Loyalist support In 1778, the British again turned their attention to the South, where they hoped to regain control by recruiting thousands of Loyalists. Their belief in widespread Loyalist support was based on the accounts of Loyalist exiles in London who had direct access to the British Secretary of State for America,
George Germain. Keen to recover their lands and be rewarded for their loyalty to the crown, these men realized that the best way to convince the British to undertake a major operation in the South would be to exaggerate the level of potential Loyalist support. As a group, Loyalists had great influence on the British ministers in London. In addition, there were strong business, trading and family ties among some Loyalists and the British in London. The British operated under the expectation that they would find substantial support for their actions, if only they liberated the right areas. While in South Carolina, Cornwallis wrote in a letter to Clinton that "Our assurances of attachment from our poor distressed friends in North Carolina are as strong as ever." For the most part, this assumption was incorrect, as Cornwallis soon realized as the campaign progressed.
British take Savannah by
Charles Willson Peale On April 19, 1778, three row galleys of the Georgia Navy engaged, defeated, and captured a Royal Navy
brigantine, an armed British East Florida provincial
sloop, and an armed
brig. On December 29, 1778, a British
expeditionary corps of 3,500 men from New York, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel
Archibald Campbell,
captured Savannah, Georgia. He was joined in mid-January 1779 by Brigadier General
Augustine Prevost, leading troops that marched up from
Saint Augustine, Florida, taking over outposts along the way. Prevost assumed command of the forces in Georgia; and dispatched Campbell with 1,000 men toward
Augusta with the goals of gaining control of that town and the recruitment of Loyalists. The remnants of the defense of Savannah had retreated to
Purrysburg, South Carolina, about upriver from Savannah, where they were met by Major General
Benjamin Lincoln, commander of Continental Army forces in the South. He marched most of the army from Charleston in a move intended to monitor and oppose Prevost. Early in February, Prevost sent a few hundred men to occupy
Beaufort in a move probably intended to divert Lincoln's attention from Campbell's movements; Lincoln responded by sending General
William Moultrie and 300 men to drive them out. The February 3
Battle of Beaufort was largely indecisive, and both contingents eventually returned to their bases. In the meantime, Campbell had taken control of Augusta without much resistance, and Loyalists were beginning to turn out. While he enrolled more than 1,000 men over a two-week period, he was powerless to prevent the defeat of a sizable number of Loyalists by Patriot militia under
Andrew Pickens in the February 14
Battle of Kettle Creek, from Augusta. This demonstrated to everyone in the area the limits of the British Army's ability to protect Loyalists. Campbell suddenly left Augusta, apparently in response to the arrival of
John Ashe and more than 1,000 North Carolina militia Lincoln sent to add to the 1,000 militia that were already across the river from Augusta in South Carolina. On the way back to Savannah, Campbell turned over command of his men to Augustine Prevost's brother,
Mark. The younger Prevost turned the tables on Ashe, who was following him south, surprising and very nearly destroying his force of 1,300 in the March 3
Battle of Brier Creek.
Second attack on Charleston By April, Lincoln had been reinforced by large numbers of South Carolina militia and received additional military supplies through
Dutch shipments to Charleston. He decided to move toward Augusta. Leaving 1,000 men under the command of Moultrie at Purrysburg to monitor Augustine Prevost, he began the march north on April 23. Prevost's reaction was to lead 2,500 men from Savannah toward Purrysburg on April 29. Moultrie fell back toward Charleston rather than engaging, and Prevost was within on May 10 before he began to see resistance. Two days later he intercepted a message indicating that Lincoln, alerted to Prevost's advance, was hurrying back from Augusta to assist in the defense of Charleston. Prevost retreated to the islands southwest of Charleston, leaving an entrenched guard at Stono Ferry (near present-day
Rantowles, South Carolina) to cover his retreat. When Lincoln got back to Charleston he led about 1,200 men, mostly untried militia, after Prevost. This force was repulsed by the British on June 20 in the
Battle of Stono Ferry. The rear guard, having succeeded in its objective, abandoned that post a few days later. Prevost's foray against Charleston was notable for his troop's arbitrary looting and pillaging, which enraged friend and foe alike in the South Carolina low country.
