The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [170]
American finances were also at a low point and recruitment was difficult. The French alliance had not been as successful as most hoped and British commander Henry Clinton had just asked the home office for ten thousand more men and more warships to win the war.
Furthermore, the British had established a near stranglehold in the southern states, where they had the support of thousands of Loyalists. The Redcoats’ capture of Charleston, along with five thousand American soldiers in May 1780, and the continued occupation of Savannah, solidified their dominance in the lower half of the country.
At first, efforts to end British control of the South failed. Blithely overriding Washington’s recommendation of Nathanael Greene, Congress named Horatio Gates, the “hero of Saratoga,” to lead forces there. His leadership proved a disaster. Cornwallis promptly routed Gates’s army of two thousand regulars and two thousand militia on August 16, 1780, at Camden, South Carolina. Gates foolishly matched his poorly trained militia up against Cornwallis’s best troops; the militia folded quickly, most of the men dropping their guns and running. Hundreds of Americans were killed, wounded, captured, or went home. Within two weeks, his army shrank to just seven hundred men.
Two events then helped the Americans. Militia defeated a large Loyalist army under Col. Patrick Ferguson at King’s Mountain, South Carolina, on October 7, 1780. Ferguson was shot dead. This severely undercut the Loyalist movement. Then, in early December, Greene replaced Gates.
Greene knew that he was an underdog in any battle he entered against Cornwallis and his savage cavalry leader, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton. Greene cagily engaged in a hit and run strategy, trying to inflict huge losses on the British in every battle and then escape to fight another day. Cornwallis was so eager to destroy Greene’s army that he chased it all over the South. Cornwallis could do so because the home office gave him total freedom of movement; he no longer had to clear any decisions with Henry Clinton, whom he despised.
The Americans surprisingly defeated the British at the Cowpens, South Carolina, January 17, 1781, capturing five hundred British regulars, and immediately fled. Cornwallis pursued them to get his men back, but could not catch the Americans. Later, on March 15, the two forces met again at Guilford Court House, in North Carolina. The British won this time, but suffered heavy losses. Throughout 1781, Greene had the assistance of nearly two thousand local militia led by shrewd backcountry partisan commanders, such as South Carolina’s Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox.” They all engaged the British in skirmishes, sometimes winning and sometimes losing, and inflicting heavy losses on Cornwallis’s army. At Eutaw Springs, in a bloody confrontation, the Americans again lost but killed 693 of Cornwallis’s men, nearly one quarter of his army, the highest percentage loss of men in the entire Revolution.
Cornwallis finally joined forces with General Benedict Arnold in Virginia. Arnold was ordered back to New York. On August 1, Cornwallis took his combined forces of six thousand to