Following the surrender of the major coastal capital of Charlestown, South Carolina (present-day Charleston) to the joint army-navy expeditionary force led by Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Clinton and Vice Admiral Mariot Arbuthnot in May 1780, British land forces began to fan out across the Carolina interior to reestablish Royal control. When Clinton returned to New […]
Departing from Morristown, New Jersey, the Continental Army’s Maryland Division, Delaware Regiment, and 1st Continental artillery (approximately 1,400 men), were ordered south in April 1780 to break the siege of Charlestown and reinforce Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s beleaguered garrison. Upon reaching Petersburgh, Virginia, in early June, the surrender of Charlestown on May 12 became known. […]
Though he played a significant role in British victory at the Battle of Camden August 16, 1780, the leadership of Lt. Col. Francis, Lord Rawdon throughout the Camden District (northeast South Carolina) prior to that battle has long gone unrecognized.[1] Few know that Lord Rawdon was charged by his commander, Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, […]
Fabulous: adj. 1) wonderful; 2) existing only in fable. Emily Geiger is celebrated in numerous books and articles, memorialized on monuments, and portrayed in videos.[1] Her fame rests on the story that as a teenager she volunteered to carry a message from Gen. Nathanael Greene to Gen. Thomas Sumter in South Carolina when no man would […]
The first objective in Lt. Gen. Earl Cornwallis’s first invasion of North Carolina was the capture of Charlotte. He intended to establish a post there, not only to control adjacent territory, but also to facilitate his communication with the south as he advanced farther. At daybreak on September 7, 1780, accompanied by two 3-pounders, Cornwallis […]
For the past two years I have had the good fortune to be heading up a project to gather, for eventual publication, the correspondence of one of the more colorful officers on the British side, Francis Lord Rawdon. Rawdon was an Irishman, one of a handful of young officers who catapulted to command ahead of […]
Colonel Samuel Bryan is thought to be the highest-ranking Loyalist officer to remain in the United States after the Revolutionary War. Despite being a high-ranking British officer in command of hundreds of men, little is known about him and the militia unit he commanded. With the arrival of British regulars in the Carolinas in 1780, […]
It is well known that George Washington was Nathanael Greene’s mentor in many ways, but luckily for many of us he did not completely share Washington’s personal discipline regarding intelligence activities in his official papers. With the exception of the Culper Ring, where the case officer for the network, Benjamin Tallmadge, often kept copies of […]
Following the American surrender at Charleston on May 12, 1780, the Continental Army’s “Southern Department” was in disarray. Taken prisoner that day were 245 officers and 2,326 enlisted, including Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, the Southern Department’s commander-in-chief, along with militia and armed citizens, the most American prisoners surrendered at one time during the American Revolution.[1] […]
As far back as the eleventh century B.C. attackers confronted by fortified cities and towns, castles, and forts, used siege towers to elevate their own soldiers to heights equal to the defenders. The Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all used such weapons to defeat enemies situated behind high walls. These machines of war provided the […]
The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas after the fall of Charleston was a great arena of war with hundreds of small battlefields. Some were battles involving a few dozen men, Tory or Whig Americans fighting each other or Whigs fighting British regulars. Other engagements involved hundreds of men, with dozens of casualties. Today, most of […]
This article is a companion piece to one of mine that appeared in this journal on July 18, 2017. Beginning with the start of the autumn campaign on September 7, 1780, it went on to describe Cornwallis’s advance from Camden to Charlotte, together with events elsewhere. Leaving what transpired next and its knock-on effect to a […]
Besides dealing with events elsewhere, this article relates in particular the plight of the Carolina loyalists and the way in which British ascendancy in South Carolina—achieved only by June 1780—began so soon to unravel in the face of internal uprisings and an external threat. By mid July Major Gen. Johann Kalb had advanced from the […]
During the southern campaigns the British used two kinds of cipher, each kind being markedly different from the other. The First Kind of Cipher: The Common Cipher Earlier this year I was asked by an American historian[1] if I could decode the cipher in the following letter from Col. Francis Lord Rawdon, commanding in the upcountry […]
As November 1780 begins, we find Cornwallis continuing to wait at Winnsborough, South Carolina, in the hope of being joined by Major Gen. Alexander Leslie, a junction on which the winter campaign to the northward depended. Bound for the Chesapeake and placed under the orders of Cornwallis, Leslie had sailed from New York on October […]
In this article I address the absurdity of Cornwallis’s decision to march from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Virginia and the light thrown on it by The Cornwallis Papers.[1] The central enigma of the Southern Campaigns, it had until their publication never been able to be satisfactorily resolved. Lt. Gen. Charles Earl Cornwallis, the British General […]
As Nathanael Greene retreated from Ninety Six in late June 1781, following his unsuccessful siege there, Thomas Sumter was eager to campaign in lower South Carolina. This was a stratagem the Gamecock had employed before. Following Greene’s defeat at Hobkirk’s Hill on April 25, 1781, Sumter quickly opened a campaign against the British supply depots […]
In February 1781, Thomas Sumter emerged from his three-month convalescence to begin his next campaign in the South Carolina interior. Having been wounded seriously in the back, chest, and shoulder at the Battle of the Blackstocks, leading his militia army against a combined force of British regulars and volunteers commanded by the notorious Lt. Col. […]
Put a large army in a rural community overseas, and some problems are bound to occur. Such was the case when thousands of British and German soldiers descended on Staten Island at the beginning of July 1776. The army was composed largely of professional career soldiers, but there was always a fringe that defied discipline. […]
