Abraham Buford (31 July 1749–26 June 1833), Continental army officer, was born in Culpeper County, the son of John Buford and Judith Early Buford. His immigrant ancestors had spelled the surname Beauford, but he always used the shorter spelling. Buford was one of the few Virginians to serve as an officer throughout the Revolutionary War. In 1775 he became the captain of a company of the Culpeper Minutemen and spent much of that winter of 1775–1776 and the ensuing year attached to the 2d Virginia Regiment in the field near Norfolk. On 13 November 1776 Buford was commissioned a major in the 14th Virginia Regiment. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the 5th Virginia Regiment as of 1 April 1777 and to colonel on 15 May 1778. Buford spent the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and fought at Monmouth Court House on 28 June 1778 before being transferred to the 11th Virginia Regiment. The following year he saw action in several skirmishes in northern New Jersey, but in 1780 he returned home to recruit new troops for the defense of the southern states.
Stalemate in the North led the British to try a southern strategy. In 1780 they laid siege to Charleston, South Carolina, and Buford was given command of one of several Virginia units sent to reinforce the city. En route he received word of Charleston's capitulation on 12 May, and he was then ordered to Camden to remove supplies and escort the governor of South Carolina, John Rutledge, to safety in North Carolina. Slowed by heavy wagons and muddy roads, Buford proceeded northward.
The British columns pushed deep into South Carolina and toward North Carolina to reestablish royal control. Their commander, General Charles Cornwallis, second earl Cornwallis, dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and 270 British soldiers and Loyalists of his mixed cavalry-infantry legion in pursuit. Tarleton caught up with Buford, his 380 men, and a detachment of cavalry on 29 May 1780 at Waxhaw, in South Carolina near the North Carolina border. Tarleton called for Buford's surrender, but Buford first delayed responding until Rutledge and the wagons were safe and then refused the demand. Tarleton ordered his heavy dragoons to crash into the center of the American defenses while his infantry and cavalry swept up the flanks. Overwhelmed, Buford offered to surrender and had his men lay down their arms. According to Tarleton's account, his horse was shot from under him, and the British, seeing their commander go down, became inflamed and attacked the unarmed Americans with sabers and bayonets. According to American accounts, Tarleton deliberately ignored Buford's white flag and unleashed his Loyalists to slaughter their fellow Americans at will.
The carnage was horrific. Buford lost 113 killed, 150 wounded, and 53 captured. Warfare in the South was immediately changed by "Bloody Ban" Tarleton's perceived outrages. Whenever loyal and rebel Americans clashed thereafter, the niceties of eighteenth-century warfare were forgotten, but the Waxhaw killings were not. In October 1780 at Kings Mountain, American backwoodsmen shouted, "Give them Buford's play," when Loyalists under British major Patrick Ferguson tried to surrender. The following year men under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee and Colonel Andrew Pickens cried, "Remember Buford," as they butchered Loyalists at Haw River.
Buford was not among the officers captured at Waxhaw and remained in the army as commander of the 3d Virginia Regiment until the end of the war. Entitled to more than 8,000 acres of land on the basis of his wartime service, he had moved to Lincoln County, Kentucky, by January 1783 and on 4 October 1788 married Martha McDowell, daughter of a fellow Virginia Continental army veteran. They moved to Georgetown in the area that in 1792 became Scott County and had five sons and one daughter. Working as a surveyor while speculating in land, Buford plotted out choice tracts in the bluegrass section and eventually held title to more than 50,000 acres. Evincing a longtime interest in racehorses, he was one of several Kentuckians who began to import prime racing stock from Virginia shortly after the turn of the century. Abraham Buford died at his home in Georgetown on 26 June 1833 during a cholera epidemic.
Sources Consulted:
Marcus Bainbridge Buford et al., History and Genealogy of the Buford Family in America (1924), 36–38, 134–141; J. Tracy Power, "'The Virtue of Humanity Was Totally Forgot': Buford's Massacre, May 29, 1780," South Carolina Historical Magazine 93 (1992): 5–14; Banastre Tarleton, A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, in the Southern Provinces of North America (1787), 27–31, 77–84; Buford letters in Papers of the Continental Congress, Record Group 360, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and George Washington Papers, Library of Congress, both Washington, D.C.; MS report to General Assembly, 2 June 1780, Emmet Collection, New York Public Library; Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, Record Group 15, NARA (variant death date of 29 June 1833 in A. D. Hiller to Mrs. Byron Wilson, 6 Dec. 1938); Thomas Sumter Papers, in Lyman C. Draper Papers, MSS 12VV251–269, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison; John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War for Independence (1980), 202; death date in notice in Lexington Observer and Reporter, 4 July 1833.