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A History | The Winning of Independence 1777-1783 | British Successes in the South
British Successes in the South
 Late in 1778 the British began to turn their main effort to the south. Tory strength was greater in the
Carolinas and Georgia and the area was closer to the West Indies, where the British Fleet had to stand guard
against the French. The king's ministers hoped to bring the southern states into the fold one by one, and
from bases there to strangle the recalcitrant north. A small British force operating from Florida quickly
overran thinly populated Georgia in the winter of 1778-79. Alarmed by this development, Congress sent General
Benjamin Lincoln south to Charleston in December 1778 to command the Southern Army and organize the southern
effort. Lincoln gathered 3,500 Continentals and militiamen, but in May 1779, while he maneuvered along the
Georgia border, the British commander, Maj. Gen. Augustine Prevost, slipped around him to lay siege to
Charleston. The city barely managed to hold out until Lincoln returned to relieve it.
In September 1779 d'Estaing arrived off the coast of Georgia with a strong French Fleet and 6,000 troops.
Lincoln then hurried south with 1,350 Americans to join him in a siege of the main British base at Savannah.
Unfortunately, the Franco-American force had to hurry its attack because d'Estaing was unwilling to risk his
fleet in a position dangerously exposed to autumn storms. The French and Americans mounted a direct assault on
Savannah on October 9, abandoning their plan to make a systematic approach by regular parallels. The British
in strongly entrenched positions repulsed the attack in what was essentially a
Bunker Hill in reverse, the French and Americans suffering staggering losses. D'Estaing then sailed away to
the West Indies, Lincoln returned to Charleston, and the second attempt at Franco-American cooperation ended
in much the same atmosphere of bitterness and disillusion as the first.
Meanwhile Clinton, urged on by the British Government, hall determined to push the southern campaign in earnest.
In October 1779 he withdrew the British garrison from Newport, pulled in his troops from outposts around New
York, and prepared to move south against Charleston with a large part of his force. With d'Estaing's withdrawal
the British regained control of the sea along the American coast, giving Clinton a mobility that Washington
could not match. While Clinton drew forces from New York and Savannah to achieve a decisive concentration of
force (14,000 men) at Charleston, Washington was able to send only piecemeal reinforcements to Lincoln over
difficult overland routes. Applying the lessons of his experience in 1776, Clinton this time carefully planned
a co-ordinated Army-Navy attack. First, he landed his force on John's Island to the south, then moved up to the
Ashley River, investing Charleston from the land side. Lincoln, under strong pressure from the South Carolina
authorities, concentrated his forces in a citadel defense on the neck of land between the Ashley and Cooper
Rivers, leaving Fort Moultrie in the harbor lightly manned. On April 8 British warships successfully forced the
passage past Moultrie, investing Charleston from the sea. The siege then proceeded in traditional eighteenth
century fashion, and on May 12, 1780, Lincoln surrendered his entire force of 5,466 men, the greatest disaster
to befall the American cause during the war. Meanwhile, Col. Abraham Buford with 350 Virginians was moving
south to reinforce the garrison. Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton with a force of British cavalry took Buford by
surprise at the Waxhaws, a district near the North Carolina border, and slaughtered most of his men, refusing
to honor the white flag Buford displayed.
After the capture of Charleston, Clinton returned to New York with about a
third of his force, leaving General Cornwallis with 8,000 men to follow up the victory. Cornwallis established
his main seaboard bases at Savannah, Beaufort, Charleston, and Georgetown, and in the interior extended his line
of control along the Savannah River westward to Ninety-Six and northward to Camden and Rocky Mount. Cornwallis'
force, however, was too small to police so large an area, even with the aid of the numerous Tories who took to
the field. Though no organized Continental force remained in the Carolinas and Georgia, American guerrillas, led
by Brig. Gens. Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens and Lt. Col. Francis Marion, began to harry British posts and
lines of communications and to battle the bands of Tories. A bloody, ruthless, and confused civil war ensued,
its character determined in no small degree by Tarleton's action at the Waxhaws. In this way, as in the Saratoga
campaign, the American grass roots strength began once again to assert itself and to deny the British the
fruits of military victory won in the field.
On June 22, 1780, two more understrength Continental brigades from Washington's army arrived at Hillsboro,
North Carolina, to form the nucleus of a new Southern Army around which militia could rally and which could
serve as the nerve center of guerrilla resistance. In July Congress, without consulting Washington, provided
a commander for this army in the person of General Gates, the hero of Saratoga
. Gates soon lost his northern laurels. Gathering a force of about 4,000 men, mostly militia, he set out
to attack the British post at Camden, South Carolina. Cornwallis hurried north from Charleston with
reinforcements and his army of 2,200 British Regulars made contact with Gates outside Camden on the night of
August 15. In the battle that ensued the following morning, Gates deployed his militia on the left and the
Continentals under Maj. Gen. Johann de Kalb on the right. The militia were still forming in the hazy dawn when
Cornwallis struck, and they fled in panic before the British onslaught. De Kalb's outnumbered Continentals put
up a valiant but hopeless fight. Tarleton's cavalry pursued the fleeing Americans for 30 miles, killing or
making prisoner those who lagged. Gates himself fled too fast for Tarleton, reaching Hillsboro, 160 miles away,
in three days. There he was able to gather only about 800 survivors of the Southern Army. To add to the
disaster, Tarleton caught up with General Sumter, whom Gates had sent with a detachment to raid a British
wagon train, and virtually destroyed his force in a surprise attack at Fishing Creek on August 18. Once more
South Carolina seemed safely in British hands.
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