118 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

Whigs returned to their homes in safety. In the death of
Slingsby the Tories were deprived of an officer whose place it
was difficult to fill; but few were equal to Godden in partisan
warfare. This battle was mostly fought by river planters, men
who had sacrificed much for their country. To judge it cor-
rectly it should not be forgotten that the country from Little
Pee Dee to the Caharas was overrun by the Tories. Wilmington
was in possession of the British and Cross Creek of the Tories.
Thus situated, the attack made on them at Elizabethtown as-
sumed much of the character of a forlorn hope. Had the Whigs
not succeeded they must have been cut off to a man. If they
had fled southward the Tories would have risen to destroy
them. If eastward, the Tories in that case, flushed with victory
would have pursued them, and they would have sought in vain
their former asylum. This action produced in this part of
North Carolina as sudden and happy results as the Battles of
Trenton and Princeton in New Jersey. The contest was un-
equal, but valor supplied the place of numbers.

It is due to Colonel Brown, who, when a youth, marched with
General Waddell from Bladen and fought under Governor
Tryon at the Battle of Alamance and was afterwards wounded

at the Big Bridge, to say he fully realized the expectations of
his friends and the wishes of those who selected him to com-

mand; and when the history of our State shall be written this
action alone, apart from his chivalric conduct at the Big Bridge
will place him by the side of his compatriots Horry, Marion,
and Sumter of the South. It must, it will, form an interesting
page in our history on which the young men of North Carolina
will delight to dwell. It is an achievement which bespeaks not
only the most determined bravery, but great military skill.
Most of these men, like the Ten Thousand Greeks, were fitted
to command. Owen had fought at Camden, Morehead com-

manded the nine months’ men sent to the South, Robeson and

Ervine were the Percys of the Whigs and might justly be called
the Hotspurs of the Cape Fear. : emit vines

The foregoing narrative was detailed to me by two of the re-
spective combatants, who now sleep with their fathers; the sub-
stance of which I have endeavored to preserve with all the ac-
curacy a memory not very retentive will permit. A respectable
resident of Elizabethtown has recently informed me that he was
a small boy at the time of the battle and lived with his mother
in one of the houses to which the Tories repaired for safety;

The Revolution 119

that he has a distinct recollection of the fire of the Whigs, which
appeared like one continuous stream. Documentary evidence I
have none. With great respect,

The Battle of Elizabethtown took place August 29, 1781.
The consequences of that victory were far-reaching. Colonel
Slingsby had at Elizabethtown a great number of Whigs held
as prisoners, who were restored to liberty and augmented the
Whig strength in Bladen. The guns, ammunition, provisions,
and other spoils taken supplied the Whigs, who were in the ex-
tremest need. Not only were the Loyalists broken up and dis-
persed, but the Whigs were so strengthened that afterwards the
Tories, who had been masters of Bladen, made no opposition to

them. Still the condition of the Whigs in Bladen, as in all the

other Cape Fear country, remained deplorable.

OLD-TIME CAPE FEAR HEROES.

Col. James Innes, who appears to have had some military
training before he came to the Cape Fear, about 1735, so dis-
tinguished himself in the war against the Spaniards, in 1740,
that when the French and Indian War came on Governor Din-
widdie of Virginia appointed him to the command of all the
forces in Virginia.

Col. Hugh Waddell, a young Irishman who came to Wil-
mington, won a great reputation during the French and Indian
War; but Innes and Waddell both died before the Revolution,
as also did Moses John DeRosset, likewise an officer in the

former war.
Among others who served in the French and Indian War were

Col. Caleb Grainger, Capt. Thomas McManus, James Moore,
Robert Howe, and John Ashe. Howe had been in command of
Fort Johnston, and Ashe, colonel of militia, was for a time on

Innes’ staff.
When the Provincial Congress began to raise troops, in 1775,

James Moore was elected colonel of the First Continentals, and
at the outset he remained to defend the Cape Fear. He was
soon appointed brigadier general in the Continental Army, and
for a while in 1776 was in command of the forces in South
Carolina. He died on the Cape Fear, while leading his brigade
to the North. He was an officer of great ability.