Tarleton’s quarter

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 54 for his account.

When Charleston fell on 12 May 1780, the whole southern army was lost, but one Continental force was still in the field: some 350 Virginians under Colonel Abraham Buford, who had come south too late to help and were ordered to retreat to North Carolina as fast as they could. Colonel Banastre Tarleton, with fewer than 300 men, covered 150 miles in 54 hours and caught them on 29 May at the Waxhaws, near the North Carolina line. Buford formed his men in a line on open ground instead of behind any works, and held their fire until the horsemen were almost on top of them. Tarleton’s charge broke the line. When the Americans tried to surrender, Rothbard writes, his troops fell upon the disarmed and wounded men with bayonets. Dr. Robert Brownfield, who was there, wrote that Buford raised a white flag and that Tarleton’s horse was shot as he called for quarter, so that his men thought him dead and gave none. Over 260 Americans were killed or badly wounded, over fifty taken, and Tarleton lost only a handful. From then on ‘Tarleton’s quarter’ meant a massacre of the disarmed. On 3 June Clinton issued an edict that denied South Carolinians the choice of staying neutral, and many who had been content to sit out the war took up their rifles.