Despite the uncertainty of surrender terms, many citizens came to Augusta to swear allegiance to the king, including Henry Laurens, president of the First Continental Congress, and two South Carolina regiments, with all their men. Brown granted them parole, with a promise of hanging if they violated it, and their names were sent to Charles Town, along with the weapons of those who refused to join British troops for active combat.

For all practical purposes, the American congress wrote off Georgia and South Carolina. What was left of the South Carolina government met in a wilderness hideaway and chose a merchant named Thomas Sumter, with limited military experience, to be “commander in chief” of an almost nonexistent armed force. Sumter began to recruit men to follow him, with the understanding that each one would have to provision himself with a horse, weapons, clothing, and food. He was a proud and ambitious commander, whose militiamen would soon remind the British that South Carolina had not given up all hope.

•  •  •

Captain William Few, Lieutenant Ethan Pratt, and about twenty other men were bivouacked in one of the more remote small forts within the Hornet’s Nest area, discussing news of the surrender of Charles Town. They had carried out orders to assemble all the men possible and to report to Elijah Clarke. Their recent call had resulted in only a limited response, and they soon realized that a number of their men had either joined the British or sworn to forgo further revolutionary service. Their motivations were easy to understand, because there was no logical prospect of further resistance. When Few and his troops proceeded to the central campground at Freeman’s Fort, seventy miles upriver from Augusta, they found the other companies to have had the same experience as their own. There was a total of only 140 militiamen present, dispirited as they faced Colonel Clarke to discuss the future.

Clarke looked over the small group and said, “It looks like we got a lot of men sick or still in bed with their wives.”

There was a scattering of mandatory laughter, and then the commander continued, “Why the stupid general would hide in Charles Town and give up all his men is beyond me, and we would have been there with them if we’d followed his orders. It may be that the fat bastard has lost the south, and now we have to decide what to do. I’m proposin’ that we cross the river and join the Carolinians that are still goin’ to defend the western part of their state.”