Qualla: Battle of Hammond's Store

Battle of Hammond's Store: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It was December 27, 1780, and Daniel Morgan needed someone fast. A scout had brought word that Loyalist Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Waters, riding with a Savannah militia detachment, was burning Patriot farms in the Fairforest Creek country between Winnsboro and Ninety Six. Morgan turned to William Washington, second cousin of George, commander of a tough Continental dragoon regiment. Washington took two companies of dragoons and four militia detachments and rode south. By the time he cornered Waters at Hammond's Old Store on December 30, his men had tracked the raiders for more than forty miles. What happened next was short and merciless.

Battle of Hammond's Store: After Camden, Before Cowpens

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Southern campaign was at its rawest moment. The catastrophic Patriot defeat at Camden in August 1780 had effectively shattered the Continental army in the South, and General George Washington had finally pulled the reliable Nathanael Greene out of his northern command and sen...

Battle of Hammond's Store: Forty Miles to the Store

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Morgan's scouts reported Waters's raiders burning their way through the Fairforest country, the priority was not military, exactly. It was protective. These were the homes of Patriot families, and Loyalist torchings during 1780 had taught everyone what the war now looked lik...

Battle of Hammond's Store: A Bad Twenty Minutes

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What happened in the camp below has been described in sources as a slaughter rather than a battle. The Loyalists, caught flat-footed and on foot, were ridden down by cavalry on broken ground. Patriot accounts speak of roughly 150 Loyalist dead and 40 captured, with no Patriot cas...

Battle of Hammond's Store: William's Fort

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Washington pressed his advantage immediately. He detached Colonel Joseph Hayes's Little River Regiment of militia and Cornet James Simons with ten dragoons to ride on toward William's Fort, a Loyalist post about fifteen miles away under Brigadier General Robert Cuningham. When th...

Battle of Hammond's Store: Thirteen Days to Cowpens

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Cornwallis got word at his headquarters in Winnsboro within days. The hammer he reached for was Banastre Tarleton, the cavalry commander whose name had become a byword for Loyalist brutality after the Waxhaw massacre earlier that year. Cornwallis ordered Tarleton west to find Mor...