Nisbet Balfour

Essential Facts

• Nisbet Balfour was born in 1743 and died in 1832.
• He served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775—1783).
• Balfour was the Commandant of Charleston, South Carolina, after August 1780.
• He ordered the execution of Isaac Hayne, an American who violated his parole following the Siege of Charleston.

Significance

Nisbet Balfour is important to American History for the role he played in the American Revolutionary War. Although he was praised by his commanding officers, he was vilified by Americans, particularly those who lived in Charleston during his time as commandant.

History

Early Life

• Nisbet Balfour was born in 1743 at Dunbog in County Fife, Scotland.
• He was the third of five sons of John Balfour, the Laird of Dunbog, and the third Lord Balfour.
• All five of Lord Balfour’s sons joined the British Army.

Early Military Career

• Balfour became an ensign in the Fourth Regiment, known as “The King’s Own Foot,” on January 27, 1761.
• By 1770, he had risen to the rank of Captain.

In Marshfield, Massachusetts, Loyalist Timothy Ruggles helped organize a “Loyal Association.” After these Loyalists felt threatened by the Patriots living in Plymouth, they asked General Thomas Gage for protection. Gage responded by sending Balfour and a contingent of troops to occupy the town. They remained in Marshfield until April 19, 1775.

• Despite his rank, he had no combat experience when the American Revolutionary War started on April 19, 1775, with the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Boston, New York, and London

• Balfour was one of the British officers wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775).
• He recovered and fought in the New York Campaign during the summer and fall of 1776 and saw action in the Battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776).
• Afterward, he was sent to London with General William Howe’s reports on the conduct of the war.
• While there, Balfour expressed his concerns about the war’s progress, but he was ignored. However, he was promoted to the rank of Major.
• Balfour was ordered to return to New York and encourage the leaders of the British Army to be more aggressive in their pursuit of the war.

Philadelphia

• He participated in the Philadelphia Campaign (1777–1778), culminating in the British capture of Philadelphia. This was offset by the British Surrender at Saratoga (October 17, 1777), which helped convince France to ally with the United States.
• In 1778, Balfour became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Twenty-Third Regiment.
• By October 1778, he was more optimistic about the course of the war, believing the arrival of reinforcements could secure victory.
• He went on sick leave at the end of 1778 but returned in time for the British Expedition against Charleston in 1780, which led to the Siege of Charleston (1780).

Prominence in the Southern Campaign

• Balfour gained prominence in the Southern Theater of the war.
• He commanded the British outpost at Ninety-Six, South Carolina, with three battalions of Royal Provincials and light infantry.
• Balfour supported Patrick Ferguson by recruiting 4,000 Loyalist militia.
• He understood the political nature of the war and saw the need to balance military control with conciliation.
• Like General Charles Cornwallis, Balfour criticized the conduct of some Loyalist troops.
• In August 1780, Cornwallis sent him to command Charleston, replacing Francis Rawdon.
• In the summer of 1781, he suppressed a rebellion behind Rawdon’s lines.
• He led the Court of Inquiry that sentenced American officer Isaac Hayne to death for violating his parole after being released in 1780.

Criticism

American leaders were critical of Nisbet’s conduct in Charleston, which included carrying out the execution of Hayne and sending American prisoners-of-war to prison ships. His actions in Charleston gave him a reputation for cruelty. In American circles, he was nearly as despised as Banastre Tarleton.

William Moultrie called him a “…proud, haughty Scot” who “carried his authority with a very high hand. His tyrannical, insolent disposition treated the people as the most abject slaves.”

In 1785, David Ramsay of Charleston published The History of the Revolution of South-Carolina, from a British Province to an Independent State, and described his opinion of Balfour’s character:

“Several commandants were successively appointed to superintend the affairs of the town. Among these, lieutenant-colonel Nisbet Balfour had the greatest share of administration. 

This gentleman, having raised himself in the army by his obsequious devotedness to the humours and pleasure of sir William How, displayed, in the exercise of his new office, all the frivolous self-importantce, and all the digusting insolence, which are natural to little minds when puffed up by sudden elevation, and employed in functions to which their abilities are not equal. 

By the subversion of every trace of the popular government, without any proper civil establishment in its place, he, with a few coadjustors, assumed and exercised legislative, judicial and executive powers over citizens in the same manner as over the common soldiery under their command. 

