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In late 1778, under the new ruling from London which
marked out the South as the main theater of war, British sails
began to break the horizon off the South Carolina and Georgia
coasts. Down from New York came warships and transports, unloading
British, Hessian, and Tory units under Lieutenant Colonel Archibald
Campbell at Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River,
some fifteen miles below the little Georgia metropolis of the
same name.
Up the coast from British Florida labored another
contingent commanded by General Augustine Prevost. A weak
American force of less than 1,000, under General Robert Howe
of North Carolina, maneuvered to get between the two bodies and
their obvious objective, Savannah. Howe was brushed aside,
his command badly scattered, and as 1779 came in, Sunbury and
Augusta fell as well as Savannah, and all of Georgia was under
British control.
Through spring and summer Prevost made no important
moves into the Carolinas, contenting himself with consolidating
his position, gathering supplies, strengthening the ruinous fortifications
of Savannah, and striving to win Georgian allegiance to the Crown.
In this last he was so successful, at least on the surface, that
the state legislature actually met under the authority of the
British government.
That same spring a small British expedition under
Sir Henry Clinton sailed along the
coast of the southern colonies in the hope of arousing the Loyalists against the newly established
American governments in the Carolinas and Georgia. Reaching the
Cape Fear River in North Carolina, Clinton learned that a Loyalist
uprising had been smashed by the patriots at the Battle of Moore's
Creek Bridge near Wilmington (Feb. 27, 1776). Then, continuing
southward, Clinton's fleet bombarded the harbor fortifications
at Charleston, S.C., perhaps seeking to establish a coastal base
for local Loyalists. In any case, the expedition was beaten off
(June 28, 1776), terminating important British activity in the
South for over two years.
In the South, a region long neglected by Britain,
the war reached its conclusion. Because of the British inability
to prevail in the North, London's strategists gradually shifted
their attention to the South, beginning in late 1778. They felt
that section contained a higher percentage of Loyalists than
any other part of America. Then, too, if choices had to be made
after France's entry into the war had stretched British resources
tissue thin, England preferred to save the South above all other
areas. Its raw materials were the most valuable of all American
commodities in the mother country's mercantile scheme.
Britain, as usual, opened a new theater of campaigning
with a string of triumphs. In December 1778 small British expeditions
from New York and Florida subdued Georgia. Fighting in 1779 was
inconclusive along the Georgia-South Carolina border, and a combined
Franco-American assault on British-held Savannah was beaten off.
In February 1780 Britain greatly expanded its southern beachhead
when Sir Henry Clinton arrived in South Carolina from New York
with 8,700 additional troops. He soon laid siege to Charleston,
where on May 12 American Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered
the city and its more than 5,000 defenders. A second, hastily
assembled American Southern army under Horatio
Gates was crushed at Camden in upper South Carolina (Aug.
16, 1780) by Lord Cornwallis, whom Clinton
had left in command when he returned to New York.
These English victories did not extinguish the flames
of rebellion. Britain found pacification of the back country
difficult. Rebel small-unit operations continued under such local,
legendary guerrilla leaders as Francis Marion
and Thomas Sumter. And a body of patriot frontiersmen, mainly
from the Watauga settlements in present-day eastern Tennessee,
wiped out a 1,000-man contingent of Loyalist troops at King's
Mountain on the border of the Carolinas (Oct. 7, 1780).
As the guerrillas tied down Cornwallis, still a third
American army formed in the South under Major General Nathanael
Greene, who then launched the most effective military campaign
of the war. Greene's basic plan was to keep his numerically superior
antagonist, Cornwallis, off balance by a series of rapid movements
and by cooperating with the South Carolina guerrilla leaders.
Greene audaciously divided his small army, sending Brigadier
General Daniel Morgan into western South Carolina, where he destroyed
Lt.Col.Banastre Tarleton's Tory Legion
at Cowpens (Jan. 17, 1781).
When Cornwallis pursued Morgan, Greene united his army, led Cornwallis
on an exhausting chase into North Carolina, and finally fought
him to a draw at Guilford Courthouse (Mar. 15, 1781). While the
British general limped eastward and then northward to the Virginia
coast, the resourceful Greene returned to South Carolina, and
between April and July picked off, one by one, every British
post save Charleston and Savannah, where the enemy remained isolated
and impotent until peace came.
Cornwallis, meanwhile, was sealing his own fate in
Virginia, where he united with a raiding expedition under Benedict Arnold (now in British service),
already in that state, and erected a base at the port of Yorktown. Both his superior, Clinton, in
New York and General Washington recognized
that Cornwallis was vulnerable to a land-and-sea blockade on
a Virginia peninsula. But Cornwallis refused to leave, arguing
the doubtful proposition that Britain would have to capture Virginia
in order to have lasting success in the lower South.
At this point, Franco-American army and naval operations,
hitherto disappointing in their results, now determined the fate
of Cornwallis. Adding to his forces the French troops of the
Comte de Rochambeau in Rhode Island, Washington raced southward
and opened siege operations before Yorktown on October 6, while
a French fleet under the Comte de Grasse sealed off a sea escape.
Clinton hastened a naval squadron from New York to the Chesapeake,
but it was repulsed by de Grasse. After suffering through an
intensive artillery bombardment, Cornwallis, on Oct. 19, 1781,
surrendered his nearly 8,000 troops to the 17,000-man allied
force.
The British failed in the South for several reasons,
including an exaggerated estimate of Loyalist support, an inadequate
program of pacification, and a failure to recognize the significance
of sea power. |
