Archive. 12 Autograph Documents from British Military Leaders in the American Revolutionary War, including Two Letters to Future Prime Minister Palmerston and Two Encrypted Letters

Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, 1819. Single sheet and folio. Sizes variable: (7 3/4 x 7 to 12 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches). 12 autograph documents and 1 later typescript copy. 8 of the documents are folio letters, 1 is a single sheet letter, 1 is a bi-fold letter, and 2 are British Army Returns of Officers ledgers. 2 of the letters include Common cipher encryption. A trove of manuscript American Revolutionary War documents from British military commanders in the Southern Theater, centering on Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Stewart and including correspondence with future Prime Minister Palmerston, future Commander-in-Chief of Ireland Charles Cornwallis, future MP (truncated) Nisbet Balfour, and future Governor-General of India Francis Rawdon. Two letters between Rawdon and Balfour include cipher encryption.

"I have the honor to inform your lordship that yesterday morning about 9 oclock I was attacked by the rebell General Green at this place with all the force he could collect in this province and North Carolina, after an obstinate engagement, and notwithstanding his being above four times my number, I finally defeated him, taking from him two six pounders, drove him from the field of battle as far as I with prudence could pursue having killed him near three hundred men upon the field and taken fifty four prisoners [.] vast numbers [.] were wounded, but were carried of[f] during the action by their mounted militia [.] Had I had cavalry to have propeled of my victory not a man of their army would have escaped but I had only fifty mounted infantry who were opposed by the corps of Washington." - Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart to General Cornwallis, Eutaw Springs, 9 September 1781 This rich collection of British military manuscript letters from the American Revolutionary War puts one in the boots of a soon-to-be defeated occupying force, running a military campaign thousands of miles from home, against an insurgent population fighting for its freedom. The remarkable mix of personalities in the correspondence would go on to major posts in the British Empire, including two different Governor-Generals of India, a Prime Minister, a Commander-in-Chief of Ireland, and multiple MPs. But the letters, which mostly concern then Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Stewart and his family, also demonstrate the inglorious nature of war: several letters from Stewart's widow and children implore then-War Secretary Palmerston to pay out Stewart's pension to them so that they may live. This archive is indispenable to understanding the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina, and the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. Eutaw Springs was the last major military engagement of the war in the Carolinas, and one of the last in the Southern Theater: General Cornwallis would just a month later surrender at Yorktown, signaling the end of major hostilities. Though the British claimed victory at Eutaw Springs, historians dispute it, and in either event, it was a strategic loss, as the British desire to pacify the South with Loyalist support was an evident pipe dream. Documents in the archive: Two (2) letters from Lord Francis Rawdon to General Nisbet Balfour dated June 24 and June 27 of 1781, each with a numerically encrypted section of text referred to as "Common Cipher" by historians, the first written at Hendricks Ford on the Enoree River in South Carolina. Two (2) Returns of Officers, which were ledgers counting infantry, one before and one after the "Action at Eutaws" (Eutaw Springs) on September 8th, 1781. Signed by M[ichael] Coxon, Major of Bridgade under Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Stewart. Two (2) pieces of correspondence from Stewart to General Charles Cornwallis: A manuscript copy of a "publick letter" pp.8 across two folded folios, and a rough draft of the same letter, both dated September 9th, 1781, and concerning the battle at Eutaw Springs the previous day, for which the Returns of Officers documents correspond. Four (4) pieces of correspondence from Stewart's family: 1. One is a letter from Stewart's daughter Grace to the War Secretary and future Prime Minister Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, thanking him for securing a pension for her and her sister, which goes on to implore him to continue his beneficence, and summarizes her father's military exploits. The earliest this letter could have been written is 1809, as that is when Palmerston ascended to War Secretary, a posting he continued until 1827. 2. A letter dated March 1773 from a "G. Maxwell" to "My Dear Sister" who is Stewart's wife. In this letter Maxwell, who appears to be Mrs. Stewart's sister, discusses plans to give up her children to Mrs. Stewart's care due to ailing health, and offers advice on how they should be educated. 3. A letter from Stewart's wife, written 25 years after Stewart's death, likely also to future Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston, ("your lordship are too young to have known") discussing her husband's military career ("he was 36 years in the army") and her family's financial hardship ("of course he died in debt, and I found myself left with a family with little to support them") pleading with him for continued assistance. 4. A manuscript copy of a paragraph from a letter sent to Mrs. Stewart, which she copied out in her own hand, about the sender's mother having been invited to celebrate with the Prince. The key to the cipher used in the two letters from Rawdon to Balfour is explained by the historian Ian Saberton: "As far as the enciphering device was concerned, it had two concentric rings, the outer of which consisted of the letters of the alphabet in their normal order, and the inner a series of numbers in a permanently fixed order. To form the cipher the numbers in the inner ring were aligned with the letters in the outer, and the key to the cipher was the number aligned with the letter A, a number which always appeared first in an enciphered document."

Saberton, "Decoding British Ciphers Used in the South, 1780-81," Journal of the American Revolution, June 6, 2019. (Inventory #: 41049)