Exhibits

Buford's Defeat

With the fall of Charles Town May 12, 1780, there was only one organized military force left in South Carolina. A detachment of Virginia Continentals under the command of Colonel Abram Buford had been on their way south to assist in the relief of Charles Town. Learning of the surrender, Buford was retreating to American headquarters in Salisbury, North Carolina. Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, commanding the British Legion, was dispatched to destroy them.

At 3 o'clock on a Monday afternoon, the Americans were overtaken. The most notorious battle of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution was about to begin. In minutes, the majority of Buford's men would be either dead or so badly wounded that they would not survive.

With the destruction of Buford's regiment, the British believed that South Carolina was theirs. However, the story of the slaughter of Buford's men galvanized American resistance in the Carolinas. "Tarleton's Quarter" became a proverb for wholesale cruelty -- and a rallying cry for the patriots.

In 1860, the citizens of Lancaster District erected a monument to the gallant Virginians. The final lines of the inscription on the monument quote Charles Stedman, Commissary General under Cornwallis. He remarked that, on this occasion,