Born in Virginia, Sumter early acquired military experience in service during the campaigns of Edward Braddock (1755) and John Forbes (1758). As a sergeant in 1762, Sumter accompanied Henry Timberlake on a military-diplomatic mission to the Cherokee and was selected as an escort for the three Cherokee chiefs sent to visit London. About three years later he settled as a merchant in South Carolina, where he centered his military, political, and business activities throughout the rest of his long life.
At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a justice of the peace, was elected to the first and second provincial congresses, and was appointed captain of a company of rangers and then lieutenant colonel of the Second Regiment of South Carolina riflemen which participated in the Cherokee campaign of 1776. Having resigned from the Continental Army in 1778, Sumter was in retirement when the British captured Charleston in 1780. After fleeing to North Carolina when Banastre Tarleton raided his home, Sumter was commissioned a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia and proceeded to raise a force of South Carolinians who engaged Loyalist troops in a succession of battles and skirmishes during 1780 and 1781. Although he cooperated with Nathanael Greene, disagreement or rivalry between the two caused Sumter to resign his command early in 1782. Nevertheless, he and his men contributed substantially to final American success in the South. Sumter's daring independent campaigns and his ability to raise and inspire his partisan troops to repeatedly harass the enemy won him the sobriquet of “gamecock of South Carolina.” In the postwar years he invested in internal improvements and numerous agricultural enterprises and served in Congress as a representative (1789—1793, 1797—1801) and senator (1801—1810). He retired to his estate known as “South Mount” near Statesburg; harried by business debts and law suits, his precarious economic situation was ameliorated by a moratorium on his debt to the Bank of South Carolina granted by the state legislature in 1827.
Although Draper had long been aware of Sumter's role in the Revolution, he did not select Sumter as a subject for a prospective individual biography until the winter of 1869-1870. Embarking enthusiastically on his customary intensive research by correspondence and travel, Draper made his last major trip through the South in 1871 to ferret out manuscripts and conduct interviews pertaining to Sumter. Although he continued to gather information on Sumter by correspondence, Draper's interest was diverted to other projects, and, like the majority of his proposed books, the Sumter biography was never drafted.
