After Charleston fell in May 1780, organized Continental resistance in South Carolina collapsed almost entirely, and the war in the state's interior became something closer to a running guerrilla campaign than a conventional one. Francis Marion, a former Continental officer who had missed Charleston's surrender due to a broken ankle, rebuilt a militia brigade in the swamps along the Santee and Pee Dee rivers and spent the next two years harassing British supply lines, communications, and outposts across a wide stretch of the backcountry. His fight against a small fortified post called Fort Watson in April 1781 shows both his tactical improvisation and how completely this theater of the war operated outside the normal rules of pitched battle. The full correspondence survives in the Francis Marion Papers, an over 600-document collection transcribed and published by South Carolina's official 250th anniversary commission.
Fort Watson sat on an old Native American mound overlooking Scott's Lake along the road connecting Charleston to the British interior posts, garrisoned by roughly 120 men under Lieutenant James McKay. Marion, joined by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee's Continental cavalry legion, laid siege to the position beginning April 15, but neither commander had brought artillery, and the mound's height put the fort's log walls out of effective range for the small arms fire available to the besiegers. For nearly a week the siege stalled, with the garrison's water supply, drawn from the lake below, the only real pressure point available.
One of Marion's officers, Major Hezekiah Maham, proposed an unconventional solution: build a log tower taller than the fort's walls, and put riflemen on top of it to fire down into the garrison. Built from logs cut nearby and assembled in a single night, the structure gave Marion's marksmen a clear line of fire into the fort's interior for the first time in the siege. Facing riflemen who could now see and hit anyone moving inside the walls, McKay's garrison surrendered on April 23.
I have the pleasure to inform you that Fort Watson surrendered to us yesterday. We have upwards of 120 prisoners, near 80 of which are British. This post has been of the greatest advantage to the enemy as a place of deposit, and from which they drew great part of their supplies. It's happy reduction has already had a great and good effect on the minds of the people.
Greene's reply the following day made clear how badly the Continental army needed exactly this kind of victory, and how thin its own resources had become.
I congratulate you on your success against Fort Watson. The articles of capitulation I highly approve of, and feel myself particularly indebted to you, and all the officers and men under you, for their spirit, perseverance and good conduct upon the occasion. A field piece is coming to your assistance, which I hope will enable you and Col. Lee to get possession of the fort. With the artillery you will receive one hundred pounds of powder and four hundred pounds of lead; I wish my present stock would enable me to forward you a larger supply, but it will not, having sent you nearly half we have.
Maham's Tower became a template Marion and other commanders reused elsewhere in the campaign, most notably at the siege of Fort Motte weeks later. Marion's brigade went on to fight at Parker's Ferry, Quinby Bridge, and the pitched battle at Eutaw Springs that September, continuing to operate as the Continental Southern Army's left flank under Greene through the remainder of the war in the state. His insurgency helped keep the Revolution alive in South Carolina during the period after Camden's disaster, when organized Continental resistance in the state had nearly collapsed, and it demonstrated that irregular militia, properly led, could accomplish what conventional forces lacking supplies and artillery could not.
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