Conceived in Liberty (256 page)

The southern strategy, however, was calculated to appeal to the budget-conscious gentry. It meant that the war in America could be carried on and supposedly won with the absolute minimum of additional expense to Great Britain: the American Tories themselves would supply the manpower! Bemused also by the overestimate of Tory strength, and influenced by the sentimental argument that Britain had the duty to come to the support of its suffering loyal subjects overseas, the gentry agreed to continue supporting the war effort, thereby irrevocably committing the crown to a strategy heavily reliant on Tory contributions to the war. This commitment itself reinforced and propelled the British tendency to overrate the Tories. As Professor Paul Smith concludes:

Consequently, the administration became dangerously dependent upon the American Loyalists. The weakness of Britain’s reliance upon the southern Loyalists was that [it]... unwisely combined political and military considerations. It was one matter to base a single operation on the expectation that widespread civilian support would appear; if that operation failed, another maneuver could be tried. It was quite a different matter to use this argument to secure Parliamentary support for the War; if the anticipated civilian support failed to materialize at any time, the same dubious strategy would have to be repeated endlessly in other areas for no other reason than to maintain the necessary political support.

As Britain came to depend increasingly upon the Loyalists to justify continuance of the War against the colonies... it became impossible for officials in the ministry to formulate a grand strategy independently of their image of conditions in the colonies. In order to maintain a Parliamentary majority, the administration tethered its strategy to the chimera of Loyalist support. Moreover,... it fell victim to every unfounded report that American resistance was crumbling.”
*

The opposition attacks in Parliament reached a peak in the spring of 1779, increasing emphasis on American Tories and on the southern strategy. By early 1779, the British government had expended hundreds of lives and millions of pounds on the American war, and it was certainly no nearer to success than at the outset. Naval and army losses had been severe during 1778, the year when the war had become worldwide. Only the iron determination of George III to carry on despite all opposition and all setbacks prevented the North ministry from toppling.

The Whig General Howe tried to salvage his reputation by opening up the entire question of the wisdom of the war to subdue America.
*
At the inquiry voted by Parliament, Gen. Charles Grey effectively told the country that the goal of crushing the American Revolution was completely impractical without a huge increase of public expenses—an increase that would not be tolerated by the country gentry. The administration rebutted with Gen. James Robertson, their most important witness. Grey had correctly maintained that the great bulk of the American people supported the Revolution, but Robertson countered with the thesis that “more than two-thirds” of the American people were against, or at least would not actively support, the Revolution. He argued, in effect, that the bulk of its American subjects were really docile and happy under the benign rule of their imperial masters; only a small minority of fanatical zealots (“outside agitators” had not yet been invented) tyrannized the bulk of the people. Therefore, all that would be necessary to win would be to land a “British presence” in the country to relieve the people of the pressure exerted by the league of fanatics, and the public would flock to the imperial banner; the British needed only to arm the American people “in their own defense.” He concluded that “the object of the war was to enable the loyal subjects of America to get free from the tyranny of the rebels, and to let the country follow its inclination, by returning to the King’s government.”

It was Robertson’s testimony that enabled the government to turn back the opposition’s challenge, but this line of argument committed the government even more heavily to the American Tory-southern strategy, and made it ever more dependent upon victories in the South.

To meet any British threat to the South, Washington had sent there, as head of the Southern Department, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, who arrived at Charleston in December 1778. Lincoln was amiable, mild-mannered to the point of insipidity, and widely beloved, but as an officer he was undistinguished. Before being raised to this post, he had never
won a single battle. Posing no threat to the commander in chief’s office or prestige, this good-natured mediocrity was picked for a vital command while Washington’s vindictiveness and jealousy were forcing America’s best generals into semi-retirement or out of the service altogether.

*
John Shy, “The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War,” in S. Kurtz and J. Hutson, eds.,
Essays on the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), pp. 129–45.

*
Shy, “The Military Conflict,” p. 140.

**
Alden,
The American Revolution 1775–1783.
p. 227.

*
Paul H. Smith,
Loyalists and Redcoats
(Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 98.

*
Cf. Smith,
Loyalists and Redcoats,
pp. 115ff.

