![]() The shooting ceased for an hour before Turnball rejected Sumter’s request by stating, “Duty and inclination induce me to defend this place to the last extremity.” Planning to continue his assault, Sumter sent a message off asking for Turnball’s surrender of the fort. What brief success came with breaking through the tangled obstructions came at a price as Neal, two militiamen, and their Catawba Indian guide were killed. With their riflemen providing cover, the patriots under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Neal charged twice more towards the fortifications with the intent to cut through the abatis. Colonel William Hill noted, “This was made under the impression that the enemy was in a large framed house the walls of which were only thin clapboards, and we supposed that our balls have the desired effect by shooting through the wall…but the enemy…had placed small logs about a foot from the inside of the wall and rammed the cavity with clay…we injure them in no way, but by shooting in their port holes.” As the Americans poured on musket fire to the clapboard house, it became clear it was heavily reinforced on the interior. Losing the element of surprise, Sumter charged the fort. Winn, leading Sumter’s advance, first ran off 100 Loyalists camped outside the fort, many leaving their horses and clothes. Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull of the New York Volunteers commanded 150 of his men and 150 militia from Camden, bringing Rocky Mount’s defenders to 300. At sunset, Sumter’s 500 men crossed the Catawba River at Land’s Ford and marched south all night and invested the crest of Rocky Mount at sunrise. Sumter’s army marched on July 29 with double rations and a suitable ammunition supply to Rocky Mount. Davie agreed to conduct a concurrent, diversionary attack upon the British Hanging Rock outpost, 17 miles east of Rocky Mount. On July 28, he moved to Major William Richardson Davie’s camp at the Waxhaw Presbyterian Meeting House. Colonel Richard Winn received word that the British fort at Rocky Mount, high on a hill west of and overlooking the Catawba River, was defended by encircled abatis, with two log-framed houses and a larger clapboarded house. Following Captain Huck’s defeat, the Americans gathered intelligence on where the British were assembling their garrisons within the vicinity. However, pioneer and settler esprit de corps in the backcountry could be fickle as many were committed to offensive campaigns but not to day-to-day soldiering. ![]() The defeat of British Captain Christian Huck at Williamson’s Plantation by Colonel William Bratton on July 12 sparked the numbers of interested patriots to join Sumter’s militia. The South Carolinians elected Colonel Thomas Sumter as their leader at a backwoods meeting in North Carolina and he immediately worked to raise the quantity and quality of his brigade of soldiers near Hill’s Iron Works at Clem’s Branch.
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