Part I of the Southern Campaign In the last issue we left poor general Cornwallis for the time being to follow the renewed campaigning in South Carolina. Greene decided to ignore Cornwallis' move north, instead deciding to strike at the British outposts and garrisons in that state. He sent Lee to once again hook up with Marion who was doing his usual outstanding job harassing the British lines of communications. The two successfully took Fort Watson on 23 April. Greene, meanwhile, decided to march against Camden and hopefully meet with Sumter and his sizable body of militia. Unfortunately, Sumter never materialized and Greene halted his 1,200 effectives just north of Camden, feeling that he was unable to take the town. However, by setting up camp nearby, he was hoping to effectively cut off supplies and force the British garrison to withdraw to the coast. Francis Lord Rawdon, based at Camden, was in command of South Carolina and knew nothing of Greene's approach until he literally showed up on the doorstep. He decided to not try and reinforce Fort Watson and concerned himself with the threat against Camden, by then a major British supply dump. By mid-April, he was aware of Cornwallis' move to Virginia and had been instructed to fall back to Charleston. However, for once British intelligence provided an accurate account of the American forces outside the town. Rawdon found out he was only outnumbered 1,200 to 900 and decided to attack on 25 April, a true adherent of Cornwallis if there ever was one. Hobkirk's Hill Greene's position outside of Camden was on Hobkirk's Hill which sat astride the main road. Like at Guilford, his army was set and awaited the British attack. Greene was beginning to successfully turn both of Rawdon's flanks as the British army advanced. However, his attack in the center, spearheaded by the 1st Maryland Regiment, collapsed as the result of loud British shouting! The 1st MD, the same guys who beat the pants off of the British at Cowpens and fought toe to toe with the Guards at Guilford, just upped and ran away. No one knows why which just goes to show you freak morale rolls on dice should always be possible. The British savagely counterattacked in the center and the Continentals remaining there began missing a few morale checks of their own. Seeing things deteriorate rapidly, Greene ordered a retreat. The result was another pyrrhic victory for the British, who with Cornwallis and the bulk of the army gone, could ill afford the losses. Greene "won" nonetheless because on 10 May, Rawdon decided to retreat from Camden, principally because his lines of communication with Charleston were becoming increasingly fragile. The retreat opened a floodgate of Patriot militia victories against a number of British outposts. By the end of May, the main outposts connecting the port cities to Augusta and Ninety Six had been taken. Marion was even able to take the port town of Georgetown on 6 June. Ninety Six Riding this wave of success, Greene decided to try and pick off the two remaining major outposts in the interior, Augusta and Ninety Six. He sent Lee and Pickens to conduct the operations against Augusta while he led the attack against Ninety Six. Lee and Pickens began operations against the forts defending Augusta on 23 May. Siege work dragged on until 5 June when the British garrison finally surrendered. Meanwhile, Greene invested Ninety Six on 22 May. His army was rather small for the operation numbering only 1,000. The British garrison was led by L. Col Cruger who commanded elements of two regular Loyalist regiments plus some local Tory militia. His total came to about 500. Greene had two parallels dug for the approach to the star fort and by 30 May was 100 yards away. Three days later, a third parallel was begun 60 yards away. Cruger estimated he had about 1 months supplies left and was hoping for a relief column to arrive. Lee and Pickens arrived from Augusta on 8 June and Greene picked up the pace of siege operations. Cruger was not quiet during this time having sent out a number of sorties that bloodied the Americans and forcing them to proceed slower than anticipated. Work on the third parallel did not proceed quickly, mainly because of Cruger's harassing activities. It was not completed until 18 June and by that time, Greene had been aware for a week that Rawdon was en route from Charleston with a 2,000 man strong relief force. Realizing he was running out of time, Greene ordered the assault on the fort on the 18th. It was bloody and repulsed. Cruger's garrison was about out of water and food and would have eventually surrendered had not Greene been forced to retreat in the face of the British relief column. Rawdon's force arrived on the 21st after a horrible force march of 14 days. Much of the army was in no shape to pursue Greene who had left two days earlier. Nonetheless, Rawdon doggedly continued after Greene with about 800 men. It did not last long since the weather became unbearably hot. Rawdon ordered the abandonment of Fort 96 so Greene's strategic goal was again met despite being forced to withdraw. Summer of 1781 Major operations halted during the summer of 1781 because of the aforementioned weather. One sharp encounter at Quinby Bridge occurred in July did break up the hot hazy summer although the usual minor skirmishes