Jethro Sumner

Jethro Exum Sumner (1733 – c. March 18, 1785) was a North Carolina landowner and businessman, and an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in Virginia, Sumner's military service began in the French and Indian War as a member of the state's Provincial forces. After the conclusion of that conflict, he moved to Bute County, North Carolina, where he acquired a substantial amount of land and operated a tavern. He served as Sheriff of Bute County, but with the coming of the American Revolution, he became a strident Patriot, and was elected to North Carolina's Provincial Congress.

Sumner was named colonel of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line in 1776, and served in both the Southern theater and Philadelphia campaign. He is best known as one of four brigadier generals in the Continental Army from North Carolina, in which capacity he served between 1779 and 1783. As a brigadier general, he served with distinction in the battles of Stono Ferry and Eutaw Springs, but recurring bouts of poor health forced him to oftentimes play an administrative role, or to convalesce in North Carolina. Additionally, after a drastic reduction in the number of North Carolinians in service in the Continental Line, Sumner served as a general in the state's militia for a time, before resigning in protest after the North Carolina Board of War awarded overall command of the state's militia to William Smallwood, a Continental Army general from Maryland. After the end of the war in 1783, Sumner helped to establish the North Carolina Chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati, and became its first president. Sumner died in 1785 with extensive landholdings and a large number of slaves.

Early life
Sumner was born in Nansemond County, Virginia in 1733 to Jethro and Margaret Sullivan Sumner. His family had originally settled in Nansemond County in 1691. Between 1758 and 1761, during the French and Indian War, he was a lieutenant in the Virginia Provincial forces under the command of William Byrd III. On November 25, 1758, Sumner participated in the capture of Fort Duquesne. He was made commander at Fort Bedford in 1760. After his regiment was disbanded in 1761, he returned home to Nansemond County. Between 1761 and 1764, he moved to Bute County in North Carolina, and married Mary Hurst of Granville County, with whom he would have three children.

Sumner owned a substantial amount of property that had been inherited through his wife's family in Bute County, where he also owned and possibly operated a tavern on land that he leased for £36 annually. Like many former Virginians who moved across the border into North Carolina during the colonial era, it is likely that Sumner would have retained close business ties with the province of his birth, and would likely have done business in both Virginia and North Carolina's colonial currency. Between 1772 and 1776, he served as sheriff of Bute County, resigning when he became an officer during the American Revolutionary War. Early on, he was active in pre-Revolution protests and politics, as he believed a separation from Great Britain was inevitable. He was chosen to be a Major in the Halifax District militia, and was instructed to drill his men so that they would be prepared for the expected conflict. Between August and September of 1775, he served as Bute County's representative at the Third North Carolina Provincial Congress. In November 1775, Sumner summoned his militia into active service, and marched north to join with Robert Howe in capturing (and later burning) Norfolk, Virginia.

Southern theater, 1776
On April 4, 1776, early in the American Revolution, the Provincial congress at Halifax chose Sumner to be colonel of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment. He likely participated in the defense of Charleston in 1776, after which he was involved in the aborted plans of Major General Charles Lee to invade British Florida. During the planning stages for the Florida invasion, Sumner became involved in a dispute with Peter Muhlenberg of the 8th Virginia Regiment over which officer was to be given temporary command over the expeditionary force in Lee's absence. This dispute was solved only when a court of inquiry awarded Muhlenberg temporary command, after Sumner failed to appear and plead his case. The plan did not materialize, though, and Sumner left his regiment at Savannah, Georgia in September, 1776 in order to recruit further soldiers from North Carolina.

Philadelphia campaign and Valley Forge
In early 1777, Sumner resumed command of his regiment, and marched north, where he then served under George Washington in the Philadelphia campaign. In the summer of 1777, he remained encamped with the main army at Morristown, New Jersey. He and his men drilled regularly during that time and had their supplies and arms inspected and repaired, although many of the North Carolinians had such poor muskets that a substantial number were discarded. Sumner saw action in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown, and spent the winter of 1777 to 1778 in Valley Forge with Washington's army.

After the death at Germantown of General Francis Nash, then in command of the North Carolina Brigade, the regiments of that unit were left without a commanding general. Generals Alexander McDougall of New York and Lachlan McIntosh of Georgia were appointed in succession to temporary command of the North Carolinians while in winter quarters, although North Carolina, based on the number of soldiers it provided to the Continental Army, was due the appointment of two additional brigadier generals. At Valley Forge, the North Carolina brigade had a total present strength of 1,051, but 353 were ill, and 164 lacked sufficient clothes to be fit for service. Sumner himself contracted an illness in the Spring of 1778, and was forced to return home to recuperate, yet he continued to recruit soldiers in North Carolina during his recovery. Despite his efforts, in February 1778, North Carolina's regiments were consolidated, and Sumner's 3rd Regiment absorbed the 5th North Carolina Regiment.

