In the sweltering heat of July 1775, Major James Mayson led a small band of South Carolina patriots on a mission that would mark one of the first overt acts of rebellion against British authority in the Southern colonies. Their target wasFort Charlotte, a strategic outpost guarding river traffic on the Savannah River, approximately fifty miles west of the frontier settlement of Ninety-Six. The bloodless surrender of British Captain George Whitefield and the subsequentseizure of valuable military supplies would set in motion a chain of events that would plunge the South Carolina backcountry into civil war.