When war first came to Fayetteville

A couple of weeks ago, I was privileged to speak at a ceremony honoring those who fought at the first major Southern engagement in the American War of Independence. Our commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge on Feb. 27 was part of a broader First in Freedom Festival, which I’m pleased to report attracted thousands of people to tours, presentations, reenactments, and other events throughout the greater Wilmington area.

“The first great British strategy to win the war, hatched in late 1775, was to invade and conquer North Carolina, severing the valuable Southern colonies from the rest of the emerging nation,” I told the audience assembled at the Moores Creek National Battlefield in Pender County.

“Among other elements, the British strategy required the Patriots of North Carolina to be distracted, to quake with fear, to falter, to stay home. That is not what happened. The Patriot militia mustered. Their leaders kept a level head, out-organized and outmaneuvered their adversaries, and emerged victorious at Moores Creek.

“The war would go on. American Patriots would go on — to victory.”

Who were the Patriots’ adversaries at Moores Creek? They weren’t British redcoats. Other than a few regular officers, the Loyalists vanquished at the battle consisted largely of Scottish Highlanders who’d pledged their loyalty to King George, along with a few former Regulator rebels from the Carolina backcountry who detested the colonial elites from coastal towns such as Wilmington and New Bern who were now leading the Patriot cause in the province.

Hoping to meet up with a British invasion fleet, the Highlanders and Regulators met defeat instead. But not all the Loyalists had joined the doomed march southeast from their gathering place at Cross Creek (modern-day Fayetteville). A few stayed behind. Others had not yet reached Cross Creek when the main force departed for the coast.

Among the latter was Thomas Reid. A militia captain, he assembled a hundred men and led them to the Loyalist camp. They found not only that the Highlanders and Regulators were gone but that they’d already been decisively defeated at Moores Creek Bridge. They also discovered that one of the victorious Patriot commanders, Colonel William Graham, had arrived in Cross Creek to hunt for Loyalists.

Graham and his Patriots were from the far-western county of Tryon, which sprawled across what are now all or part of Gaston, Cleveland, Lincoln, Rutherford, Burke, and McDowell counties. Exhausted by their long march up the Cape Fear River, but probably still exhilarated by their victory at Moores Creek, the Tryon militiamen took up residence in a Cumberland County millhouse owned by a local man named Cochrane. Fatefully, they posted no sentries.

Captain Reid proved as audacious as Colonel Graham was complacent. Accompanied by only 15 Loyalist militiamen, Reid strode to the door of the millhouse and banged on it, leading the Patriots to believe the place was surrounded. He demanded their surrender. Graham complied. Within moments, I assume, he knew he’d been had.

For the Patriots, it was an embarrassing coda to what had been a symphony of military success. That’s all it was, however. Reid and his Loyalists still intended to march to the coast to meet up with a British invasion force. They were in no position to bring prisoners with them. So, they disarmed and then released William Graham and his men.

There will be no grand semiquincentennial commemoration of this “battle” of Cross Creek/Cochrane’s Mill on March 20. No blood was shed. No strategic goals were achieved. But the episode illustrates a point often overlooked in traditional accounts of the Revolutionary War, which tend to focus on the maneuvers — and occasional clashes — between British armies and blue-coated Continentals. In the Carolinas, in particular, much of the war consisted of Patriots and Loyalists raiding, robbing, wounding, or killing each other in regular spasms of violence.

William Graham would himself fight several more times, with greater success. More tales to come.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.