The American volley, at 10 yards’ distance, was too little, too late. The British attack devastated the American line. The Americans, realizing the battle was over, surrendered. The American accounts asserted a white flag was tendered to the British, which was refused rudely. Flag or no, in the parlance of the time, the Americans begged for “quarter,” meaning protection, but to no avail. Buford was blunt. He lost two-thirds of his men killed or wounded, “many of which were killed after they had lain down their arms.”

There is no legal definition of a massacre. Webster’s uses terms like “mericless” and “indiscriminate” killing, and these words convey the sense of the matter. In this vein, Tarleton left astounding casualty figures. He insisted his Legion killed 100 Americans and captured 200 more. Charles Stedman amplified the casualty numbers, adding that of the captured, 150 men were badly wounded, too much so to move, an inconvenient fact Tarleton overlooked. Buford commanded no more than 400 men. Some were sent north with the artillery and baggage. Almost all the rest were killed or badly wounded, many of the latter too badly wounded to move.The devastation on the American side spoke volumes. The British casualties were minimal, five killed and 12 wounded.

The casualty figures left little doubt there was a massacre. There were few survivors, even fewer unwounded ones. There were many accounts that substantiated the idea of a massacre. Writing in the early nineteenth century, Alexander Garden quoted an American officer who visited the Waxhaws wounded, who described a scene from Hieronymus Bosch, a hellscape of savagery where each man sustained an average of sixteen wounds. An officer of the British Legion, writing in a London magazine shortly after the event, waxed exultant: “in three minutes after the attack was begun, there was not a rebel on the field that was not levelled with the ground.” Stedman, appalled, lamented that at the Waxhaws, “the virtue of humanity was totally forgot.”

At this point in the narrative, Tarleton’s account comes into focus. Tarleton wrote his memoirs fully aware of the accusations against him. His book was his bast case, his chance at vindication. He asserted that his horse was shot from under him, and his men feared he had been killed. He attributed the savagery of the attack to the idea that the cavalry believed their commander had been killed. The prospect of losing Tarleton “stimulated the soldiers to a vindictive asperity not easily restrained.” Tarleton, not squeamish, never backed away from the idea of a bloody disaster on the field. After his horse was shot, he was out of action until remounted, and in this hiatus, “slaughter was commenced.”The unavoidable fact was that he never denied the massacre, but rather, tried to justify it. He was trying to separate the matter into two questions. Yes, Americans were killed indiscriminately, but no, this fell short of an atrocity. He blamed Buford’s orders, and insisted his men were simply overeager, perhaps misguided, but not war criminals.

The best response to Tarleton lay in the reports of the wounded, found in their pension applications after the war. Rather than wade through the thousands of pages of applications, I recommend the excellent summary in Leon Harris’s article in the Journal of the Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution, entitled “Massacre at Waxhaws: The Evidence From Wounds.” Harris found that Waxhaws was the only battle in the southern war where soldiers received sword wounds to hands and arms in numbers exceeding the norm. The conclusion: Tarleton’s cavalry attacked Buford’s men after the latter had grounded their weapons, just as Buford had stated. Harris also determined that Waxhaws was the only battle where soldiers received wounds from both swords and bayonets in large numbers. On all the other battlefields, soldiers received wounds from one or the other, not both. This meant that Tarleton’s cavalry had attacked the Americans first, followed by an attack on them by his infantry.

Much of the debate on the Waxhaws turns on assigning blame. Realistically, there seems little room to doubt the fact of the massacre, just as there is little room to doubt the fact of the atrocity. The idea of blame has loomed large. The Waxhaws debate has divided participants into two irreconcilable camps, a black-or-white absolutism that endorses or condemns Tarleton or Buford, but allows no middle ground between the two.

