[Angela here, and for the next month we are going to have a little fun here every Wednesday as
authors from Barbour's Backcountry Brides collection share a little about their villains! I'll let Shannon McNear take it from here:]
I wrote an entire post on Colonial Quills
about William Cunningham, the infamous Tory leader, and his reign of terror
across the South Carolina backcountry in the fall of 1781. Victorian era
writers styled him “Bloody Bill” Cunningham, but several others earned the same
moniker. Some of them even deserved it. By all accounts, Cunningham certainly
did, when I’ve questioned the same about others.
Cunningham was son, nephew, and cousin to
staunch loyalists at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but being the
strong-minded, contrary sort, he joined the rebel side. (That’s loyalist
terminology for what we call patriots.) When refused a promotion he thought he
deserved and assigned to a location he didn’t care for, Cunningham attempted to
resign from the Continental Army but was court martialed for insubordination
and sentenced to a whipping.
Sent home in disgrace and facing threats on
his life, he fled to St. Augustine, Florida. Two years later, word reached him
that patriot militia had turned his family out of their house, treating his
aged father roughly and whipping his disabled brother so severely that he died.
Furious, Cunningham returned to South Carolina on foot and went straight to the
patriot leader responsible for his family’s suffering, where as the story goes,
he shot the man at dinner, in front of his family.
Afterward, Cunningham’s exploits for the
British soon earned him the rank of major and later, captain, and he’s recorded
as being present at the Battle of King’s Mountain. Notably fearless and an
expert horseman, he was so much admired by his peers that even his enemies
speak of him in tones of awe, decades later.
The truly chilling accounts, however, start
just after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which took place October
1781. A series of raids against the patriot populace quickly became a campaign
of vengeance on those who had committed the gravest offenses against the Tories
or their families. Cunningham’s habit of pinning down his enemies, then
deliberately putting them to death with a single-minded fury that is legendary
even today, puts him head and shoulders above others in infamy. To my
knowledge, no other figure is attributed with such habitual, wholesale
slaughter.
BUY LINKS:
After more than two decades in the South,
Shannon McNear now makes her home on the windy northern plains with her
husband, four of their eight children, two German Shepherds, four cats, several
chickens, and a noisy flock of guinea fowl. She serves in worship and youth
ministry, and has been writing novel-length fiction since age 15. Her first
novella, Defending Truth, from A Pioneer Christmas Collection, was a 2014 RITA® nominee. When
not sewing, researching, or leaking story from her fingertips, she enjoys being
outdoors, basking in the beauty of the Dakota prairies.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