Promotion and campaigning in the Carolinas
Although North Carolina was owed additional general officer positions, conflicts between members of the North Carolina General Assembly over who was to be considered for the positions, and the apparent disinterest of Thomas Burke, one of North Carolina's leading delegates to the Continental Congress, in any of the suggested candidates stalled the selection of officers to assume those positions. To complicate matters further, Alexander Martin, once a leading candidate for generalship, resigned after charges of cowardice were leveled against him, and Martin was no longer seen as an appropriate candidate. The General Assembly deferred discussion of possible replacement generals for more than a month after convening on November 7, 1777. By December 15, 1777, the North Carolina General Assembly instructed its representatives in the Second Continental Congress to nominate Sumner for promotion to general. It was not until January 9, 1779, though, that the Continental Congress commissioned Sumner as brigadier-general (along with fellow North Carolinian James Hogun), and ordered him to join General Benjamin Lincoln in South Carolina. Sumner received the highest number of congressional votes with thirteen to Hogun's nine, and Thomas Clark's four.

On June 20, 1779, Sumner led a Continental Army brigade at the Battle of Stono Ferry, where he led the assault on the British right flank, and routed the Hessian von Trümbach Regiment. The Continentals and the Patriot militia began to run out of ammunition during the battle, and Lincoln was forced to order a general retreat. At least seven Continental officers under Sumner's command were wounded during the battle, and future United States President Andrew Jackson's brother Hugh was among ten North Carolinians killed. After the engagement at Stono Ferry, Sumner experienced another bout of poor health. He returned to North Carolina to recover, continuing to recruit troops during his convalescence. Despite being away from the rigors of camp life, he was left in an almost worse position, as a monetary crisis at the time rendered many officers in his position nearly unable to support themselves at home. Additionally, he was tasked by Lincoln with finding deserters in North Carolina and pressing them back into service. Sumner was on a leave of absence in September and October 1779 during the disastrous Siege of Savannah.

Militia command
Between the Siege of Charleston in May 1780 and the Battle of Camden in August of that year, the North Carolina Line was virtually annihilated, suffering substantial casualties and the loss of many men as prisoners of war. Rather than rebuild the Line, the North Carolina General Assembly determined to rely on militia for the defense of the state. In September 1780, Sumner temporarily transferred to command of the Hillsborough District militia, under the statewide command of Richard Caswell. As commander of a brigade of North Carolina militia, he was tasked with defending the state from the advances of British General Charles Cornwallis, but Sumner's men were poorly equipped and ill-trained.

In late 1780, the North Carolina Board of War removed Caswell from command of North Carolina's militia, and the General Assembly awarded command of the militia to Continental Army Brigadier General William Smallwood of Maryland, citing the Assembly's lack of confidence in their own state's military commanders. Sumner was further offended when command of the dwindling number of North Carolina continentals in the southern theater was given to Smallwood as well. Despite persistent urging from Alexander Martin and others, Sumner resigned from his militia command in October 1780, and returned to the Continental service. A change in the political landscape would lead to the abolition of the Board of War by the General Assembly soon after Sumner's resignation, and men like Caswell and Martin would later come back to power on the Board's replacement organ, called the "Council Extraordinary".

Return to the Continental Army
Sumner next served under General Nathanael Greene, who arrived in the southern theater in December of 1780. Greene ordered him to recruit further Continental soldiers from North Carolina. On June 2, 1781, Greene ordered Sumner to join him in South Carolina, which he did along with 350 new recruits on August 1, 1781. Despite the passage of a draft law in North Carolina, his command fluctuated from day to day because of both temporary and permanent desertions. These desertions eventually elicited his personal apology to Greene, as Sumner felt unable to control the ebb of soldiers in camp. On September 8, his regiments were positioned on the right flank of the Continental Army at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, where his unit served a vital role in halting several British assaults. Greene commented on the North Carolinians' actions at Eutaw Springs, stating that they "fought with a degree of obstinacy that would do honor to the best of veterans".

Following his success at Eutaw Springs, Sumner was appointed commanding officer of Continental Army forces in North Carolina by Greene in 1781. Greene primarily wanted him to regain control of the military situation in the state, as then-Governor and former Continental Congress delegate Thomas Burke had been captured by David Fanning in a stunning daylight raid on Hillsborough, North Carolina on September 12, 1781. After the Continental Army's victory at the Siege of Yorktown, Sumner, who had once again fallen ill, failed to report to Greene for several months at a time.

Post-war activities, death, and legacy
Following the war, Sumner returned to Bute County, which had been renamed Warren County after Joseph Warren, the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill. It appears that Sumner's wife died at some point between 1781 and 1785. For his service in the Continental Army, he received a land warrant on October 23, 1783, which represented compensation for 84 months of service. Sumner helped create North Carolina's chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati in October 1783, serving as its first president.

Sumner died in Warren County between March 15 and March 19, 1785 at the age of 52. When he died, he owned approximately 20,000 acres of land in North Carolina and Tennessee (much of which in the latter were part of the Continental Army land warrant he received), as well as 35 slaves. He was originally buried approximately eight miles outside of Warrenton, but in 1891, his remains were moved to the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield, where they were interred under a monument intended as part of a "shrine to patriots". In March 2012, a driver struck Sumner's monument after going off-road to avoid hitting a deer, nearly destroying the stone structure and the general's remains. The monument was restored by May 2012, and Sumner was reburied in a public ceremony.

Sumner County, Tennessee, originally in the western portion of North Carolina, was named for him, although Sumner never visited the county.