ETV Endowment Southern Campaign, Day 2: On Day 2 of the Southern Campaign tour, we visited the "star fort" up in Ninety-Six, South Carolina. There were two battles fought at the fort: one in 1775, and again in 1781, after the surrender of British General Cornwallis at Yorktown. The latter battle was the bigger engagement. After Cornwallis' surrender, Patriot General Nathaniel Greene needed to sweep the backcountry areas in the South, since there were quite a few British occupied forts left in the area. The Ninety-Six star fort was one of these fortifications. The patriots dug trenches in order to get closer to the star fort, and a Polish-Lithuanian engineer, Colonel Thaddeus Kosciusko, attempted to dig a tunnel under the fort, to blow it up from underground with gunpowder. The tunnel almost got to the fort, but when Gen. Greene heard news of the imminent arrival of British reinforcements, the patriots retreated. The tourists saw a movie about the battle in the visitors center, and then, with tour guides Dr. Walter Edgar, and John Slaughter, of the National Park Service, we toured the battlefield. The weather fared much better this time around; raining only a little bit in the morning, but then cleared up in the afternoon. Up next: Day 3 - Historic Brattonsville and King's Mountain
Standards
- 8.2.CO Compare the motives and demographics of loyalists and patriots within South Carolina and the colonies.
- This indicator was developed to encourage inquiry into the economic, political, and social motivations of the patriots and the loyalists in the era of the American Revolution.
- 8.2.CE Explain the economic, political, and social factors surrounding the American Revolution.
- This indicator was developed to encourage inquiry into how the colonies began to unify to create a distinctive American identity over the course of events of the American Revolution.
