Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Southern theater
Part of the American Revolutionary War
The Battle of Cowpens
Date 1775–1782 Location Virginia and present Southeastern United States Result Surrender of British army at Yorktown

The Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War became the central area of operations on land after France entered the war on the side of the United States. During the first three years of the conflict, the primary military encounters were in the north. After the failure of the Saratoga campaign, the British largely abandoned operations in the Middle Colonies and pursued a strategy of pacification in the Southern Colonies.

[edit] Early operations, 1775–1776

In Virginia, what became known as the Gunpowder Incident took place on April 20, 1775, a day after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, an event with some parallels. Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, attempted to remove gunpowder stored in Williamsburg to an armed British ship in the James River. Dunmore saw rising unrest in the colony and sought to deprive Virginia militia of supplies needed for insurrection. Patriot militia led by Patrick Henry forced Dunmore to pay for the gunpowder.

After the war began, Dunmore issued an emancipation proclamation in November 1775, promising freedom to runaway slaves who fought for the British. On December 9, 1775, American Revolutionaries defeated Loyalist forces (including runaway slaves) under Governor Dunmore at the Battle of Great Bridge. After the defeat, Dunmore and his troops took refuge on British ships off of Norfolk; Dunmore bombarded and burned the town on January 1, 1776. He was driven from an island in Chesapeake Bay that summer, never to return.

"Flight of Lord Dunmore"

In June 1776, General Henry Clinton sailed south to attack Charleston, South Carolina. This ended in humiliating defeat for the British, and the Patriots remained in control of the southern states for the next three years.

[edit] British campaign in the South

In 1778, the British once again turned their attention to the South, where they hoped to regain control by recruiting thousands of Loyalists.

On December 29, 1778, an expeditionary corps of 3,500 men from Clinton's army in New York captured Savannah, Georgia. An attempt by French and Revolutionary forces to retake Savannah failed on October 9, 1779. In this assault, Count Kazimierz Pułaski, the Polish commander of American Revolutionary cavalry, was mortally wounded. With Savannah secured, Clinton could now launch a new assault on Charleston, South Carolina, where he had failed in 1776.

Clinton finally moved against Charleston in 1780, blockading the harbor in March and building up about 10,000 troops in the area. Inside the city, General Benjamin Lincoln commanded about 2,650 Continentals and 2,500 militiamen. When British Colonel Banastre Tarleton cut off the city's supply lines in victories at Monck's Corner in April and Lenud's Ferry in early May, Charleston was surrounded.

On May 12, 1780, General 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 biggest city and seaport, winning perhaps the greatest British victory of the war and paving the way for what seemed like certain conquest of the South.

The young and dashing Banastre Tarleton was perhaps the best cavalry commander in the war—and the most hated man in the South. This portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1782.

The remnants of the southern Continental Army began to withdraw to North Carolina but were pursued by Colonel Tarleton, who defeated them at the Battle of Waxhaws on May 29, 1780. Among the Americans, a story spread that Tarleton had massacred many Americans after they had surrendered (the truth of this charge is still debated). “Bloody Tarleton” became a hated name, and “Tarleton’s quarter”—referring to his reputed lack of mercy (or “quarter”)—soon became a rallying cry.

With these events, organized American military activity in the South had collapsed. The states however carried on their functions, and the war was carried on by partisans such as Francis Marion. General Clinton turned over British operations in the South to Lord Cornwallis. The Continental Congress dispatched General Horatio Gates 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, setting the stage for Cornwallis to invade North Carolina.

The tables were quickly turned on Cornwallis, however. One wing of his army was utterly defeated at the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780, delaying his move into North Carolina. Kings Mountain was a battle between American Loyalist militia and American Patriot militia. The British plan to raise large Loyalist armies failed; not enough Loyalists enlisted, and those who did were at risk once the British army moved on. Only in Georgia did the Crown manage to create a counter-revolutionary civil government.

Gates was replaced by George 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. Greene proceeded to wear down his opponents in a series of battles (Guilford Court House, Hobkirk's Hill, Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs), each of them tactically a victory for the British but giving no strategic advantage to the victors. Greene summed up his approach in a motto that would become famous: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Unable to capture or destroy Greene's army, Cornwallis moved north to Virginia.

[edit] Yorktown campaign

British forces raided Virginia sporadically during the war. In January 1781, the rebel capital of Richmond was put to the torch by Benedict Arnold, who had sold his services to the other side and was now a British general.

In March 1781, General Washington dispatched Marquis de Lafayette to defend Virginia. The young Frenchman had 3,200 men at his command, but British troops in the state, now reinforced and commanded by Cornwallis, totaled 7,200. Lafayette skirmished with Cornwallis, avoiding a decisive battle while gathering reinforcements. "The boy cannot escape me," Cornwallis is supposed to have said. However, Cornwallis was unable to trap Lafayette, and so he moved his forces to Yorktown, Virginia, in July in order to link up with the British navy. The French navy was there instead, and Cornwallis was forced to surrender at the siege of Yorktown.

[edit] See also

• South Carolina during the American Revolution

[edit] Further reading

• Alden, John R. The South in the Revolution, 1763–1789. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1957.
• Cashin, Edward J. William Bartram and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57003-325-0.
• Chidsey, Donald Barr. The War in the South: the Carolinas and Georgia in the American Revolution, an Informal History. New York: Crown Publishers, 1969.
• Crow, Jeffrey J. and Larry E. Tise, eds. The Southern Experience in the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978. ISBN 0-8078-1313-3.
• Eckenrode, H. J. The Revolution in Virginia. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964.
• Lumpkin, Henry. From Savannah to Yorktown: the American Revolution in the South. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1981. ISBN 0-87249-408-X.
• O'Donnell, James H. Southern Indians in the American Revolution. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973. ISBN 0-87049-131-8.
• Selby, John E. The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783. Williamsburg, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1988. ISBN 0-87935-075-X.
• Thayer, Theodore. Nathanael Greene: Strategist of the American Revolution. 1960.