• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1380 0

before. December had brought dark days of deep cold, and the harbor was alive with floes of ice. The fleet finally set sail in a hard gale, snow driving across the decks of a hundred ships. From the first day at sea, there were destructive problems from the weather, some transports blown uncontrollably to founder in the shallows, one disappearing altogether, far beyond the horizon to the east. As the fleet worked its way southward, the storms were relentless, and the pitching waves shattered bulkheads and cracked masts. Though the conditions were so very different from Howe’s disastrous journey to Pennsylvania, the results were eerily similar. Horses could not endure the tumbling chaos of the holds, and many died, carcasses cast overboard. The men fared poorly as well, sickness magnified by the sharp cold and icy rains.

The journey required more than a month to complete, and the fleet was so badly damaged, any thoughts of an immediate assault on Charleston were set aside. By early February, the army was put ashore near Savannah, and within a few weeks, they finally began the mission by a march over land toward Charleston.

The rebel forces in the city were commanded by Benjamin Lincoln, a Massachusetts man who had distinguished himself from the first days of the siege of Boston to the defeat of Burgoyne. Lincoln had nearly four thousand men in his defenses, and continued to call in every militia unit and other strength he could gather into the fortified city. It was a disastrous mistake.

Clinton did not repeat his errors of four years before. Despite a stubborn unwillingness to cooperate with Clinton’s detailed plans, Arbuthnot wisely did not attempt to engage the impregnable position at Fort Moultrie, instead slipped his warships quickly past the rebel artillery. Within days, Clinton was preparing the first of three major siege lines, and Lincoln’s strong defensive position became irrelevant. The maneuver required weeks to perform, and inspired uncomfortable memories of the slowness of William Howe. But even Cornwallis understood that a siege requires time. The final piece of the trap was laid when Cornwallis moved inland and severed Lincoln’s escape route. With the British lines moving ever closer to the city itself, the rebel command had no alternative. Benjamin Lincoln was forced to surrender the city, along with the entire army under his command. The collapse rivaled the rebel disaster at Fort Washington as their worst defeat of the war.

MAY 1780

With Charleston secure, Clinton had sent Cornwallis inland, establishing outposts at key crossroads and larger towns. Despite Clinton’s optimism, Cornwallis still expected resistance, but the occupation progressed with almost no confrontations. With Lincoln’s surrender, any organized command of rebel forces had disappeared.

Clinton had issued a proclamation, requiring the citizenry either to pledge an oath of allegiance to King George, or sign a parole, pledging not to take up arms against the British for the remainder of the war. Cornwallis had unpleasant memories of William Howe’s decrees, which seemed always to prompt more protest and hostility than any benefit the British received. But South Carolina was a different place from New Jersey, and Cornwallis was surprised to see the outpouring of signatures on the official ledgers. To Clinton, it was confirmation that South Carolina had never truly been an enemy of the crown. But Cornwallis saw past the signatures to the people themselves. In each small town they would come out and receive the British troops with quiet curiosity. Their names on a piece of paper meant little more than a means of easing their fears. Most never read the document, signed because men with bayonets stood close by. If the papers were signed, the bayonets went away. It made little difference what uniform the soldiers wore.

Cornwallis spent much of his time in the town of Camden, extending British control like the spokes of a wheel. With Clinton in Charleston, Cornwallis’ duty was relatively calm, and the entire command beneath him seemed