A series of proclamations was issued by his authority, which militated as well against the British constitution, as those of justice, equality and humanity. For slight offences, and on partial and insufficient information, citizens were confined by his orders, and that often without any trial.”

Post-War Career and Death

• After the war, Balfour was promoted to the rank of Colonel.
• He became an aide-de-camp to King George III.
• Balfour served as a commissioner for Loyalist compensation claims.
• In 1790, he was elected as a member of Parliament for Wigton Burghs, holding the seat until 1796.
• From 1797 to 1802, Balfour represented Arundel in Sussex.
• He was a supporter of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger.
• Balfour was promoted to Major General in February 1793 and served in Flanders in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802).
• He was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1798 and General in 1803.
• Balfour died on October 10, 1823.

Biography

AHC Note — This biography of Nisbet Balfour is from the Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. III, edited by Leslie Stephen and published in 1885. Minor text corrections have been made.

BALFOUR, NISBET(1743-1823), a most distinguished officer under Lord Cornwallis in the American war of independence, was not (as Draper’s American Biography asserts) the son of a small bookseller in Edinburgh, but the last representative of the Balfours of Dunbog in the county of Fife. 

Harry Balfour, the first Laird of Dunbog, was the third son of John, third Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and in the middle of the last century, officers had very little chance of rising to higher rank who were not of good family. 

He was born at Dunbog in 1743 and entered the army as ensign in the 4th regiment in 1761.

He was promoted to lieutenant in 1765 and captain in 1770 but did not see service until the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself at the battle of Bunker’s Hill, where he was severely wounded, and at Long Island and Brooklyn.

In August 1776, his services were so conspicuous at the taking of New York that he was sent home with the dispatches announcing the success and was promoted major by brevet. He at once returned to America and struck up a warm friendship with many of the younger officers, including Lord Cornwallis and Lord Rawdon.

He was present at the battles of Elizabethtown, Brandywine, and Germantown, and, after being appointed lieutenant colonel of the 23rd regiment in 1778, accompanied Cornwallis to Charleston. After the capture of the city, he was appointed commandant at Ninety-Six, and there “by his attention and diligence,” says Cornwallis, succeeded in raising 4,000 militia among the loyal colonists.

In the following year, he accepted the difficult and invidious post of commandant at Charleston and there acquitted himself to the complete satisfaction of Cornwallis. He obeyed to the letter the rigorous orders of Cornwallis against the colonists and incurred much odium for carrying out the execution of a planter named Isaac Hayne, which Lord Rawdon had ordered. “You have done what few officers in our service are capable of doing,” wrote Cornwallis to Balfour on 12 Nov. 1780, “and have voluntarily taken responsibility on yourself to serve your country and your friend” (Cornwallis Dispatches, Cornwallis to Balfour, i. 46). 

When the war was over, Balfour was rewarded for his services with the rank of colonel and the appointment of aide-de-camp to the king. He was also appointed, with a lawyer named Spranger, on a commission to award the money granted by parliament to those loyal colonists who had suffered in the war. 

He now enjoyed a high reputation and moved in the best military society, and in 1790, Mr. Stewart, of Castle Stewart in Wigtonshire, who had married his only sister, returned him to parliament for the Wigton Burghs. In 1793, on the outbreak of the war with France, he was promoted major-general and received the command of a brigade in the force which his old comrade, Lord Rawdon, now Lord Moira, was to take the west coast of France. With the rest of Lord Moira’s army, Balfour joined the Duke of York in Flanders in 1794. Though Lord Moira returned home, Balfour volunteered to continue his services in any capacity in which he could be useful and assisted General Ralph Abercromby in commanding the reserve until December 1794. 

He never again saw active service but continued to sit in Parliament, first for Wigton Burghs and then for Arundel, till 1802. 

He was made colonel of the 39th regiment in 1794, promoted lieutenant-general in 1798, and general in 1803. 

He retired to his family seat, Dunbog, and there died at the advanced age of eighty, in October 1823, being then sixth general in seniority after sixty-two years’ service. He bequeathed Dunbog to his nephew William Stewart, who took the name of Balfour. His reputation was made in the American war, and the friendship of such generals as Hastings and Cornwallis seems to justify it.