There are many problems with this rigid all-or-nothing resolution. Life rarely appears so orderly. The events at the Waxhaws were actually more nuanced. A huge road block to accepting all of Tarleton, or all of Buford, was the fact that to believe all of one is to brand the other a liar. For example, Buford was crystal clear that his men were slaughtered after surrendering. One cannot accept Tarleton’s account without saying Buford lied. While liars exist and lies happen, these are much rarer than simple shadings of the truth. It is much more likely that Buford, under fire after the battle for taking a huge loss, shaded his report, just as it is more likely that Tarleton, severely criticized for his part in a notorious war crime, omitted inconvenient details from his memoir.

To find a compromise between the two extremes, we start with Henry Bowyer. Bowyer served as adjutant to Buford during the battle. He left an account of the battle at odds with the black-or-white outcomes in the others. According to Bowyer, Buford sent him forward under a flag to negotiate surrender terms. As he arrived, Tarleton’s horse was shot from under him. Enraged and frustrated, Tarleton ordered his men to cut Bowyer down. Bowyer defended himself with his sword, successfully. Two American officers were watching his progress, and sensing he was in desperate trouble, ordered their men to fire on the dragoons attacking Bowyer. Bowyer was able to escape. He noted, though, that at this point, the British, outraged at the American volleys after sending a flag forward, were driven to extreme violence and retribution.  

Bowyer’s story did not suit either side in the debate. The British were unwilling to admit that Americans were killed after a flag went up. Tarleton, as one obvious example, mentioned nothing about a flag in his memoir. At the same time, the Americans were displeased to read that two platoons of infantry fired on the British, literally in the shadow of the flag to Tarleton.

Legions of historians have disregarded Bowyer’s statement. Inconvenient to both sides, it was readily ignored in the push to exonerate one side at the expense of the other. It was entirely inconsistent with all the other memoirs, but ultimately, its inconsistency proved its value. A body of information from other eyewitnesses provided confirmation for the idea of a middle ground, a nuanced view where no one lied and both sides had some responsibility for what happened.

The Moravian Church in North Carolina kept detailed records of life in the communities around Salem, North Carolina. The Moravian Records noted that on 5 June 1780, an officer and twelve men entered Salem, telling of an American defeat below Charlotte. These men moved on, but more came in with stories of a big loss with large numbers of wounded men. On 8 June, three men arrived without food or the means to acquire it. A kind Moravian gave them bread, and they told him their story. They were in a “bloody action” in South Carolina. The fighting progressed rapidly, and “before they were aware of it,” they were surrounded. Realizing they were beaten, they laid down thier arms. At this point, “the English commander rode up,” and one man grabbed his weapon and shot at him. This was the heart of it: “then the massacre began.”

Bowyer’s account shared with the story told by the three soldiers the problem of too many hands. Both went through many people before finding refuge in a final, written form. The accounts also shared the problem of the fog of war. The three soldiers, in particular, had an unknown view of the overall battle. Even so, they shared the essential commonality that the Americans violated the surrender, and the British, enraged, responded with an atrocity. This version explains Buford’s adamant position as well as Tarleton’s tepid defense. Buford needed to blame the entire epic disaster on an unscrupulous enemy. Partial fault was no enough; only a purely evil Tarleton could provide sufficient exoneration. Tarleton, facing accusations at home as well as from America, could not afford a whiff of criminality. He needed people to believe Buford was a raging incompetent, the Legion soldiers well-intentioned but overenthusiastic.

Things rarely arrive so neatly. Most events lie in shades of gray, and a rigid black-or-white resolution is a unicorn in a world of horses. The story told by Bowyer and the three soldiers finally presents a way to reconcile the many other versions of the battle. In a disaster the size of the Waxhaws, there was plenty of blame to go around. It was overly simplistic to assign all of it to one side or the other.

Most importantly, no one lied. Buford was correct in stating his men were killed after grounding their weapons. Tarleton was correct in asserting Buford made terrible tactical decisions, just as he was correct that his men became enraged just as his horse was shot from under him. Both commanders, under fire after the fact, shaded their reporting to emphasize favorable facts and obscure awkward ones. This development, hardly surprising, restores both commanders to more human dimensions.