While the siege of Ninety-Six was in progress, partisan corps were elsewhere successful. Lee captured Fort Galphin, twelve miles below Augusta, and then sent an officer to the latter post to demand its surrender from Brown. The summons was disregarded, and Lee, Pickens, and Clarke, commenced a siege. It lasted several days, and on the fifth of June, the fort and its dependencies at Augusta were surrendered to the republicans. Lee and Pickens then joined Greene at Ninety-Six, and with him retreated beyond the Saluda.
And now Greene and Rawdon changed their relative positions, the former becoming the pursuer of the latter, in his march toward Orangeburg. Finding Rawdon strongly entrenched there, Greene deemed it prudent not to attack him; and the sickly season approaching, he crossed the Congaree with his little army, and encamped upon the High Hills of Santee, below Camden, where pure air and water might be found in abundance.
Considering the post at Ninety-Six quite untenable, Rawdon ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Cruger to abandon it and join him at Orangeburg. There Rawdon was met by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart, who had come up from Charleston with an Irish regiment. As Greene had gone into summer-quarters apparently, and the American partisans were just then quiet, his lordship left all his forces in charge of Stewart, went down to Charleston, and embarked for Europe to seek the restoration of his health.
Soon after encamping on the High Hills of Santee, Greene detached Sumter with about a thousand light troops to scour the lower country and beat up the British posts in the vicinity of Charleston. His assistants were those bold partisans, Lee, Marion, Horry, the Hamptons, and other brave republican leaders, with troops accustomed to the swamps and sandy lowlands. These performed excellent service in preparing the way for the expulsion of the enemy from the interior of South Carolina.
Early in August Greene was reinforced by North Carolina troops, under General Sumner; and toward the close of the month, he broke up his encampment, crossed the Wateree, and marched upon Orangeburg. Stewart, who had been joined by Cruger, immediately retreated to Eutaw Springs, near the southwest bank of the Santee, and there encamped. Greene followed, and on the morning of the eighth of September, a very severe battle commenced. The British were finally expelled from the camp, leaving their tents standing, and almost everything but their arms behind them.