This post is Part #2 of an overview that shows how South Carolina fought to keep the British Empire at bay. This is a continuation of Part #1 where in my previous post I showed how twice South Carolina, specifically the port of Charleston, was able to resist the British advances to date. However, in my last paragraph I mentioned how the American Continental’s unsuccessful siege at Savannah, Georgia in the fall of 1779 caught the attention of British general Clinton in the port of New York City who decided the time was right to send part of his fleet and troops south to the Carolinas and roll them all up the coast to finally crush this rebellion.
Clinton assembled an 8500 man expeditionary force on this large flotilla of ships that would take six-weeks in bad weather to reach the shores of South Carolina about 25 miles south of Charleston. The June 1776 attempt to enter the port taught the British that maybe the land approach would be more successful. The British had to throw all their horses overboard in the rough Atlantic Ocean weather and so targeting replacement horses in South Carolina would be one of the first orders of business.
The British landed on February 11th near Beaufort, South Carolina and joined the British forces from Savannah in an attempt to encircle Charleston, lay siege to the city and force a surrender. The people of South Carolina were not real excited about the defense of Charleston as the militia refused to deploy there for fear of smallpox, the locals refused to have trees cut down to keep the British from having cover during the siege. Cooperation was at an all-time low.
In early April 1780 the British had laid siege to Charleston and by mid-April, Continental General Benjamin Lincoln ordered all officers without an assigned command and any who were unfit for duty to leave the garrison and retire to the countryside. Francis Marion, who had injured his ankle attempting to escape an officer’s party that had turn into a drunken affair, retired to his plantation 50 miles north and inland from the port of Charleston. On 14APR1780 the noose tightened as the British cavalry commander Tarleton surprised a larger force of American Continentals at Monck’s Corners 30 miles north of Charleston and secured 400 horses for the British. The American commander in Charleston with 5000 men had been requested to defend Charleston at all costs and now had no escape route.
By early May 1780, Charleston was indeed cutoff from the rest of the colony and the British almost had free reign of the land routes throughout the region. Charleston ran up the white flag on 11MAY1780 and the next day the entire Continental force under Lincoln surrendered. The power vacuum was quickly replaced by the British as the following towns also were occupied in the next three days by 15MAY1780:
Monck’s Corners, Cheraw, Orangeburgh, Ninety-Six and Dorchester. The port of Georgetown would be occupied by July 11th.
The next major town to be occupied would be Camden by August 16th and this would be the low-point of the patriot cause in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War or better described as the War for the Independence of Thirteen Sovereign Colonies from the British Empire!
SF1