Defense of Savannah In October 1779, French and Continental Army forces tried to
retake Savannah. Under the leadership of Lincoln, and with the assistance of a French naval
squadron commanded by
Comte d'Estaing, it was a spectacular failure. The combined French and American forces suffered some 901 casualties, to the British 54. The French Navy found Savannah's fortifications similar to those that had defied Admiral
Peter Parker at Charleston in 1776. The artillery bombardment had little effect on the defenses, but unlike Charleston—where Clinton had decided against attacking Fort Moultrie by land—Estaing decided to press the assault after the naval bombardment had failed. In this assault, Count
Kazimierz Pułaski, the Polish commander of American cavalry, was fatally wounded. With Savannah secured, Clinton could launch a new assault on Charleston where he had failed in 1776. Lincoln moved his remaining troops to Charleston to assist in the construction of its defenses.
Third attack on Charleston Clinton moved against Charleston, blockading the harbor in March 1780 and building up about 10,000 troops in the area. His advance on the city was uncontested; the American naval commander, Commodore
Abraham Whipple,
scuttled five of his eight frigates in the harbor to make a boom for its defense. Inside the city, Lincoln commanded about 2,650 Continentals and 2,500 militiamen. Tarleton blocked any hope of reinforcement or resupply with victories at
Moncks Corner in April and
Lenud's Ferry in early May. Charleston was surrounded. Clinton began constructing siege lines. On March 11 he commenced the bombardment of the town. On May 12 Lincoln surrendered his 5,000 men—the largest surrender of U.S. troops until the
American Civil War. With relatively few casualties, Clinton had seized the South's largest city and seaport, winning perhaps the greatest British victory of the war. This victory left the American military structure in the South in ruins. It was only after
Nathanael Greene slipped past
Lord Cornwallis after the
Battle of Guilford Court House in 1781 that the British finally lost this advantage in the South. took command when Sir Henry Clinton sailed for New York. The remnants of the southern Continental Army began to withdraw toward North Carolina but were pursued by Tarleton's
British Legion, which defeated them decisively at the
Battle of Waxhaws on May 29. After the battle, Patriots alleged that Tarleton's forces had killed soldiers who were trying to surrender. The phrase "Tarleton's quarter"—referring to his reputed lack of mercy, or "
quarter"—became a rallying cry for the Patriots. Historians still debate whether a massacre occurred, but the belief affected the rest of the campaign. Many Loyalist militiamen were killed by vengeful Patriots shouting "Tarleton's Quarters!" after they surrendered at the
Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7. Tarleton later published an account of the war.
Cornwallis takes command After the surrender at Charleston, organized American military activity in the South virtually collapsed. The states carried on their governmental functions, and the war was carried on by
partisans such as
Francis Marion,
Thomas Sumter,
William R. Davie,
Andrew Pickens, and
Elijah Clarke. Clinton turned over British operations in the South to Lord Cornwallis. The
Continental Congress dispatched General
Horatio Gates, the victor of
Saratoga, to the South with a new army, but Gates promptly suffered one of the worst defeats in U.S. military history at the
Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. Cornwallis prepared to invade North Carolina. Cornwallis's attempts to raise Loyalists in large numbers in North Carolina were effectively crushed after the defeat at Kings Mountain. Many of the Patriot men had crossed the
Appalachian Mountains from the
Washington District of North Carolina to fight the British and were so named the
Overmountain Men. The British plan to raise large Loyalist armies failed—not enough Loyalists enlisted, and those who did were at high risk once the British army moved on. The defeat at Kings Mountain and the continuing harassment of his communications and supply lines by militia forces in South Carolina forced Cornwallis to withdraw and winter in South Carolina. Gates was replaced by Washington's most dependable subordinate, General Nathanael Greene. Greene assigned about 1,000 men to General
Daniel Morgan, a superb tactician who crushed Tarleton's troops at the
Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781. As after Kings Mountain, Cornwallis was later criticized for detaching part of his army without adequate support. Greene proceeded to wear down his opponents in a series of skirmishes and military movements referred to as the "Race to the Dan" (so named because the
Dan River flows close to the border between North Carolina and Virginia); each encounter resulted in a tactical victory for the British but gave them no strategic advantage, while attrition took its toll. by
John Trumbull Cornwallis knew that Greene had divided his forces and wanted to face either Morgan's or Greene's contingent before they could rejoin. He stripped his army of all excess baggage in an effort to keep up with the fast-moving Patriots. When Greene learned of this decision, his gleeful response was "Then, he is ours!" Cornwallis's lack of provisions as a consequence played a role in his later difficulties. Greene first engaged Cornwallis in the
Battle of Cowan's Ford, where Greene had sent General
