Location: NC 41/87 (Broad Street) in Elizabethtown
County: Bladen
Original Date Cast: 1939
Elizabethtown, North Carolina, was established in 1773 on a 100-acre plot of land on the Cape Fear River. The town lay halfway between Wilmington and the Highland Scots community of Cross Creek (today’s Fayetteville). Much of the Highland population remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution. Elizabethtown’s importance to the war was closely tied to that of Wilmington, especially in 1781.
Major James Craig of the British 82nd Regiment of Foot led an expedition that captured Wilmington on February 1, 1781. The town served as a supply base for Lord Charles Cornwallis as he pursued General Nathanael Greene across North Carolina. Wilmington also served as a post that North Carolina Loyalists like David Fanning could use as a supply base. The British presence greatly strengthened Loyalist resolve in the region and allowed them to be much more active than they were previously.
Elizabethtown came under the control of Loyalist Colonel John Slingsby and his force of 300 Bladen County Militia in late August. Col. Slingsby was returning from a successful raid on the Cumberland County Courthouse with many prisoners in tow. At the time, the local Bladen County Patriots, commanded by Colonel Thomas Robeson Jr, were hiding in nearby Duplin County. In late August, the Patriot militia, with only sixty to seventy men, decided to attack the Loyalist forces at Elizabethtown.
The Patriots, aware of the weakness in their inferior numbers, developed a plan to confuse their Loyalist opponents based on information provided by Sallie Salter, daughter of the locally influential Salter family. She entered the Loyalist camp on August 26, under the guise of selling eggs. Her goal was to gather information about the Loyalist camp and positions. Patriot Col. Robeson and Lt Col. Thomas Brown devised a plan to trick the Loyalists into thinking the Patriots had been reinforced.
Col. Robeson’s men crossed the Cape Fear River in the middle of the night and quietly took up positions around the Loyalist camp in the early morning hours of August 27. The Patriots attacked quickly from multiple directions. The commanders called out the names of Patriot leaders who were not actually there, ordering attacks from different locations, while the same sixty men attacked again. The Patriots continued the deception, convincing the Loyalists that they were under attack by a much larger force. This caused panic in the Loyalist ranks. After the deaths of their commanders, the Loyalists were forced to retreat, seeking refuge in a deep ravine near the Cape Fear River. The Patriots continued to attack the Loyalists in the ravine until they were obliged to surrender. The Loyalists’ prisoners from Cumberland County were also freed. The ravine where the Loyalists surrendered became known as the Tory Hole.
The Battle of Elizabethtown is considered one of the Cape Fear region’s most important Revolutionary War battles, second only to the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge in Pender County. The Patriot victory at Elizabethtown ended Loyalist control in the area. Following their defeat at Elizabethtown, the local Loyalists were never able to fully regain strength, damaged by the loss of strong commanders and their weapons and supplies. After Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown in October, Major James H. Craig and the Loyalist forces abandoned Wilmington and returned to Charlestown, SC.
Sources:
R. F. Beasley, The Battle of Elizabethtown (1901)
Patrick O’Kelley, Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, 1781 (2005)
Eli W. Caruthers, The Old North State in 1776, vols. I and II (1854 and 1856)
Bladen County Historical Society, Battle of Elizabethtown (1957)
William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006)
Ian Saberton, The Cornwallis Papers, vol VI. (2010).