Carolina campaign

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For the campaign in the American Civil War, see Carolinas Campaign.
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The Carolina Campaign of the American Revolutionary War was a British effort during 1780 and 1781 to reclaim and hold the Carolinas after the fall of Charleston on May 12, 1780. Sir Henry Clinton, after capturing Charleston, left in June to return to New York, leaving a British force under Cornwallis to subjugate the rest of the Carolinas to British control.

Cornwallis swept north and capped his success in the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780. The American force was completely routed, the gallant Baron de Kalb was mortally wounded, and the American commander, Horatio Gates, fled from the field, outdistancing officers and men in retreat. Patriot defense was thus broken in the Carolinas, leaving only the swift and secretly moving guerrilla bands of Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens to harass the invaders.

The American cause was later advanced, however, with the remarkable Battle of King's Mountain (October 7, 1780), in which bands of frontier riflemen under Isaac Shelby, John Sevier, and William Campbell surrounded a Loyalist raiding party under British Major Patrick Ferguson. The British commander fell, and his men surrendered. This victory prefaced the campaign fought in North Carolina by General Nathanael Greene (who had been appointed to succeed Gates) and his lieutenants, notably Light Horse Harry Lee and Daniel Morgan. It was Morgan who, at the head of a raiding party, met and all but annihilated Cornwallis's raiders under Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens on January 17, 1781. Cornwallis then pushed north and at Guilford Courthouse won a Pyrrhic victory over Greene on March 15, 1781; the British had technically won but had to retreat to British-held Wilmington, North Carolina, and then to Virginia. Greene then joined the guerrilla leaders in freeing South Carolina. Twice more the Americans were defeated—by Lord Rawdon at Hobkirk's Hill on April 25, 1781 and by Colonel Alexander Stewart at Eutaw Springs on September 8, 1781—and yet the British had to retreat, returning to Charleston.

The campaign was a British failure and was, moreover, a triumph for the patriots that set the stage for the Yorktown campaign.