The Day the American Revolution Came to Captain James Steen’s Door

Reverend William Tennent, James Steen, and the Fight for the South Carolina Backcountry in 1775

In August 1775, nearly a year before the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution reached the home of my sixth great-grandfather, Captain (later, during the war, Lt. Colonel) James Steen, on Thicketty Creek in the South Carolina backcountry. It's an area that only three years earlier had still been a part of North Carolina. The boundary between the two states was finally settled in 1772.

News of the Continental Congress and grievances against King George III and the British arrived in the person of the Reverend William Tennent—a thirty-five-year-old minister carrying political pamphlets, enlistment forms, and the document known simply as the Association.

South Carolina was already deeply divided. The Provincial Congress and its Council of Safety had assumed authority in Charles Town (this was the official name of what is now Charleston until after the war, and it's how I will refer to the then-capital city of South Carolina), but allegiance in the backcountry remained uncertain. In fact as evidenced by the diary of William Tennent in his summer and early fall travels through the backcountry in 1775, there was strong loyalist sentiment towards England.

Many of the mostly Scots-Irish settlers distrusted the coastal Lowcountry leadership, feared losing their lands, or believed that resistance to Parliament amounted to rebellion against King George III. Loyalist leaders like Colonel Thomas Fletchall and the Reverend Joseph Alexander’s theological rival, the Reverend Joseph Robinson, worked actively to keep the settlers from joining the Patriot movement. Thus the civil war type nature of the relationship between Patriots and Loyalists in what is now the upstate and the interior of South Carolina.

The Council of Safety in Charleston decided in the spring of 1775 to send out William Henry Drayton, Presbyterian Minister William Tennent, and the Baptist minister Oliver Hart, and other representatives into the interior “to explain to the people at large the nature of the unhappy public disputes” and to build unity behind the American cause.^1

The Association they carried had been adopted by the South Carolina Provincial Congress on May 11, 1775. Those who signed pledged themselves, under “every tie of religion and honor,” to unite in defending the liberties of America and to obey the decisions of the Continental and Provincial congresses.^2

Signing did not yet constitute a declaration of independence from Britain, but it was a public and potentially dangerous act of resistance. It placed a man’s name, reputation, property, and perhaps his life behind the Patriot cause.

When I discovered Tennent's diary online several years ago in Columbia, SC, I read it with intent. Tennent’s surviving writing reveals how difficult their mission was.

He and Drayton and Hart traveled mile after mile through summer heat, crossed rivers and creeks, attended musters and worship services, preached long sermons in ridiculously hot weather, distributed literature, answered Loyalist arguments, and spoke privately with militia officers whose influence might determine the allegiance of an entire neighborhood. At some gatherings, men signed readily. At others, Tennent encountered suspicion, anger, or outright hostility. The backcountry was not politically united, and the struggle to win it was conducted initially through sermons, conversations, printed pamphlets, and personal persuasion rather than actual battle or bloodshed.^3

Here I have to part from my original intent to give heed to today's ministers. There is NOTHING wrong with addressing culture through a biblical worldview from the pulpit. The minister's job is to preach the gospel and stay true to the word of God. But biblical illiteracy is such in this country that sometimes people can't see the forest for the trees unless you explain it to them. And that's what many of these Revolutionary-era ministers did. To ignore what is going on in society is tantamount to denying the very gospel we are supposed to preach. Okay, I'm off my soapbox, but I feel strongly about this subject, and the precedent for it is there all the way back to the beginnings of our country. And the precedent was set by good, Godly, faithful men, who adhered to biblical fidelity and preached the word of God and the one true gospel of Jesus Christ, yet they did not ignore what was happening in the colonies.

On Monday, August 22, 1775, William Tennent rode approximately thirteen miles, crossing the Broad River at Smith’s Ford and arriving at the meetinghouse of the Reverend Joseph Alexander on Thicketty Creek. He found Alexander preaching to a gathered congregation. Among those present were many friends of the Loyalist minister Joseph Robinson, as well as several local militia officers, including my sixth Great Grandfather Captain James Steen and also a Captain Coleman. Tennent recorded that after Alexander finished his sermon, he himself addressed the people for nearly two hours:

“There were present many of the most noted of Mr. Robinson’s Friends, his Wife & others: two Captains (viz.) Steen & Coleman. The People seemed convinced & after meeting an Association from memory, refreshed myself & drank out of a cowbell, they signed the Association & retired seeming contented.”^4

This brief entry was an awesome find when I discovered it several years ago. My ancestor James Steen was right there at the center of one of the decisive political gatherings in the Thicketty Creek settlement.

He appears in the contemporary diary of the man sent by South Carolina’s revolutionary government to secure the allegiance of the backcountry. At first I was sort of shocked that an ancestor of mine was there at that particular place and time.

Following the meeting, James Steen invited William Tennent to his home. There the minister learned that the captain had previously been influenced by what Tennent called “a most horrid Scheme carrying on here.”^5

That phrase almost certainly referred to the organized Loyalist effort then spreading through the region, although Tennent didn't fully describe the scheme in this particular entry. His language shows how seriously Patriot leaders in 1775 viewed the political contest that was transpiring. War was happening whether anyone was ready to admit it or not. The patriots believed Loyalist organizers were preparing resistance to the Provincial Congress and perhaps armed cooperation with royal authority.

