Huck ' s Defeat Huck ' s Defeat or the Battle of Williamson ' s Plantation was an engagement of the American Revolutionary War that occurred in present York County , South Carolina on July 12 , 1780 , and was one of the first battles of the southern campaign to be won by Patriot militia . Background . In May 1780 , the British captured the only significant American army in the South at Charleston , South Carolina and quickly occupied four vital courthouse towns : Camden , Cheraw , Georgetown , and Ninety Six . Believing the Whigs had been crushed in South Carolina , Sir Henry Clinton abrogated the terms of surrender , which had allowed parolees to remain neutral for the remainder of the war . Under terms of the proclamation of June 3 , 1780 , Patriots or Whigs ( as they were commonly known ) were compelled to either take an oath of loyalty to the king or be regarded as " rebels and enemies of their country . " Clinton then departed for New York , leaving Lieutenant General Charles , Earl Cornwallis in command of the British army in the South . In the absence of civil government in South Carolina ( Governor John Rutledge had fled to North Carolina when Charleston fell ) , backcountry Whigs selected their own leaders to continue the fight against the " senseless cruelty of the Tory militia " and the " cruel and contemptuous treatment of the populace " by British Legion commander Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton . Preliminaries . Around the first of June 1780 , the British army established a fortified outpost at Rocky Mount on the upper Catawba River , near the North Carolina border , and placed a garrison there under Lieutenant Colonel George Turnbull , a career British officer who commanded a British Provincial regiment called the New York Volunteers . In early July , Turnbull ordered Christian Huck , a Philadelphia lawyer and a captain in Tarleton ' s British Legion , to find the rebel leaders and persuade other area residents to swear allegiance to the king . A native of Germany , Huck was one of many Pennsylvania Loyalists whose property was confiscated after the British evacuated Philadelphia . He was then banished from the state and joined the British army at New York . Huck was a remarkably poor choice for this assignment because he held a great deal of bitterness toward the Whigs in general , and the Scotch - Irish Presbyterians in particular . During an earlier incursion into what was then called the Upper District between the Broad and Catawba Rivers ( modern Chester County , South Carolina ) , his troops had murdered an unarmed boy , reportedly while he was reading a Bible , and burnt the home and library of Rev . John Simpson , a Whig leader and influential Presbyterian minister . A week later , Huck and his men invaded the New Acquisition District ( roughly modern York County , South Carolina ) , and destroyed the ironworks of William Hill , another influential Whig . Residents who had only wanted to be left alone had then joined the Patriots . After destroying Hill ' s Ironworks and putting the rebel garrison there to flight , Huck convened a compulsory meeting of the remaining male residents of the New Acquisition District ( mostly men too old to fight ) , and proclaimed that " God almighty had become a rebel , but if there were twenty gods on that side , they would all be conquered . " Huck then stated that " even if the rebels were as thick as trees , and Jesus Christ would come down and lead them , he would still defeat them , " following which he and his troopers confiscated all the men ' s horses . Actions like these quickly earned Huck the nickname " the swearing captain " and further angered the Presbyterian inhabitants of the backcountry . After witnessing Huck ' s tirade , one resident , Daniel Collins , told his wife , " I have come home determined to take my gun and when I lay it down , I lay down my life with it . " Huck ' s style in the Catawba River Valley was to rough - up backcountry women , confiscate food and horses , and generally threaten prison and death to any who dared resist the British . This simply encouraged more men to join the rebels , who were organizing a militia brigade under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter . On July 11 , 1780 , Huck raided the home of the partisan leader Captain John McClure on Fishing Creek in present - day Chester County , caught his brother and brother - in - law with newly made bullets , and sentenced them to hang as traitors at sunrise the next day . Huck ' s detachment , consisting of about 35 British Legion dragoon s , 20 New York Volunteers , and 60 Loyalist militia , then advanced once more into the New Acquisition and arrived at the plantation of another Whig militia leader , Colonel William Bratton , later that evening . Shortly thereafter , one of Huck ' s soldiers put a reaping hook to the neck of Col . Bratton ' s wife , Martha , in an unsuccessful attempt to discover Bratton ' s whereabouts . Huck ' s second - in - command , Lieutenant William Adamson of the New York Volunteers , intervened and disciplined the offending Loyalist soldier . Huck next arrested three elderly neighbors of the Brattons , including Col . Bratton ' s older brother Robert , and told them they too would be executed the next day . Huck then proceeded a quarter of a mile southeast of Bratton ' s plantation to the neighboring house of an elderly Whig named James Williamson , where he and his approximately 115 men made camp for the night . The five prisoners were secured in a corncrib to await execution . Battle . With intelligence provided by John McClure ' s younger sister , Mary , and a Bratton slave named Watt , the loosely organized Patriot forces swarmed after Huck . About 150 arrived in the vicinity of Williamson ' s plantation that night , commanded by experienced militia officers . After a brief reconnaissance and some discussion , they agreed to attack Huck from three directions simultaneously . Huck ' s security was extremely lax . Shortly after sunrise , at least two of the Patriot groups managed to attack simultaneously . The British and Loyalist troops were caught completely by surprise ; many were still asleep . The partisans rested their rifles on a split rail fence , from which " they took unerring and deadly aim " at their opponents as they emerged . Huck mounted a horse to rally his troops and was shot in the head by John Carroll , who had loaded two balls in his rifle . Some of the Loyalists surrendered while others fled , hotly pursued by Whigs seeking vengeance . Tory losses were very high . Tarleton later reported that only twenty - four men escaped . Patriot losses were one killed and one wounded ; the five prisoners were also released from the corncrib unharmed . Importance . Although the numbers engaged were small , the importance of the skirmish was immediately clear . As South Carolina historian Walter Edgar has written , " The entire backcountry seemed to take heart . Frontier militia had defeated soldiers of the feared British Legion . " Volunteers streamed in to join the partisan militia brigade of General Thomas Sumter . Edgar has called Huck ' s Defeat " a major turning point in the American Revolution in South Carolina . " It was the first of more than thirty - five important battles in South Carolina in late 1780 and early 1781 , all but five of which were partisan victories . This chain of successes was essential to the major Patriot victories at King ' s Mountain and Cowpens .