*Although the early phases of the American Revolution were primarily fought in the North, there were a few battles in the South as well.

*One day after the Battles of Lexington and Concord (20 April, 1775), Lord Dunmore tried to take the gunpowder stores in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Locals sounded the alarm and the militia, some led by Patrick Henry, surrounded Williamsburg.  Dunmore further infuriated Virginians by offering freedom to any slave who would fight for the British and threatening to have the navy bombard Yorktown and burn Williamsburg to ashes if he was personally attacked.  Eventually the royal treasury paid for the gunpowder and Dunmore fled to a ship of the Royal Navy.

*On 28 June, 1776, Sir Henry Clinton led an attack on Charleston, South Carolina.  Charleston’s defence was led by William Moultrie.  He built a fort of palmetto trees and sand on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbour.  The green palmetto trees were soft and the cannonballs bounced off them. 

*Neither side lost many men, although one British ship got stuck on a sandbar and when the British could not pull it off, they burnt it.  The defenders retrieved a few cannon before it exploded when the fire reached the ship’s powder stores.  Soon the palmetto was added to South Carolina’s state flag, which dates to the Revolutionary War.

*Georgians tried to attack East Florida several times, but were never able to take it.  Otherwise, there was little military action in the South in most of 1777 and 1778.

*After Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga and Clinton’s retreat from Philadelphia, the British began to concentrate on the South.  For one thing, it was felt that there were more Loyalists in the South who might support the British army if it moved into that area.

*On 29 December, 1778 a British force of 3,500 troops sent from New York by Henry Clinton captured the city of Savannah, by far the largest of the settlements in Georgia.  By mid-January, 2,000 more troops had marched up from St Augustine to join them.  Furthermore, thousands of Georgia’s slaves escaped from their owners into British protection.

*Although American and French forces attempted to re-take Savannah, they accomplished nothing except taking significant casualties.  Soon the majority of American forces (aside from local militia) had withdrawn to Charleston, South Carolina.  Georgia would remain a Loyalist stronghold until the end of the war.

*In December, 1779, General Clinton, along with Charles Cornwallis, sailed from New York for South Carolina.  They brought 8,500 troops and were soon joined by 14,000 more.

*On 11 April, 1780, Clinton laid siege to Charleston, which was under the command of General Benjamin Lincoln.  The British cavalry under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Banstre Tarleton was able to completely cut Lincoln off from re-supply of escape.  A month later, on 12 May, Lincoln was forced to surrender along with over 5,000 men—the worst defeat of the war for America, and the largest surrender of American forces until the surrender of Bataan in 1942. 

*Many of the prisoners were loaded on prison ships, on which as many as three-fourths of the prisoners may have died.  Among those who died on Charleston’s prison ships was the mother of Andrew Jackson, who had gone there to tend the sick and wounded prisoners of war.

*Still, with the fall of Savannah and Charleston, Southern Loyalists became much bolder in fighting back against the Revolutionaries, and soon much of the South was embroiled in a civil war, as loyalists and patriots attacked each other over the issues of the war or used them as an excuse to settle old grudges.

*What remained of the Continental Army in South Carolina began to retreat towards North Carolina.  One such group of about 400 men was commanded by Colonel Abraham Buford, who had been sent from Virginia to assist the forces in Charleston, but started back home when he learnt that the city had fallen.

*On the way back to Virginia, his men were pursued and eventually caught by Banastre Tarleton’s British Legion (a mixed force of cavalry and infantry mostly made up of American Loyalists; they wore a green uniform and were sometimes known as the Green Jackets).

*Tarleton sent a message to Buford claiming that he had 700 men (when he really had 150 cavalrymen) and demanding Buford’s surrender.  His message also said, ‘Resistance being vain, to prevent the effusion of human blood, I make offers which can never be repeated,’ meaning that he would not ask Buford to surrender again.  Buford replied, ‘I reject your proposals, and shall defend myself to the last extremity.’