and harassment actions continued unabated. Sumter, Lee, and Marion were involved at Quinby Bridge. However, tactical ineptitude and imperious manner during the battle so disgusted Lee and Marion, they left him the next day. In fact, Sumter had pretty much alienated most of his fellow commanders during the course of the Southern campaign. Despite not inflicting significant losses on British forces during the summer, the Crown's control was pretty much confined to areas just inland from the coastline between Charleston and Savannah. Greene bivouacked the army near the Santee river in central South Carolina and it was not until late August that the British felt able to once again try and crush the Americans. LCol Alexander Stuart led a force from Charleston of about 2,300, comprised mostly of British regulars and the converged remnants of the Loyalist regiments from 96. Stuart arrived near the junction of the Congaree and Wateree rivers and by 28 August, Greene too was on the march. First, Greene proceeded north to Camden and then again southwest. Pickens joined him with a militia force as did Marion once the American army arrived in the vicinity of the British force which was now at Eutaw, about 40 miles southwest of its original position. The American army, reinforced by the militia, numbered about 2,100. Eutaw Springs Unlike the actions at Guilford and Cowpens, the battle at Eutaw Springs saw the Americans on the attack with the British defending. Greene used his now standard tactic of a front line comprised of militia and a second line with Continentals. Lee's Legion was posted on the right flank. Stuart's force was drawn up in one line and consisted of regular Loyalist and British line regiments. A small regiment (six companies altogether) of converged light infantry and grenadiers were posted on the British right next to Eutaw Creek. The American militia was from North and South Carolina. The South Carolinian contingent fought well, their Northern brethren, well, they fought like militia. Nonetheless, the first line, bolstered shortly after the battle began with some Continentals, briskly engaged the British line. At the point when the first line was wavering, Greene sent in the main body of Continentals with orders to fix bayonets and advance. They marched steadily forward, fired one crisp volley at 40 yards, and then charged. The hand to hand fighting was vicious. The British left and center collapsed and fell back. The right, held by the converged light infantry and grenadier companies, covered the withdraw in good order. The British line jackknifed backwards revealing its camp to the advancing Americans. The resulting flanking fire on the American line as it immediately began looting the camp plus a counterattack on the right flank by the small British cavalry contingent, convinced Greene the situation was unwinninable and he gave the order to withdraw. Bloody Battle The battle was bloody even by southern campaign standards. Stuart lost about 1/4 of his men killed or wounded, Greene around 1/3. The British held the field so Greene's record of never having won a battle remained intact, this time because of the ill-discipline of his troops in the face of free rum. Although Stuart had brought Greene into battle, he failed to crush him and, like Cornwallis at Guilford, lost too many men to continue operations inland. He retreated to Charleston having nothing else to do and Greene hovered nearby making sure the British did go back to the coast. Eutaw Springs marked the last major engagement in the south other than Yorktown. Greene had done his part, now the rest was up to Washington and the French. COLLAPSING AT YORKTOWN The siege of Yorktown itself is pretty boring in the sense that tons has been written on the subject and the operation was a classical 18th century approach. Instead, I will focus on the campaign itself that lead up to Cornwallis' surrender. Cornwallis' move to Virginia is not as dumb as has been portrayed over the years. After Guilford, I doubt Cornwallis would have been able to march back to Charleston without fighting Greene again. His supply line was non-existent and he would have put the army at greater risk without any strategic gain. On the other hand, British troops had been virtually flooding into Virginia since the beginning of 1781. Benedict Arnold led a punitive expedition consisting of his American Legion (comprised mainly of Continental deserters), the Queens Rangers, and the 80th Foot, through much of the Piedmont. Arnold ran roughshod over the ill-prepared Virginia militia. By April, 3,000 more troops under Major General Phillips had arrived in Portsmouth giving the British more than 4,000 regulars in the state. To Virginia Cornwallis had barely 1,400 effectives by April 1781. He sensibly moved north into Virginia where the theater of operations was shifting. Virginia was Clinton's latest focus on bringing the war to a close, hence the movement of men and material into the region. Cornwallis arrived to take command of the entire force on 20 May. When Arnold had arrived in January, Washington was eager to counter the move and sent Lafayette with 1,200 men into Virginia. The idea was to also send a French naval squadron and another 1,200 troops to the state. Unfortunately, when the small French fleet encountered a