The British ignited the war in the South on December 23, 1778, landing an invasion force of 3,500 men under the command of Col. Archibald Campbell at the mouth of the Savannah River, just below Savannah, Georgia. Meanwhile, in a coordinated strike, General Augustine Prevost moved up by land from St. Augustine with 2,000 troops. Maj. Gen. Robert Howe, Lincoln’s predecessor, not yet replaced in the field, was there to defend Savannah with fewer than 900 men, mostly South Carolina and Georgia militia. Howe split his small force, weakening it further, leaving part south of Savannah at Fort Sunbury to check Prevost, and absurdly preparing himself to defend Savannah frontally against overwhelmingly superior British arms. To cap his strategic error of accepting direct confrontation, he added the tactical one of not choosing a defensible site, and he allowed himself to be nearly surrounded. Campbell easily smashed him on December 29 and seized Savannah. Howe’s folly led to more than 500 American casualties and losses, a staggering rate of well over 50 percent of the American force. British losses were almost nonexistent. Fort Sunbury was soon captured by Prevost, and 200 more men were lost to the American war effort. At the end of January, Prevost, now in command of the joint force, sent Campbell northwest up the Savannah River with 1,000 men to capture Augusta and erect garrisons throughout western Georgia.

In Augusta, Campbell administered the oath of allegiance to 1,400 citizens and formed them into twenty Tory militia companies. By February, all of Georgia was under British control. The first phase of the British campaign in the South had been a resounding success, and they rushed the
last royal governor, Sir James Wright, and the other loyal top officials back to Savannah to reestablish a British civil regime in Georgia. This regime was the only one during the war to convene a legislature under British authority. (Even in New York City the British never felt secure enough in their six continuous years of occupation to shift from military to civilian rule.) The old Tory proclivities of the Georgians quickly came to the fore; most of the people of Georgia were opportunists and they flocked to make their peace with the British restoration under guarantee of royal protection. Reliance on Tories seemed truly to be the key to conquest of the South.

The Savannah River became the line between the two main armies: General Lincoln took up his post with 3,600 men at Purysburg on the South Carolina side of the river, north of the town of Savannah, while Prevost was stationed at Ebenezer across the river with over 3,000 men. The river was too wide and swampy for a crossing in force by Prevost or the Americans; but Prevost used the Royal Navy to land a Major Gardiner and 220 men to seize Port Royal Island behind Purysburg. Lincoln quickly sent Gen. William Moultrie to the island to raise the militia, and he assembled over 300 men to occupy Beaufort, the island’s major town. Moultrie’s force fought off the British in a pitched, if necessarily small-scale, battle on February 3, and Gardiner withdrew with heavy losses. This battle stopped the British military momentum and for the time being halted any attempt to invade South Carolina.

Meanwhile, Colonel Campbell, encouraged by his reception by the Tories at Augusta, had sent 200 mounted Tories under the command of Col. John Hamilton, an aristocratic and highly influential Scots Highlander, to the Georgia back country to recruit more Tory militia. This stimulated Colonel Boyd, a leading Tory of North Carolina, to round up 700 Scottish Tories of that state and march to back-country Georgia to join Hamilton. By plundering happily as they marched, Boyd’s men gained few adherents to the royal cause in the Carolina back country and alienated many. After easily driving off a small party of American militia under a Captain Anderson, Boyd and his party crossed the Savannah River into up-country Georgia. While they were relaxing at Kettle Creek, on the Georgia side of the river, a party of fewer than 300 South Carolina militia surrounded the camp on three sides and fell upon them in a surprise maneuver. The outcome was a total rout of the superior Tory militia; Boyd was killed, nearly 200 other casualties were suffered, and almost half the survivors fled back to their homes. Three hundred of the beaten men were able to scurry to join Campbell at Augusta. The patriot militia, in contrast, had only about 30 casualties. The 75 captured Tories were taken to South Carolina, where they were tried
en masse
on charges of high treason, and all were condemned to death. While seventy were pardoned, five leading
Tories were duly hanged for treason—a hanging that taught the back-country Tories an impressive lesson.