The following morning, Tuesday, August 23, Tennent continued his conversation with James Steen. The surviving manuscript pages from the diary indicate that Captain James Steen appeared convinced and prepared to support the Association. Tennent then departed and continued his work among other local officers, riding to the homes of Job Loftin, Major Mitchell, Anderson, Captain Coleman, and Captain Rimes. He spent much of the day answering objections, challenging the influence of Colonel Fletchall, and explaining what he described as the destruction of Massachusetts’ charter and the danger posed to colonial liberties.^6

The importance of the meeting between William Tennent and James Steen was revealed when Tennent talked about getting Steen’s signature on the Association. More importantly, it's what happened after that. Within days and weeks, Patriot militia organization in the upper backcountry accelerated. Colonel John Thomas Sr. organized the Spartan Regiment of militia, and William Henry Drayton supplied them with gunpowder to defend themselves. James Steen emerged as a captain in the Spartan Regiment, the militia organization formed to fight the Loyalist influence and defend the revolutionary government. He would eventually become lieutenant colonel of the Second Spartan Regiment during the mid part of the war and serve through some of the fiercest fighting in the southern campaign of 1780.^7

Yet on August 22, 1775, the military future was uncertain. No one knew the depth, breadth, or length of the struggle that lay ahead. The immediate struggle was being waged in a small meetinghouse and around the table in Steen’s home. The first job of patriots was to get people of the side of the Provincial government so resistance could be a reality.

William Tennent’s diary is a fantastic resource on that summer of 1775 and what was happening in the backcountry of South Carolina. It has allowed me to witness the moment when conviction for a cause turned into action for the citizens who desired to be free of British rule.

When people talk about the American Revolution in the South Carolina backcountry, it is often just the battles of Kings Mountain or Cowpens. But that's not where it started.

It began in the conversations, the sermons, the meetings of patriots in the backcountry in the summer of 1775. They organized friends, family, and neighbors. And when neighbors gathered after preaching, when ministers and militia captains argued over the rights of Englishmen, and when men stepped forward to place their names on the Association document or petition, if you will, that's where the ball got rolling.

For James Steen, the road toward revolutionary service is traced directly to that hot August evening on Thicketty Creek just south of modern-day Gaffney, SC. Tennent brought the Association documents to James Steen's house on Thicketty Creek, and by the time Tennent rode away the next morning, Captain James Steen had publicly aligned himself with the American cause.

Five years later, Lt. Colonel James Steen would give his life in that cause. But the documentary trail for my research on James Steen in the American Revolution began there in August 1775 with William Tennent, the traveling preacher, his diary, a signed Association, and men on what was then still mostly wilderness of the Carolina frontier. Steen and many others decided that loyalty to liberty would require resistance to the King of England. In modern terms, it was on!

Notes

1. Robert Wilson Gibbes, ed., Documentary History of the American Revolution: Consisting of Letters and Papers Relating to the Contest for Liberty, Chiefly in South Carolina, from Originals in the Possession of the Editor, and Other Sources, 1764–1776 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855), 90–92; J. B. O. Landrum, Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina (Greenville, SC: Shannon and Co., 1897), 47–48. The mission was intended to explain the dispute, quiet political divisions, and persuade backcountry inhabitants to cooperate with the Council of Safety. (America in Class)

2. “The Association,” adopted May 11, 1775, South Carolina Provincial Congress, reproduced in Gibbes, Documentary History, and in National Humanities Center, “Recruiting Backcountry Settlers to the Patriot Cause, Reports to the South Carolina Council of Safety, 1775.” The Association was circulated throughout the colony after being widely subscribed in Charles Town. (America in Class)

3. William Tennent, “Travel Journal, August 2–September 15, 1775,” in Travel Journal and Album of Collected Papers of William Tennent III, 1740–1777, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. The collection description identifies the journal as Tennent’s account of his 1775 journey through the South Carolina backcountry. (TCL Digital)

4. Tennent, “Travel Journal,” entry for August 22, 1775, manuscript image supplied by the author. I have lightly expanded punctuation for readability while retaining Tennent’s original wording and capitalization. “Lovefeast” may refer to food or drink shared in connection with the religious gathering, rather than necessarily to a formal Moravian observance.

5. Ibid. Tennent wrote that Steen invited him home and that he found the captain “entirely taken off from a most horrid Scheme carrying on here.”

6. Tennent, “Travel Journal,” entry for August 23, 1775, manuscript image supplied by the author. The next portion records Tennent’s visits with local inhabitants and officers and his effort to convince Captain Coleman and Captain Rimes of the justice of the American cause.

7. Bobby Gilmer Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983), s.v. “Steen, James”; Christine R. Swager, True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution (Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007), 12–18; J. D. Lewis, “Captain James Steen,” The American Revolution in South Carolina. Surviving summaries place Steen as a captain in the Spartan Regiment from 1775 and later in the First and Second Spartan regiments. (Carolana)

   
   

Bibliography

Gibbes, Robert Wilson, ed. Documentary History of the American Revolution: Consisting of Letters and Papers Relating to the Contest for Liberty, Chiefly in South Carolina, from Originals in the Possession of the Editor, and Other Sources, 1764–1776. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855.

Landrum, J. B. O. Colonial and Revolutionary History of Upper South Carolina. Greenville, SC: Shannon and Co., 1897.

Moss, Bobby Gilmer. Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1983.

O’Donnell, James H. “A Loyalist View of the Drayton-Tennent-Hart Mission to the Upcountry.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 67, no. 4 (October 1966): 220–227.

Swager, Christine R. True for the Cause of Liberty: The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 2007.

Tennent, William. “Travel Journal, August 2–September 15, 1775.” In Travel Journal and Album of Collected Papers of William Tennent III, 1740–1777. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.