similar sized British one also at the mouth of the Chesapeake, it turned around and headed back to Newport. By the time Lafayette arrived in Virginia in March and April, he was outnumbered almost 3:1. When Cornwallis arrived at Petersburg on 20 May, additional reinforcements in the form of 2 German and 3 British regiments had also been sent to the region. Despite another 800 men under "Mad" Anthony Wayne plus some militia, Lafayette still only had about 3,000 troops to Cornwallis' 7000+ when operations began in earnest in June. Between April and June of 1781, most of the military activity in Virginia consisted of punitive raids by elements of the British Legion and Queens Rangers. In fact, in June Tarleton's men came very close to capturing Thomas Jefferson, then governor of Virginia. After Lafayette Cornwallis' main efforts during the summer was to try and crush Lafayette's force, generally ransack the Virginia countryside, and then retire to the coast. His "flying raiders" of the British Legion and Queens Rangers succeeded in besting American forces at Charlottesville and Williamsburg. In July, Cornwallis essentially duped Lafayette into committing to an attack near Jamestown. The French marquis thought he was attacking the British rear guard, not the entire army. Anthony Wayne's savage counterattack and the arrival of darkness essentially prevented a potentially catastrophic rout of the American army. Lafayette, with the exception of the battle at the Green Springs Plantation on 4 July, essentially tried to skirmish and generally harry Cornwallis' army. He did not want a stand-up battle even after getting significant reinforcements in the form of veteran Virginia riflemen and some additional state troops. Until mid-July, Cornwallis had conducted his Virginia campaign with the same vigor and aggressiveness in which he fought in the Carolinas. Unfortunately for him, his fate was once again in the hands of others, this time the British navy and Sir Henry Clinton. French Navy Clinton, ensconced in New York as always, had received word of a French naval force gathering in the Caribbean that would sail to New York. Clinton was always fearful that he never had enough troops to defend the Big Apple so immediately called for Cornwallis to send some troops back. That is why Cornwallis began his leisurely withdraw back to the Virginia coast instead of pursuing Lafayette further north. No sooner had the troops embarked on the ships at Portsmouth, Clinton countermanded the order. He now felt, rightly so, that French operations would be directed at British forces in the Chesapeake region. Washington and Rochambeau had come to that same conclusion in late July. They had 9,000 troops at their disposal and felt that New York was too strongly defended for an assault. With the French fleet under DeGrasse and its additional 3,000 troops, the decision was made to conduct operations against Cornwallis in Virginia. When Clinton countermanded the orders to send troops back to New York, he also ordered Cornwallis to establish a defensible station for the British Navy and to maintain a strong defense against the French threat. Cornwallis and his engineers decided that Yorktown provided the best anchorage and protection for warships. He, and the bulk of the British army, arrived at the sleepy hamlet by the end of July. Much speculation abounds on Cornwallis apparent sudden lapse into inactivity. Some have said he was in over his head with the number of troops at his disposal, previously never having more than 3,000 to command. Others say he was just following orders. Of course during the run of the Southern Campaign, he saw fit to go around Clinton when possible and keep him non- informed the rest of the time. This reasoning, nevertheless, overlooks the fact that Clinton was his superior and Cornwallis could not disobey a direct order, none of which he had received while campaigning in the Carolinas. Lastly, two years of almost constant campaigning in, at times, horrible weather, might have also taken a toll on the redoubtable soldier. For whatever reason, he followed orders and began fortifying Yorktown. Which was not really a bad idea since the British navy, hitherto, could always show up and take its troops away with impunity. Cornwallis obviously was counting on the British Navy to save his bacon if seriously threatened. Quite frankly, in August, there was nothing in Virginia that could threaten him. Lafayette, while a now sizable contingent of 5,000, was still outnumbered. But like Ferguson at Kings Mountain and Tarleton at Cowpens, other men, namely Admiral Graves of the British Navy, would hold the fate of Cornwallis and the ultimate outcome of the Southern Campaign. Benedict Arnold in Command An interesting "what if" presents itself at this point. Benedict Arnold had in fact been in command of Britain's Virginia forces for 8 days after Phillips had died and Cornwallis showed up to take over. He argued strenuously against Clinton's order to move to Yorktown. Instead, he felt Cornwallis should base his operations at Richmond. If Arnold had remained (he was ordered back to New York in May), things might have gone differently. He was a bold leader and had some sense of vision of the campaign. He would have complemented Cornwallis well. Had he stayed in Virginia and Cornwallis