The triumph at Kettle Creek brought into prominence Col. Andrew Pickens of the South Carolina militia, commander of the victorious force. The dour young Pickens, a Presbyterian elder, was to prove to be one of the finest guerrilla leaders of the war.

The nearly simultaneous victories at Beaufort and Kettle Creek in early February 1779 not only greatly buoyed American hopes, but they also turned the tide of public opinion in back-country Georgia. The emboldened patriot militia flocked to Lincoln’s camp and inspired him to try to retake Georgia. He sent two contingents to the up country, one a force of 1,500 North Carolina militia under Gen. John Ashe to Briar Creek, and another of 1,200 men under Gen. Andrew Williamson of Georgia to the east bank of the Savannah opposite Augusta. Seeing this formidable force coming upriver, Campbell decided to leave Augusta and march back to Savannah. This withdrawal disheartened the Tories of the back country, and their militia companies wilted away, leaving upper Georgia, including Augusta, open to the rebels. Furthermore, by spreading themselves too thin in Georgia and consequently being forced to contract again, Campbell disheartened Tory sentiment throughout the South.

As General Ashe, his forces swelled to nearly 1,700 men, eagerly pursued Campbell’s retreating force down to Briar Creek, about halfway to Savannah, General Prevost devised a brilliant plan to defeat him. Prevost sent his younger brother, Col. Mark Prevost, with 900 men in a wide flanking movement around Ashe, to encircle the American force and attack it from the rear. Ashe learned of Prevost’s advance, but took no steps whatever to meet or forestall it. As a result of this remarkable display of incompetence, he was attacked simultaneously from front and rear, and on March 3 his army was totally shattered. Nearly 200 Americans were killed in this Battle of Briar Creek, and almost another 200 were captured, along with seven cannon and almost all of Ashe’s arms and ammunition. Of the rest of Ashe’s large force, nearly two-thirds scattered to their homes. Approximately a third of the southern army had been lost. Georgia had been saved for the British, who had lost only a tiny handful of men.

Despite the heavy American losses, Lincoln’s forces continued to swell with militia recruits, and he still determined to march into Georgia. Leaving only Moultrie’s 1,000 men to guard the lower Savannah, Lincoln marched upriver with 4,000 men on April 23 to take Augusta. General Prevost saw that lower South Carolina was weakly defended, and anxious to draw Lincoln back to South Carolina, he crossed the river with over 2,500 men to take Purysburg on April 29. After successive rear guard skirmishes, his advance pushed Moultrie all the way back to Charleston,
the only major city of the three southernmost states and by far the leading port in the South. Prevost pursued the Americans, and reaching Charleston on May 12, he demanded that the city surrender. Even though 3,000 American troops were within the city’s walls, the fainthearted, the opportunistic, and the conservatives tried to opt out of the war effort. President John Rutledge (who had been given almost dictatorial powers by the legislature) and his fellow conservatives in the upper house prevailed upon South Carolina to propose an agreement of neutrality for the state for the remainder of the war, an offer which Prevost scorned.

The South Carolinians were prevented from making further moves in the same direction by the return of Lincoln’s large force. Prevost retreated to John’s Island below Charleston and kept a fortified bridgehead on the mainland at Stono Ferry. From there he decided to extricate himself by sea to Savannah. He left behind a vastly outnumbered rear guard of 900 under Col. John Maitland. On June 19, Lincoln attacked Stono Ferry with only 1,200 of his 6,000 men against the fortified position. Moultrie, on James Island, failed to provide expected support, and Lincoln had to retreat after suffering heavy losses and a large number of desertions. Prevost completed his withdrawal to Savannah and left Maitland in occupation of Port Royal Island, which could be protected by British control of the sea. Prevost had gained little from his swift foray to Charleston except for intensive looting of the civilian population
en route.
The British found great numbers of slaves flocking to welcome and aid them, but their gratitude consisted of selling the thousands of Negroes back into slavery in the West Indies. Once again, they had failed to take the opportunity to split America, especially the South, by offering to liberate the slaves. But then, the British could scarcely have been expected to suppress a revolution by outdoing the Americans in so radical an act.