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Conceived in Liberty Companion · Volume IV, chapter 78 · April 1787

The King of England’s soldiers

Behind a log wall in a swamp camp, armed men stand guard looking out over black water and moss-draped cypress, while a woman tends a cooking fire with a child at her side and an older woman stands in a small cornfield.
Bear Creek swamps, Georgia, 1787. Behind a log wall in the swamp, some 300 former slaves who refused to leave with the British stand guard with muskets, calling themselves the King of England’s soldiers and raiding plantations. Rothbard says it took four years and the combined militia of Georgia and South Carolina to rout them. Chapter 78 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 78 for his account.

When the British left Savannah in 1782, about 4,000 escaped slaves sailed with them, and 6,000 more left Charleston. Rothbard counts as many as 100,000 slaves who got away during the Revolutionary War, nearly a fifth of all the enslaved. Some of the escaped became maroons, fugitives who fought slaveholders from hiding places no militia could easily reach. One group of 300 did not sail. They stayed in the swamps at Bear Creek, took the name “King of England’s soldiers” and raided Georgia plantations. Historians who have followed them down the Savannah River describe a community of men who had served the British, led by captains named Cudjoe and Lewis, first on Belleisle, an island in the river, then, after Georgia militia burned that camp in 1787, at Bear Creek. There they built a wall, carried weapons and kept guards on patrol. Militia found the fortress on April 21, 1787, and in May they forced their way through the wall and set it on fire. Rothbard says it took four years and the combined militia of Georgia and South Carolina to rout the band.

Where the record differs from Rothbard

Errata notes. Rothbard’s text and his account above are left as he wrote them. Every erratum.

Conceived in Liberty, p. 1551
Rothbard says 300 ex-slaves stayed in the swamps at Bear Creek when the British evacuated Savannah (1782), and it took four years and the combined Georgia and South Carolina militia to rout them.
The evidence Sources quoting Diouf (Push Black, Wikipedia ‘Maroons’, the South Carolina Encyclopedia, as seen in summaries) place the Savannah River maroon camps in 1786-87: the Belleisle camps burned by militia in 1787, then Bear Creek, whose walled fortress militia found on 21 April 1787 and forced and burned in May. One summary puts the community at about 100, not 300. Rothbard’s four years run from 1782 to 1786, which the accounts read do not match.
Source the sources named in the evidence column

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. IV, ch. 78, ‘Elimination of Feudalism and the Beginnings of the Abolition of Slavery’, pp. 1547-1552, esp. p. 1551. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. ‘They Survived In This Hidden Fortress After Fleeing To Freedom’, Push Black (accessed 2026-10-02, through a fetch summary of a piece built on Sylviane A. Diouf’s work): a secret fortress built near the creek in the 1780s, reached by wading through water and mosquitoes; the maroons ‘carried weapons, constructed a wall, and had guards patrol it’; militia found it on 21 April 1787 and in May forced their way through the wall and set the fortress afire. Secondary source
  3. ‘Maroons’, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-10-02, through a fetch summary): two maroon settlements on Abercorn Island (Belleisle) on the Savannah River in Effingham County destroyed by militia in 1787; the maroons then built another settlement at Bear Creek, also raided. Secondary source
  4. Sylviane A. Diouf, Slavery’s Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons (NYU Press, 2014), as summarised in search results on 2026-10-02 (the Brooklyn Public Library event page for ‘The Hidden Fortress’, the South Carolina Encyclopedia entry ‘Maroons’): Belleisle camps led by Captains Cudjoe and Lewis, many of the maroons having served with the British and calling themselves ‘the King of England’s Soldiers’; militia under James Jackson burned Belleisle in 1787 and the maroons built a second settlement on Bear Creek. The book itself was not opened. Secondary source
  5. Era registry entry lower-savannah-maroons-1787 (data/cil/registry/), dress, arms and the camp; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source