given him some leeway in operations, it is interesting to see what might have occurred. Arnold vs Lafayette would make for some interesting games. As I stated, the rest of the story has been told often. The British fleet failed poor Corny, Washington pulled off another one of his miraculous troop movements, and Lafayette's presence with 5,000 troops kept the Yorktown garrison from breaking out with ease. By mid-September, Washington had over 16,000 troops massed at Williamsburg. Cornwallis, again putting his faith in Clinton and a relief force, stayed put. On 19 October 1781, just as Clinton's force of 7,000 was setting sail from New York, Cornwallis surrendered. Even had he held out longer, Admiral Graves and the British force never tried to force its way past deGrasse who was still in the Chesapeake. The Southern Campaign was officially over. CONCLUSIONS Clinton's "grand strategy" for winning the war by shifting operations south was essentially sound. However, he, and every other British war planner, erroneously placed too much faith on the Loyalist population in areas where the army could not control. The initial phases of the Southern Campaign, the taking of Savannah and Charleston, seemed to validate Clinton's basic assumptions. The operations went smoothly and the Americans were certainly no match for the British. The disaster at Camden did nothing to change that perception. Unfortunately for the British, Clinton had no clear vision beyond taking Charleston. Cornwallis certainly knew what it would take to subdue the Carolinas but was thwarted by the blunders of subordinates and the fact he was fighting against what was essentially an insurgency movement, something we have had trouble handling in the 20th century much less in the 18th. Compounding British setbacks on the campaign trail after the relative ease of battles through Camden, were several directives which essentially un-paroled many who had been captured at Charleston. After that city fell, Clinton paroled all the militia. In effect, he allowed them to be neutrals for the rest of the war. Nonetheless, he wanted their support and in a significant error in judgment, stated in June 1780 that such parolees would be free from its effects if they submitted to the authority of His Majesty's government. The proclamation backfired and Clinton alienated most of those he was wooing. Furthermore, the more committed Loyalist population was never what the British assumed it to be, an unshakey prop if there ever was one on which to establish a strategic military campaign. Put these effects into an area that was fighting its own little civil war, and things got more muddled. Loyalties were mixed at best among a good portion of the population. Desertions were rampant on both sides. Greene even commented that by the end of the war, he was essentially fighting the British with their soldiers and they fought him with deserted Americans. I do not feel that any of the British commanders, strategic, operational, or tactical, understood the entire situation that faced them in 1780. Cornwallis and Clinton began an effective subjugation policy which might have ensured the safety of the Loyalist population. Yet when Clinton left and Cornwallis began his moves into North Carolina, American partisans showed how tenuous British control really was. The fact that Cornwallis eventually wound up in Virginia shows how fragile his existence in the field was outside of the Charleston-Savannah region. Cornwallis' Due To give him his due, Cornwallis probably saw best what was needed to win the campaign. His only real error in judgment, if you discount his faith in Clinton and the British fleet at Yorktown, was racing Greene to the Dan. Had he let Greene go and concentrated more on consolidating control in the Carolinas, while it is debatable whether if would have won over the "hearts and minds" of the locals, would have made it harder for the likes of Marion to continually undermine British rule and question the latter's ability to provide security for its citizens. On the other hand, I have always considered Greene an overrated tactician. He was consistently defeated on the battlefield and did nothing, in my mind, that showed any flair for tactics. He almost won at Eutaw and it was the fault of his army's ragged discipline that cost him the battle. Yet that tactical "deficiency", one shared by most American generals including Washington, put them at a severe disadvantage when facing their British counterparts who did have a flair for moving guys around the battlefield. However, that was not a fatal flaw. Greene, like Washington, had what no British general ever displayed, a strategic vision of what was needed to lose the battle and win the war. Washington too, had that vision and was willing to gamble his army on it when it counted, namely in the risky decision to trap Cornwallis at Yorktown. England needed a Wellington, and an effective war office at home, to win the Revolution and unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, both were about 10 years too late. Related Part I of the Southern Campaign Pour Le Merit: Rules for the AWI Uniforms of the Southern Campaign What Happened to AWI Commanders Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #67 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com