Now that the South Carolina legislature had officially taken that matter under consideration, Abraham might have felt obliged to thank the man who had set him on the path to freedom.

Furthermore, it was the fort’s commander, Captain Paul Demeré, who propelled the enslaved Abraham into action by promising to secure his manumission. The surviving documents relating to his adventures in 1760 reveal nothing of Abraham’s internal sentiments, but his willingness to make repeated, dangerous journeys to Fort Loudoun suggest that he had some sort of personal attachment to the place or its people. As I mentioned in an earlier episode of this story, it’s possible that Abraham was friends with some of the people at Fort Loudoun, and was perhaps even more intimately acquainted with a special someone in that vicinity. Abraham was in a rush to get to that distant fort as quickly as possible, to deliver good news to the garrison he had not seen since he left them in mid-May to carry details of their miserable situation back to Charleston. In contrast to the slow-moving army, Abraham and other express riders routinely made the 300-mile journey between Charleston and Fort Prince George in six or seven days, and the additional 150 miles over the mountains to Fort Loudoun in a further five to seven days, depending on the weather. Their transport vessels weighed anchor from the Cooper River on August 16th, and on the 20th set sail for New York. Colonel Montgomery and his suite arrived in Charleston six weeks later, on August 10th, and the following day his troops arrived at a camp site near what is now the old Navy Base in North Charleston. The main body of his troops, numbering about 1,500 men, marched eastward from Fort Prince George on July 4th. Having been humiliated by the Cherokee at the battle of Etchoé Pass on June 27th, Montgomery abandoned his westward campaign against the Indians and turned back towards the coast. Matthews, he passed the long column of slow-moving, war-weary troops under the command of Colonel Archibald Montgomery. Somewhere in the eastern part of what is now Orangeburg County, between Holly Hill and St. The message of hope entrusted to Abraham that August was the only relief available.Īs Abraham galloped westward along the path leading between Charleston and the backcountry settlements, he followed a path that is roughly equivalent to the present U.S.

Their slow, overly-cautious progress reflected a certain reluctance to get involved, and their mission ultimately proved to be of little consequence to the ensuing chain of events. At that moment, however, the Virginians marching under the command of Colonel William Byrd were still several weeks distant from Fort Loudoun.

His mission was simple and direct: he was to reach Fort Loudoun, some 450 miles to the northwest, and inform the starving, beleaguered garrison that a regiment of Virginia soldiers was in motion to rescue them. Lieutenant Governor William Bull entrusted a packet of official dispatches to the formerly-enslaved express rider, Abraham, who departed Charleston early on the morning of August 2nd. While assisting his comrades at Fort Prince George, Abraham dodged Cherokee bullets and flying tomahawks, and then rode like the wind through a gauntlet of Indian warriors to carry news of frontier violence to the provincial government back in Charleston.īy the end of July 1760, the government of South Carolina had not received any intelligence from, or been able to deliver any news to Fort Loudoun, in what is now eastern Tennessee, for more than six weeks.

In the climax of his dramatic story, Abraham’s efforts to bring hope to the garrison at Fort Loudoun ended in tragedy and despair.

Ipanic escape charlestown