The British Go South: A Story of the American War for Independence

We look at the later years of the American Revolution including the British Southern Strategy.

Transcript

The British Go South in the American War for Independence.

June 2024

“We have said that Cornwallis had subordinates who were foot, hand, staff, and sword to him. Tarleton was his hunting leopard, glossy, beautifully mottled, but swift and fell -- when roused by resistance, ferocious.”

Henry S. Randall, in his 1858 The Life of Thomas Jefferson 

“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

Nathanael Greene

One of the keys to war is to understand the actual objective.  In the case of the American Revolutionary War, the British, forged in European conflicts, thought in terms of territory and cities.  That was the case in the wars with France from the late 1600s through the mid-1700s; even small provinces and fortified cities meant something.  However, in the War of Independence, these objectives were not critical.   Even with British armies as large as 30,000, Continental warfare could be quickly swallowed up.  The land of the original 13 colonies was 430,000 square miles. In contrast, the isle of Britain is about 1/5 of that size.   Instead, the British should have focused on destroying Washington’s army and capturing those who had signed the Declaration or were leading the war effort.

When we learn about the American War for Independence, we often hear of decisive battles such as Saratoga or Yorktown or the exclamations of John Paul Jones saying, “I have not yet begun to fight!” at the battle of Flamborough Head. For me, one of the decisive battles of the war was a standoff: According to Battlefields.org, “on a hot and humid June 28, 1778, General George Washington and his subordinate, General Charles Lee, attacked rearguard elements of General Sir Henry Clinton’s British Army.  Although outnumbered two-to-one, the Continental Army had undergone extensive training in the art of war during its winter encampment at Valley Forge. Charles Lee, who launched the initial attack, lacked confidence in the ability of the soldiers under his command. In failing to press his advantage, Lee ceded the initiative to his British counterpart, General Charles Lord Cornwallis, who commanded the rear elements of Clinton’s army.”

What began as a promising opportunity devolved into a potential disaster. As Washington approached the fighting, he encountered panic-stricken troops fleeing the enemy. Enraged, he galloped ahead of his wing. In an angry confrontation on the field of battle, Washington removed Lee from command. Rallying what troops he had, Washington continued the assault on the British. The commanding general’s delaying action gave time for the rest of the Continental Army to come up and join the battle.

Washington placed General Nathanael Greene’s division on the right and the division of General William Alexander, “Lord” Stirling, on the left. Lee’s men were turned over to the Marquis de Lafayette, who kept those troops in reserve. General “Mad” Anthony Wayne assumed command over other elements of Lee’s force and manned Lafayette’s front. Artillery was placed on both flanks, with the guns on the right positioned to rain enfilading fire on the British.

An American counterattack on the British right forced the Redcoats to fall back and reorganize. Cornwallis then led his men in an attack on Greene’s division. Supported by artillery, Greene’s men stiffened their line and repulsed Cornwallis and his troops.

The fighting see-sawed back and forth under the brutal June sun for several hours. By 6:00 P.M., however, the British felt they had enough. Washington demurred, while Wayne wanted to press the attack, believing his men were “beat out and with heat and fatigue.”

The British did not allow Washington to renew the fight in the morning, slipping away under the cover of darkness and resuming their withdrawal to New York City. Though the war would drag on another three years, and it would be five until a permanent peace, this was the last full-scale battle in the North, and three takeaways ensued.

First, with reverses such as Saratoga and Monmouth Courthouse, the British decided that the North, especially with pro-patriot sentiments in New England and the Middle Atlantic States, differed from the theater where success would occur.  After all, before Monmouth Courthouse, they had bested Washington in several battles, taken at least three states, and occupied the Continental capital of Philadelphia, yet victory seemed even more remote. Second, talk of replacing Washington with his second in command, Charles Lee, or the victor of Saratoga, Horatio Gates, ended as Lee disgraced himself at Monmouth.  Third, the British were looking for a more significant number of loyalists.  

With the fighting in the North at a stalemate during the revolt, the British needed a change and direction; this slowly began to take shape in London. This policy change called for the British to become more mobile and use its littoral advantages over the rebels. The British decided to leave the troublesome New England Colonies for the vast plantation grounds of the South. This new strategy from London came from the Secretary of State for America, Lord George Germain. Lord Germain faced calls for his resignation and the prospect of falling out of favor with King George III. He had to put down the rebels’ revolt and check the rising cost of the conflict by moving South to conduct operations.

