About 250 Years Ago … Battles of the South

The Revolutionary War began in the northeastern colonies and traveled southward to the homes of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.

The British Southern Strategy was a plan to win the war by concentrating their efforts in the south, where they anticipated more support from Loyalists, slaves, and Indian allies.

The strategy initially seemed to work, with Archibald Campbell’s capture of Savannah, Georgia in December 1778, followed by another British victory at Henry Clinton’s siege of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780.

British troops continued their tour through the south and gradually moved northward, with Charles Cornwallis’s victory at the Battle of Camden in northern South Carolina in August of 1780.

But the tide began to turn when William Campbell’s American troops pushed back the British at the Battle of Kings Mountain in what is now Cherokee County, South Carolina, in October 1780.

Another American victory followed with Daniel Morgan’s defeat of the British at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, only to be followed by a victory by Cornwallis’s men at the Battle of Guilford Court House in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“I never saw such fighting since God made me. The Americans fought like demons.” – Lt. General Charles, Earl Cornwallis

On March 15, 1781, six years into the American Revolution, General Greene and Lord Cornwallis’ troops faced off at a small courthouse community. The battle would change the course of the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution.

Though Patriots and the British traded victories throughout a series of southern battles in the last three years of the war, the Patriots ultimately held their own and Britain’s Southern Strategy failed to secure the victory they had planned.