History buffs know that May 29 marks many significant events.
But 245 years ago on this date, one event changed the course of American history forever.
And one British Colonel unleashed pure hell that sparked America’s first civil war.
British Colonel Banastre Tarleton earned a nickname that haunted America
The date was May 29, 1780, and the American Revolution was hanging by a thread in the South.
Charleston had fallen just weeks earlier on May 12, and with it went the entire Southern Continental Army – over 5,000 troops surrendered in what was the largest American defeat of the entire war.
Only one organized Patriot force remained in South Carolina: Colonel Abraham Buford’s 3rd Virginia Regiment, roughly 350 Continental soldiers trying to escape north to safety.
British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis had a simple mission for one of his most aggressive commanders.
Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a 26-year-old cavalry officer who had already earned a reputation for ruthless efficiency, was ordered to hunt down and destroy Buford’s retreating Americans.
Tarleton commanded the British Legion, a mixed unit of Loyalist cavalry and mounted infantry that had become Cornwallis’s go-to force for rapid strikes against Patriot resistance.
The young British officer pushed his 270 men hard through the South Carolina backcountry, covering nearly 100 miles in just two days.
Their horses were exhausted, but Tarleton was closing in on his prey.
A massacre that shocked both sides into fury
Tarleton finally caught up with Buford’s force near the Waxhaws settlement, just six miles south of the North Carolina border.
The British commander sent a flag of truce demanding surrender, but Colonel Buford reportedly replied with one sentence: “Sir, I reject your proposals, and shall defend myself to the last extremity.”
What happened next became one of the most controversial episodes of the entire American Revolution.
At 3:00 PM, Tarleton’s cavalry charged the American line.
Buford made a fatal tactical error by holding his men’s fire until the British cavalry was only ten yards away.
The Continentals got off one volley before Tarleton’s mounted troops crashed into their ranks with sabers slashing.
According to multiple accounts, Tarleton’s horse was shot out from under him during the charge, trapping the British commander under the dead animal.
With their leader pinned down, the British and Loyalist troops went into a frenzy.
American survivors later claimed they tried to surrender by raising a white flag, but the brutal assault continued.
“The virtue of humanity was totally forgot,” wrote Charles Stedman, an aide to Cornwallis, describing what his own side had done.
Continental surgeon Robert Brownfield, who witnessed the carnage, reported that American soldiers were being “inhumanely mangled” by saber cuts even after they had fallen.
In just minutes, 113 Americans lay dead and 147 more were wounded so severely that many died later.
British losses were a mere 5 killed and 12 wounded.
“Tarleton’s Quarter” became a rallying cry that changed everything
The lopsided casualty count wasn’t unusual for cavalry charges of that era.
But what happened at Waxhaws went far beyond normal battlefield violence.
Patriots throughout the South began using the phrase “Tarleton’s Quarter” to describe the brutal killing of soldiers trying to surrender.
The term meant you could expect no mercy from the British – only a savage death at the hands of what Patriots saw as cowardly enemies.
Tarleton himself later wrote in his memoirs that the slaughter was committed by troops acting with “vindictive asperity not easily restrained.”
The British colonel tried to distance himself from the massacre, claiming he was trapped under his horse and couldn’t control his men.
But the damage was done.
News of the Waxhaws “massacre” spread like wildfire through the Carolinas.
Instead of terrorizing Patriots into submission, Tarleton’s brutality had the opposite effect.
Wavering colonists who had been sitting on the fence now flocked to the Patriot cause.
The birth of America’s first civil war
Under leaders like Thomas Sumter, who became known as the “Carolina Gamecock,” Patriot militia began their own campaign of brutal reprisals against Loyalists.
What had been political disagreements between neighbors turned into blood feuds.
Carolinians began killing their own with a ferocity that shocked even hardened British veterans.
Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” emerged to lead hit-and-run attacks that drove British forces to distraction.
The conventional war that the British thought they could win became a guerrilla nightmare that slowly bled their forces dry.
Cornwallis found that instead of gaining Loyalist recruits, his forces faced increasing resistance at every turn.
Patriot victories at places like King’s Mountain and Cowpens proved that Southern resistance was far from broken.
The seeds of Cornwallis’s eventual defeat at Yorktown were planted in the blood-soaked soil of the Waxhaws.
A propaganda victory disguised as military defeat
Military historians note that Tarleton’s “quarter” became one of the most effective propaganda tools of the entire Revolution.
The British thought they were sending a message about the price of resistance.
Instead, they created a martyr’s tale that inspired thousands of fence-sitting colonists to take up arms.
Even future President Andrew Jackson, whose family lived in the Waxhaws region, was shaped by the brutal events of that day.
Young Andrew and his family reportedly helped care for the wounded at the local church where many of the injured Americans were taken.
The memory of British brutality would influence Jackson’s attitudes toward authority for the rest of his life.
What Tarleton intended as a quick military strike to crush Southern resistance instead became the spark that ignited a civil war within the Revolution.
The lasting impact of one afternoon’s brutality
The Battle of Waxhaws proved that sometimes the worst military defeats can become the most important political victories.
Buford’s command was destroyed, but the Patriot cause in the South was reborn in the flames of outrage.
Tarleton earned his nickname “Bloody Ban” and became the most hated British officer in America.
The British strategy of using terror to pacify the South had backfired spectacularly.
Instead of submission, they got rebellion.
Instead of Loyalist recruits, they got guerrilla warfare.
Instead of a quick victory, they got a bloody civil war that helped doom their entire Southern campaign.
The events at Waxhaws on May 29, 1780, remind us that sometimes the most decisive battles aren’t won by the side that leaves the field victorious.
Sometimes they’re won by the side that turns defeat into inspiration.