This planned move to the South appeared on paper to be an excellent decision to recalibrate the British war effort. The main target would be Charleston, which has a deep-sea harbor for the Royal Navy and a resupply of troops. Controlling the harbor city of Charleston also allowed the British to attack French interests in the Caribbean.

And there was the question of loyalties.  In HW Brands’ Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution, the author shows it to be more than a fight against the British: it was also a violent battle among neighbors forced to choose sides, Loyalist or Patriot. The issue with Brands’s book is that much of it, like much history, focuses on the North, particularly the relationship of Benjamin Franklin with his son and Loyalist New Jersey governor William.  This story, in and of itself, is compelling and heartbreaking, as Benedict Arnold, the patriot turned Loyalist. And there is an understandable element here.  The likes of Lenin never saw themselves as loyal to the Tsar, only later to change their minds—the Americans, however, as late as the 1770s, saw themselves as loyal Englishmen.  Yet Brand’s does address some of the Southern strategy.  “If the Southern states fell under British and Loyalist control, any victory Washington won in the North would be half complete at best.” Adds Brands, “Washington wasn’t alone in imagining a Brith offer of recognition of Independence to those states that clearly wanted it as demonstrated by their support Washington’s army, but only to those states. The Loyalist-controlled Southern states might remain within the Empire.”

In his book American Revolutions, Alan Taylor describes one British Officer, Lt. Colonel Archibald Campbell, on his conquest of Savannah, Georgia, “I have gone country in arms against Congress, and ripped on star and stripe from the rebel flag of America.” Taylor goes on to comment on the efforts of both the British and the Americans, particularly John Laurens, to recruit slaves and free blacks to their causes, each with middling results.  

A post from the Professional Military Blog notes the crucial nature of the war in the South. 

“South Carolina is arguably the epicenter of the battles that pitted Loyalist Americans vs revolutionary ones. The battles in South Carolina pitted neighbor against neighbor in some of the bloodiest and cruelest fights of the war. Moreover, nearly one-third of all battles in the American Revolution took place in South Carolina, and a significant number were strictly Loyalist Americans fighting against Patriot Americans.”

For example, the Battle of Kings Mountain was a battle in which the “Over Mountain Men” attacked and destroyed nearly one thousand Provincial soldiers under the command of Major Patrick Ferguson. As a native of Scotland, Ferguson was the only non-American in the battle. The Battle of Musgrove’s Mill is another excellent example of Americans fighting Americans. 

When the Northern aspect of the war is recounted, the names are (well, relatively in today’s classrooms) well known.  Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, and Brooklyn Heights.  And the decisive Trenton and Princeton, along with Saratoga.  But Charleston, Camden, and Musgrove’s Hill?  Yet, in some regards, these battles would come to be critical to winning the war and the most decisive battle of them all, Yorktown.  

Here, we come across a selection of names and personalities that create an incredible narrative:  Benjamin Lincoln, Charles Cornwallis, Banastre Tarleton, and one of the great generals of our history, Nathanial Greene.  The Southern Strategy initially succeeded there with the British capture of the colony’s major port, Savannah, and the defection of thousands of colonists to the British in December 1778. The following year, they witnessed the continued success of the Southern Strategy when, due to a series of logistical and diplomatic blunders, a Franco-American siege failed to recapture Savannah. A devastating event for Patriots occurred at Charleston, an American-held city since the start of the Revolution, in May 1780. After a six-week siege of Charleston by British land and naval forces, American General Benjamin Lincoln, outnumbered and outsmarted by British forces under generals Henry Clinton and Lord Charles Cornwallis, surrendered over five thousand troops and ample Continental supplies.  Taylor notes it was “the greatest disaster suffered by the Patriot forces in the entire war” and adds, “Patriot support in South Carolina virtually collapsed.” However, the British overplayed their hand by declaring martial law as opposed to turning the colony over to Loyalist civilian hands and then exacerbated that decision by ordering the conscription of Loyalist men. Even in the loyalist south, people began to see the British as tyrants more in the New England vein than as liberators, restoring them to king and country.  

