In December 1781, Maj. Robert McLeroth and the 64th Regiment were escorting newly arrived British army recruits of the Royal Fusiliers from Charleston to the High Hills of Santee when Col. Francis Marion, leading about 700 militiamen up the Santee River Road, surprised McLeroth near Halfway Swamp. McLeroth delayed a battle by proposing a staged combat of twenty men on each side, then withdrew his troops north during the night toward Singleton’s Mill. When Marion discovered the deception the next morning, he sent horsemen under Maj. John James in pursuit. James’s men reached Singleton’s Mill, a large rice plantation and grist mill ten miles north, just ahead of the British, seized the buildings, and fired one volley before realizing the Singleton family was ill with smallpox, whereupon the Whigs quickly abandoned the plantation to the British. The next day Marion moved his men back down the Santee Road. Although British commanders in South Carolina were dissatisfied with McLeroth’s field performance, several Patriot sources attested to his uprightness and generosity: after the skirmishing between Halfway Swamp and Singleton’s Mill, he took the wounded from both sides to a tavern, paid for two weeks’ lodging, and left an army physician to care for them. On learning this, Marion told one of his officers, “Well, I suppose I feel now very much as I would feel were I in pursuit of a brother to kill him.”