Thomas Sumter (14 August 1734 – 1 June 1832) was a United States senator from South Carolina from 15 December 1801 to 6 December 1810, succeeding Charles Pinckney and preceding John Taylor. Sumter was a Brigadier-General in the South Carolina state militia during the American Revolutionary War, leading a guerrilla campaign against Great Britain during the war.
Biography[]
Thomas Sumter was born on 14 August 1734 in Hanover County, Virginia, and he joined the militia after having a rudimentary education. Sumter fought in the Anglo-Cherokee War, and he swam nearly half a mile in icy water to retrieve a canoe for the expeditionary force. In February 1776, he became a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 2nd South Carolina Regiment during the American Revolutionary War, fighting in several battles early in the war to prevent an invasion of the state of Georgia by Great Britain. His greatest achievement during the war was his partisan campaign waged against the British Army, during which he forced Charles Cornwallis to withdraw from North Carolina to Virginia. Sumter was nicknamed the "Carolina Gamecock" after the Battle of Blackstock's Farm by Banastre Tarleton, and Cornwallis said that he was his "greatest plague". Sumter's campaign to recover the south alongside Andrew Pickens and Francis Marion led to the defeat of the British forces in the southern theatre, and he became a senator and a member of the US House of Representatives after the war. Sumter retired to his estate of South Mount and died in 1832 at the age of 97.