Dorchester Road, South Carolina

Charlestown Campaign
25 March 1780

General Leslie received information that 600 of Colonel
Washington’s dragoons and Vernier’s Legion had occupied the pass to
Bacon’s Bridge. At daybreak on March 25th Heinrichs and his Jägers
detected a party of cavalry approaching their post on the Dorchester
Road. Heinrichs sent several men to the woods on the right of his
position so that they could fire on the flanks of the cavalrymen. When
the Jägers fired their rifles they only hit one man, a sergeant of the
3rd Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons. The sergeant had rode far in
front of the other cavalry, and had been wounded in the stomach.
Ewald asked the dying sergeant why he acted so rashly. The
sergeant said, “Sir, Colonel Washington promised me that I would become
an officer right away if I could discover whether the jägers were
supported by infantry and had cannon with them, because if not, he would
try to harass the jägers.” The surgeon told the sergeant that his wound
was mortal. The sergeant replied, “Well then, I die for my country and
for its just cause.” Heinrichs gave the sergeant a glass of wine, “which
he drank with relish, and then died.”


Patrick O'Kelley
http://www.2nc.org/
Author of "Nothing but Blood and Slaughter" The Revolutionary War in the
Carolinas
Available at Volume One 1771-1779
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1469.html
Volume Two 1780
http://www.booklocker.com/books/1707.html

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