Riflemen above the stockade

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 61 for his account.

In April 1781 Greene sent Henry Lee’s Legion to join Francis Marion on the lower Santee, and on the 14th they laid siege to Fort Watson. The British post stood on an old Indian mound beside the river, on the road that fed Camden, with a stockade on top, a ditch and rows of sharpened abatis around its foot. About 120 men held it under Lieutenant James McKay. After days of siege, Hezekiah Maham, an officer in Marion’s force, proposed a tower tall enough for riflemen to shoot down into the fort. The men cut green pine, notched the logs into square cribs and put the tower together out of the garrison’s sight. On the night of 22 April they carried it up within rifle shot and set a platform and a log breastwork on top. At sunrise the riflemen climbed up and began to shoot down over the stockade, and the defenders could no longer stand on the wall. Fort Watson surrendered on 23 April with over a hundred prisoners, and the Americans lost only a few men. Rothbard counts it among the guerrilla successes that stripped the British of their forts in South Carolina. The same design went up again at Augusta and at Ninety-Six.