And here, we begin to hear more about Banastre Tarleton.  After becoming commander of the British Legion, a force of American Loyalist cavalry and light infantry, Tarleton went to South Carolina at the beginning of 1780. There, the Legion supported Sir Henry Clinton in the siege operations that culminated in the British capture of Charleston. The siege and capture of the city were part of the British strategy in the southern military theatre meant to restore royal authority over the southern colonies of British North America.

American Major General William Moultrie of South Carolina, who aided the American forces defending Charleston against the British, remarked on the desperate state of the American cause, stating that “at this time, there never was a country in greater confusion and consternation.” 

After Charleston’s fall, Cornwallis, whom Clinton had appointed commander of the Southern Department before returning to New York, began fanning his troops into the southern backcountry. The summer of 1780 was demoralizing for the South and the entire American war effort, especially after American General Horatio Gates’s humiliating defeat against Cornwallis at the Battle of Camden on August 16. However, as the British achieved initial success, their harsh practices in the South, such as the brutality of officers like Colonel Banastre Tarleton, began to incite resentment among Southerners. Tarleton’s actions in allowing his cavalrymen to slaughter most of an American force at the Battle of Waxhaws in late May 1780 made him infamous for cruelty in the South. 

With a force of 149 mounted soldiers, Colonel Tarleton overtook a detachment of 350 to 380 Virginia Continentals, led by Colonel Abraham Buford, who refused to surrender or stop his march. Only after sustaining many casualties did Buford order the American soldiers to surrender. Nonetheless, Tarleton’s forces ignored the white flag and massacred the soldiers of Buford’s detachment; 113 American soldiers were killed, 203 were captured, and 150 were severely wounded. The British army casualties were five soldiers killed, and 12 soldiers wounded. From the perspective of the British Army, the affair of the massacre is known as the Battle of Waxhaw Creek. At that time, the American rebels used the phrase “Tarleton’s quarter” (shooting after surrender) to mean “no quarter offered .” An American doctor present at Waxhaws recounted the massacre as a “scene of indiscriminate carnage never surpassed by the ruthless atrocities of the most barbarous savages.” 2 As a result, a fierce partisan war between an ever-growing number of American patriots and a shrinking number of loyalists ensued in the South from 1780 to 1782.

In South Carolina, to deny the resupply of food and horses, cause attrition, and reduce reconnoitering, Tarleton’s British Legion was harried by Francis Marion, an American militia commander who practiced guerrilla warfare against the British. Throughout the campaigns, Tarleton could not capture him or thwart his operations.  Marion was later rewarded with the sobriquet of the “Swamp Fox.” 

Cornwallis’s plan to subjugate the South involved turning control of one state after another to loyalists. The strategy failed, however, when patriot militiamen and even civilians attacked and gained control of loyalist strongholds left behind by Cornwallis’s main army. Guerilla bands led by backcountry patriots such as Thomas Sumter began attacking Cornwallis and his army’s supply trains. 

Southern patriot militiamen proved their growing strength over loyalist forces at the decisive Battle of King’s Mountain in the North Carolina backcountry in October 1780. The Battle of King’s Mountain produced the first major American victory in the South since Savannah’s capture and boosted the morale of Southern patriots. 

The continued success of Continental troops under the capable American general Nathanael Greene, who was chosen to head the Southern Department in 1780, also hastened the demise of Britain’s Southern Strategy as 1781 dawned. Whereas the British were militarily trained professionals with long experience, Greene was originally the manager of an iron forge. Greene, however, was a speedy study and emerged from managing the Rhode Island militia in 1775 to have become a key member of Washington’s staff in the early years of the war, so much so that the general-in-chief trusted Greene with this independent command.   

Being outnumbered and not possessing the skill and firepower of the British, Greene pursued a successful Fabian strategy against Cornwallis’s army. By dividing his army and allowing Cornwallis to chase him through the Carolinas and into Virginia in early 1781, Greene and one of his equally capable generals, Daniel Morgan, secured victory over the British at the Battle of Cowpens in January 1781. The Cowpens victory was won over a crack British regular army led by Tarleton and brought together strong armies and leaders who made their mark on 

history.  The battle was over in less than an hour. It was a complete victory for the Patriot force. British losses were staggering: 110 dead, over 200 wounded, and 500 captured out of a total British force of 1,100. Morgan lost only 12 killed and 60 wounded, a count he received from those reporting directly to him.