William Lee Davidson with 900 men. When Davidson was killed in the river, the Americans retreated. Greene was weakened, but he continued his delaying tactics, fighting a dozen more skirmishes in South and North Carolina against Cornwallis's forces. About 2,000 British troops died in these engagements. Greene summed up his approach in a motto that would become famous: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." His tactics have been likened to the
Fabian strategy of
Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the Roman general who wore down the superior forces of the Carthaginian
Hannibal by a slow
war of attrition. Greene eventually felt strong enough to face Cornwallis directly—near New Garden, North Carolina (modern day
Greensboro, North Carolina). Although Cornwallis was the tactical victor in the
Battle of Guilford Court House, the casualties his army suffered forced him to retreat to
Wilmington, North Carolina, for resupply and reinforcements. While Cornwallis was unable to completely destroy Greene, he recognized that most of the supplies that the American forces were relying on were coming from Virginia, a state that up to this point in the war had been relatively untouched. Against the wishes of Clinton, Cornwallis resolved to invade Virginia in the hopes that cutting the supply lines to the Carolinas would make American resistance there impossible. This theory was supported by
Lord George Germain in a series of letters that left Clinton out of the decision-making process for the Southern Army, despite his nominally being its overall commander. Without informing Clinton, Cornwallis marched north from
Wilmington into Virginia to engage in raiding operations, where he eventually met the army commanded by
William Phillips and
Benedict Arnold, which had engaged in raiding activities there. These raids resulted in massive destruction of tobacco fields and curing barns, as the colonists used tobacco to fund their war efforts. The British destruction of about 10,000
hogsheads of tobacco (roughly 10 million pounds) in 1780 and 1781 became known as the
Tobacco War. When Cornwallis left
Greensboro for Wilmington, he left the road open for Greene to begin the American reconquest of South Carolina. This he achieved by the end of June, in spite of a reverse sustained at
Lord Rawdon's hands at
Hobkirk's Hill (2 miles north of
Camden) on April 25. From May 22 to June 19, Greene led the
siege of Ninety Six, which he was forced to abandon when word arrived that Rawdon was bringing troops to relieve the siege. However, the actions of Greene and militia commanders like Francis Marion drove Rawdon to eventually abandon the
Ninety Six District and Camden, effectively reducing the British presence in South Carolina to the port of Charleston. Augusta was
also besieged on May 22 and fell to Patriot forces under
Andrew Pickens and
Harry "Light Horse" Lee on June 6, reducing the British presence in Georgia to the port of Savannah. Greene then gave his forces a six weeks' rest on the High Hills of the
Santee River. On September 8, with 2,600 men, he engaged British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart at
Eutaw Springs. Americans who fell in this battle were immortalized by American author
Philip Freneau in his 1781 poem "To the Memory of Brave Americans." The battle, although tactically a draw, so weakened the British that they withdrew to Charleston, where Greene penned them in for the remaining months of the war.
Yorktown ; sculpture from the facade of the
Capitol Building in Washington. Upon arrival in Virginia, Cornwallis took command of the existing British forces in the region, which had been commanded first by Arnold and then by Major General
William Phillips. Phillips, a good friend of Cornwallis, died two days before Cornwallis reached his position at
Petersburg. Having marched without informing Clinton of his movements (communications between the two British commanders was by sea and extremely slow, sometimes up to three weeks), Cornwallis sent word of his northward march and set about destroying American supplies in the
Chesapeake region. In March 1781, in response to the threat of Arnold and Phillips, General Washington had dispatched the
Marquis de Lafayette to defend Virginia. The young Frenchman had 3,200 men at his command, but British troops in the state totaled 7,200. Lafayette skirmished with Cornwallis, avoiding a decisive battle while gathering reinforcements. It was during this period that Cornwallis received orders from Clinton to choose a position on the
Virginia Peninsula—referred to in contemporary letters as the "Williamsburg Neck"—and construct a fortified naval post to shelter
ships of the line. In complying with this order, Cornwallis put himself at risk to become trapped. With the arrival of the French fleet under the
Comte de Grasse and Washington's combined French and American army, Cornwallis found himself cut off. When the Royal Navy fleet, under Admiral
Thomas Graves, was defeated by the French at the
Battle of the Chesapeake, and a French
siege train arrived from
Newport, Rhode Island, his position became untenable. Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and the French commander the
Comte de Rochambeau on October 19, 1781. Cornwallis reported this disaster to Clinton in a letter that opened: I have the mortification to inform Your Excellency that I have been forced to give up the posts of York and Gloucester and to surrender the troops under my command by capitulation, on the 19th instant, as prisoners of war to the combined forces of America. ==Consequences==