*Despite this, Buford kept marching, perhaps hoping to outpace Tarleton, rather than preparing for battle.  When Tarleton’s men attacked anyway, both against his rear and this flanks, Buford had his men form a line and wait until the enemy was ten yards away before firing, which did not allow them time to reload.  Soon they were being torn to pieces by the attacking cavalry.

*Buford tried to surrender by waving a white flag.  At about the same time, Tarleton’s horse was hit by a musketball and fell.  His men thought he had been killed (while Buford’s men were asking for mercy), and they fell upon the surrendering soldiers and began to massacre them.  Although Buford’s men begged for quarter, none was given.  Many Patriots later said that Tarleton ordered this attack so he would not have to deal with prisoners.  113 Americans were killed, and over 200 were captured.  Only 5 of Tarleton’s men were killed and 12 wounded.

*Word of this massacre of surrendering men begging for mercy spread throughout the colonies, turned some people away from the Loyalist cause, and angered many Americans who called showing no mercy to surrendering soldiers ‘Tarleton’s Quarter.’ 

*Tarleton earned a cruel reputation otherwise as well, particularly during his hunts for Southern guerrillas—according to one story, he stopped at the farm of a Patriot officer who had died, ordered his body dug up, burnt the house, crops, and outbuildings after requiring the dead officer’s widow to serve him dinner. 

*As most of the Loyalist and Patriots in Georgia and South Carolina were not organised as part of a regular army, some of them turned to guerrilla warfare.  One of the most famous guerrilla leaders was Francis Marion.  In his youth he had been a sailor in the Caribbean (until his schooner was sunk by a whale), and he had fought against the Cherokee in the French and Indian War, taking part in James Grants’s destruction of Cherokee villages and their crops.

*He was given a commission in 1776, and only escaped capture at Charleston because he was at home recuperating from a broken ankle.  When he recovered, he gathered what militia he could and began a guerrilla war against the British.  He attacked small groups of soldiers and captured supplies, then vanished into the woods and swamps of South Carolina, where the British could not find him.  Tarleton was among the officers charged with hunting him down, but he had so little luck that he said, ‘As for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him.’  Afterwards Marion was known as the Swamp Fox.

*There were still regular soldiers in the South, even though they had left South Carolina itself.  Horatio Gates was placed in command of the Southern armies after Lincoln’s surrender, and arrived in North Carolina in July, 1780.  At about the same time, Clinton returned to New York and left Cornwallis in charge of the British forces in the South.

*Gates had a larger army than Cornwallis, but Cornwallis was more aggressive, and moved to engage Gates’s army which was camped near Camden, a valuable crossroads in northern South Carolina.  Although Cornwallis was looking for Gates, both sides were surprised with the British cavalry out scouting under Tarleton ran into American cavalry on their own scouting mission.  To handle the shock of this encounter, both sides withdrew their scouts and prepared for a battle the next day (16 August, 1780).

*Cornwallis had about 2,100 men while Gates had over 4,000, but disease had left at most 3,700 of Gates’s men fit for duty.  Of them, over 2/3 were militia who had never fought in a battle before.  Gates put them in front, with regular infantry and cavalry to support them.

*Gates’s untrained militia faced experienced British and Loyalist troops.  Many of them ran without firing a shot.  The more experienced American soldiers were ordered to advance, and some did well without even knowing that many of their comrades were fleeing—meaning that they ended up isolated in the field as the American line disintegrated, and eventually Tarleton was able to attack the American rear and the last American regulars and the one North Carolina militia unit that had held out managed to retreat through a swamp.  Tarleton chased retreating Americans for twelve miles before turning back. 

*The Continental Army lost at least 1,000 casualties and most of its supplies, while the British lost 350 killed and wounded.

*Among the Americans who fled the battle was General Horatio Gates, who ran almost as soon as the militia did.  Within hours he was in Charlotte, North Carolina, 60 miles away, and by the 19th of August he was in Hillsborough, North Carolina, 180 miles away.  He was soon relieved of command and replaced by Nathaniel Greene, who arrived in  December.  While the American army retreated into North Carolina, things looked grim indeed for Southern Independence.

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