third, one of Cornwallis’ best officers, Col. Patrick Ferguson, pursued the over-mountain men, to protect his left flank.  Ferguson sent a challenge that the frontiersmen answered with a rally of men who marched from Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River to be joined by others and at Kings Mountain on October 7 defeated the British and mortally wounded Ferguson.  Weakened by the loss of his left wing and robbed of his confidence in North Carolina loyalism Cornwallis abandoned his plans.



In the fall of 1780 Washington sent Gen. Nathanael Green to succeed the discredited Gen. Gates.  Green took command in Charlotte December 2.  His forces were too weak to attack Cornwallis.  Daniel Morgan under Green’s command  routed Banestre Tarleton at Cowpens on the Broad river  on January 17, 1781.  Cornwallis set out in pursuit of Morgan who retreated to Charlotte.  Now followed the masterly and historic retreat of Greene and pursuit by Cornwallis to draw Cornwallis as far away as possible from his South Carolina bases.  Greene crossed the Dan River into Virginia in February 1781 where his men went through a period of rest and preparation.



On March 15 Greene took position at Guilford Court House and Cornwallis advanced from Hillsborough to meet him. Greene won a strategic victory but a tactical defeat.  Cornwallis was too weak to renew the offensive.  He announced a victory and repaired to Wilmington which was under the British force of Major Craig to re-supply.  Cornwallis reached Wilmington on April 7.  He was victorious but helpless.  He decided to abandon North Carolina and invade Virginia.  He set out from Wilmington on April 25 to join General Phillips in Virginia.



Could 18 year old Duncan have been among the 100 Bladen troops who attacked and scattered 400 British troops encamped at Elizabethtown on August 29, 1781?[19]   The story is told that Sallie Salter crossed the Cape Fear under the guise of selling eggs to the British and returned to give information to the militia under Col. Thomas Roberson who used the information to defeat the Tories.  The retreating British ran into a gully to escape that is known today as Tory Hole.[20]



Cornwallis took position at Yorktown where after a siege that began on September 7, he surrendered to General Washington on October 19, 1781. “The war was over but neither George Washington nor George III knew it, so different does lived experience look from history crystallized in books.”[21] Major Craig did not evacuate Wilmington until November 18.[22]  The British did not leave Charleston until December 1782 and it was 1783 before the British left New York. And September 1783 before the Paris Peace Treaty was signed.

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[1] The magazine Salt, Dec. 2019, Kimberly B. Sherman

[2] Duncan Stewart by Saunders. P. 4.

[3] A Being so Gentle, by Patricia Brady, p. 74.

[4] The Founders at Home, by Myron Magnet, p. 171.

[5] Chuck Speed

[6] The birthdate is subject to some debate.

[7] Wrightsville Beach Magazine, Feb. 2016, pp 22-23.

[8] Wrightsville Beach Magazine…..

[9] History of a Southern State, pp.208-215

[10] Stewart Clan Magazine, Vol. XVI, No. 2, Beatrice Neb. Aug. 1936.

[11] Chuck Speed

[12] Bladen County Heritage, NC, Vol. I, 1999, Bladen County Heritage Book Committee, p. 26.

[13] Duncan Stewart by Saunders, pp 4-6.

[14] Duncan Stewart by Saunders, pp. 6-9.

[15] Bladen County North Carolina Tax Lists, 1775-1789, Vol II,, William L. Byrd III, Heritage Books, Inc. Chapter 5: Bladen County Tax List of 1779, p.105.

[16] His birthdate and therefore age are of some dispute.

[17] The Life of Reuben Ross, chapter 27.

[18] Washington, a Life by Ron Chernow, 2010, p. 371.

[19] Bladen County Heritage, p. 26.

[20] Years of History, a limited history of Bladen Co. NC, by CE Crawford, 1987.

[21] The Founders at Home by Myron Magnet, p. 171.

[22] History of a Southern State, pp. 218-253