Two months later, Greene secured another strategic victory even while technically losing at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Cornwallis lost a quarter of his army in the battle, leading him to abandon the backcountry of the Carolinas and move his army to Wilmington on the North Carolina coast to resupply and rest his troops. Cornwallis’s unsanctioned decision to march his army to Yorktown, Virginia, effectively hastened the end of the British Southern Strategy. 

Although British troops were still stationed at Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington, Cornwallis’s retreat of the main British army in the South to Virginia allowed Greene’s army, which was still largely intact, to reclaim the Carolina backcountry. With Cornwallis’s evacuation, those loyalists who remained either fled or pledged allegiance to the patriots for fear of their safety. Meanwhile, Cornwallis skirmished with American troops in Virginia under the Marquis de Lafayette during the summer of 1781. 

In October, Cornwallis’s army fell under siege at Yorktown by American troops led by Washington and French troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau. The arrival of French ships on the York River pinned Cornwallis between the French Navy and the French and American troops, forcing him to surrender on October 19. With the surrender of the main British army operating in the South, the British Southern Strategy and the major hostilities of the American Revolution effectively ended.

Whereas Greene died just a few years after these events, Charles Cornwallis would go on a distinguished career as Governor General of India and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.  When he died in 1805, he was considered the very model of imperial viceroy and was accorded many honors.  

One of the oddest historical circumstances is how often nations go to war without a clear strategy of first, how to win the war, and two, what should come after.  When we engaged in the Vietnam War, the strategic plan was clear: keep the communist North from taking the South.  But how that was to be accomplished, with which forces, and what would be the resistance on the part of the North was ill-considered.  After all, the US had not lost a war since 1812, which was a draw.  Conversely, when the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the objective was clear: the destruction of the Iraqi army, especially the elite Republican Guard, and the removal of savage dictator Saddam Hussein.  The first was accomplished in 30 days.  The 2nd would take four bloody years, and even after the successful surge in 2007, the jury is still out on Iraq.  In fact, both these conflicts contrast their approaches.  In Vietnam, an elite, highly mobile strike force targeting North Vietnamese leadership should have been employed. Instead, a force that at one point reached 500,000 was employed.  Conversely, the Iraqi strike force of 100,000 was great at taking out an army 10x its size but was woefully undersized for what essentially became governance of the nation.  

Today, two significant conflicts threaten to pull us in.  The first is Ukraine, and the second is Israel.  In the case of Ukraine, Putin’s motivations and strategy are clear: the nation’s conquest in the same manner as Catherine the Great some 250 years ago.  For the Ukrainians, the answer is to receive the latest in Western combat technology and to begin targeting assets in Russia.  If not this, Russia, as happened to Poland, Lithuania, Finland, and even Ukraine itself, will ultimately use its size and tenacity to wear down the Ukrainians. 

In the case of Israel, they were securing their right to resist and the complete destruction of their existential enemy, Hamas.  And in this case, there is a parallel to both the American Revolution and our recent encounter with Al Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11.  As noted, it is probably for the best that the British did not dedicate themselves to the destruction of Patriot Leadership. However, at one point, Tarleton envisioned the capture of Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson.  The signing of the Declaration of Independence meant that the patriot leaders were, by International law, traitors and subject to death if captured, much as Nathan Hale died.  Would the war have ended if the British had sent assassins after Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams?  I would think that this is not necessarily true, but if the war had gone on, our republic would have been a much darker and uglier entity without these men at the helm.  We do know that the targeting of the leadership of Al Queda, up to and including Osama Bin Laden, has neutered that murderous and bloody cult.  If Israel is to survive, the leadership of Hamas has to be brought to Justice both for the massacres of October 7th and the inhumane treatment of its people used as human shields to amp up the body count.  That means not just in Rafah but in Qatar as well.  The British never fully grasped how to win the War of Independence.  The Israelis are not so unknowing.