Qualla: Siege of Savage's Old Fields

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It started over a wagonload of gunpowder bound for the Cherokee. In November 1775, Loyalists intercepted the shipment, and the Patriot Council of Safety responded by dispatching Major Andrew Williamson with orders to recover it. What he found at the backcountry crossroads of Ninety Six was a problem the war had not yet learned how to fix: neighbors with rifles, on opposing sides, unwilling to fire and unwilling to leave. The siege of Savage's Old Fields became South Carolina's first major engagement of the American Revolution, and almost nothing about it went the way anyone planned.

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: The Backcountry Was Not Boston

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When fighting broke out in Massachusetts in April 1775, the Province of South Carolina did not move as a unit. The Charleston coast tended toward the Patriot cause; the upcountry, with its German and Scots-Irish settlers, leaned heavily Loyalist under the influence of Thomas Flet...

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: Five Hundred Against Nineteen Hundred

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Williamson reached the area with roughly 500 men and threw up a hasty stockade in the fields belonging to John Savage, near the old trading town of Ninety Six. The Loyalists, led by Major Joseph Robinson and Captain Patrick Cuningham, had nearly four times that number. By any mil...

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: The Truce No One Could Explain

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On November 21, the Patriots held a council of war and decided to break out that night. They were preparing the sortie at sunset when a Loyalist appeared at the stockade carrying a parley flag. The next morning, terms emerged that bordered on absurd given the imbalance of forces:...

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: Snow Closed the Argument

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Richardson was. By the end of November he had over 4,000 men under arms, and his Snow Campaign rolled through the backcountry arresting or dispersing the Loyalist leadership Williamson had just made peace with. The campaign ended on December 22 when fifteen inches of snow buried ...

Siege of Savage's Old Fields: What the Fields Remember

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Savage's Old Fields itself is quiet farmland now, just south of present-day Ninety Six, the town that took its name from a long-disputed colonial estimate of the distance to the Cherokee village of Keowee. The 1781 siege site is preserved as Ninety Six National Historic Site, wit...