The Fall of Charleston (May 12, 1780)
Click here for a map of the Southern campaign
|
Since the fall of
1778, the British had been siphoning off New York-based troops for a
new invasion of the South. (They had tried and failed in
1776.) The campaign began in earnest with the capture of
Savannah, Georgia. Then, in the winter of 1779, General Sir Henry
Clinton sailed for Charleston, South Carolina, eager to avenge the
embarrassing retreat of 1776. Five thousand Continental soldiers
rushed to join the South Carolina militia in defense of the city.
From the "Citadel," a fortification spanning the northern neck of the
city's peninsula, these American forces bombarded the British with all
they could find, firing projectiles made of glass, broken shovels,
hatchets, and pickaxes. From aboard their ships, the British
answered with a steady stream of mortar shells. On May 12, 1780,
after months of deadly bombardment and high casualties on both sides,
the Citadel fell. The American commander, General Benjamin
Lincoln, surrendered his entire army to the British. A
satisfied
General Clinton sailed for New York, leaving
in command of the southern campaign. General Cornwallis was an ambitious and able general who set out with more than eight thousand men to conquer the rest of South Carolina. Cornwallis and his regular army were joined by loyalist troops who were as eager to take their revenge on their enemies as Clinton had been. Since the British had abandoned the South in 1776, small, roving bands of loyalist guerrillas had kept resistance to the Revolution alive. After the British victory at Charleston, the guerrillas increased their attacks, and a bloody civil war of ambush, arson, and brutality on both sides resulted. By the summer of 1780, fortunes had reversed: the revolutionaries were now the resistance and the loyalists were in control. The revolutionary resistance produced legendary guerrilla leaders, including Francis Marion, "the Swamp Fox." Marion organized black and white recruits into raiding bands that steadily harassed Cornwallis's army and effectively cut British lines of communication between Charleston and the interior. While Marion did his best to trouble the British, Thomas Sumter's guerrillas and other resistance forces focused their energies on the loyalists. When these guerrillas and loyalists met head-on in battle, they honored few of the rules of war. In October 1780, for example, in the Battle of King's Mountain, revolutionaries surrounded loyalist troops and picked them off one by one. As this bitter civil war continued, marauding bands terrorized civilians and plundered their farms. Often the worst damage was done by outlaws passing as soldiers. The regular American army, under command of the hero of Saratoga, General Horatio Gates, had little success against Cornwallis. In August 1780, Gates and his men suffered a crushing defeat at Camden, South Carolina (August 16, 1780). That fall, Washington widely replaced Gates with a younger, more energetic officer from Rhode Island, Nathanael Greene. The fourteen hundred Continental soldiers Greene found when he arrived in South Carolina were tired, hungry, and clothed in rags. They were also, Greene discovered, "without discipline, and so addicted to plundering that the utmost exertions of officers cannot restrain them." Greene's first steps were to ease the strains caused by civil war, raids, and plundering by offering pardons to loyalists and by proposing alliances with local Indian tribes. In the end, Greene managed to win all but the Creeks away from the British. Greene's own military strategy was attrition: wear the British out by making them chase his small army across the South. He sent Virginian Daniel Morgan and six hundred riflemen to western South Carolina to tempt troops under the command of Banastre Tarleton into pursuit. Tarleton finally caught up with Morgan on an open meadow called the Cowpens. When the outnumbered Americans stood their ground, ready to fight, the tired and frustrated British soldiers panicked and fled. Annoyed by this turn of events, Cornwallis decided to take the offensive. Now it was Greene's turn to lead the British on a long, exhausting chase. In March 1781, the two armies finally met at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. Although the Americans lost the battle and withdrew, British losses were so great that Cornwallis had to rethink the southern campaign. He decided that the price of conquering the Lower South was more than he was willing to pay. Disgusted, Cornwallis ordered his army north to Virginia. Perhaps, he thought, he would have better luck there. |
|||
Treason
|
In the fall of
1780, the popular general Benedict Arnold, one of Washington's
protégés, defected to the British. His betrayal was
shocking and forever after, his name would be synonymous with treachery. Arnold was a brilliant general who had helped conquer Ft. Ticonderoga in 1775 and helped defeat Gen. Burgoyne at Saratoga. Perhaps he was too talented, or certainly thought he was more talented than his commander-in-chief, George Washington, as well as his comrades. Washington had surrounded himself with talented young officers, like Alexander Hamilton, and the politics and intrigue of the headquarters was often as heated as that of royal court as officers vied for Washington's favor. In 1780, Arnold found himself relegated to commanding the American strategic garrison on the Hudson River at West Point. It was an important post because it guarded a possible invasion point from British forces in Canada, but nevertheless it took Arnold out of the mainstream of action. With his ego, Arnold felt his position the result of some backstabbing by fellow officers, or willful spite from Washington himself. Actually, his position may have owed as much to physical infirmity as anything else. Arnold had been wounded twice in the same leg and walked with a limp, and though this did not necessarily make him unfit for a field command, it perhaps contributed to Washington's decision to post Arnold to command West Point. Jealous and greedy, Arnold sent word to British forces through spies that he would willingly surrender West Point to them in return for money and a command in the British army. (He also hoped for a royal title and lands.) However, a letter written by Arnold to his would-be benefactors was intercepted by patriot forces, and Arnold was forced to flee to British lines. He remained with the British, but ever held a meaningful command nor gained great wealth. He would die, bitter and disappointed, in England. |
|||
Yorktown
|
News of Arnold's
treachery saddened Washington and damaged American morale.
However, news that help from the French was on its way helped bring new
hope for victory. Washington sat down with his French
counterpart, General Rochambeau, in May of 1781 to determine
strategy. The result was not exactly what Washington had hoped
for. He had pressed for an attack on British-occupied New York,
whereas Rochambeau insisted on a move against Cornwallis in
Virginia. Since the French general had already ordered Admiral
de
Grasse and his fleet to the Chesapeake, Washington had little
choice
but to concur. Thus, on July 6, 1781, a French army joined Washington's Continental forces just north of Manhattan for the long march to Virginia. The French soldiers, elegant in their sparkling uniforms, were openly amazed and impressed by their bedraggled allies. "It is incredible," wrote one French officer, "that soldiers composed of whites and blacks, almost naked, unpaid, and rather poorly fed, can march so well and stand fire so steadfastly." Within a few months, General Cornwallis too would be forced to admire the American enemy's stamina. In July, however, the British commander was unaware that a combined army was marching toward him. His first clue that trouble lay ahead came when a force of regular soldiers, led by Baron von Steuben and the Marquis de Lafayette, appeared in Virginia. Soon afterwards, Cornwallis moved his army to the peninsula port of Yorktown (just a stone's throw across from the peninsula from the site of Jamestown) to prepare for battles that lay ahead. Initially, the choice of Yorktown seemed ideal, but it would soon turn out to be a disaster. Cornwallis picked Yorktown because he would have the British naval ships with their artillery "parked" behind him to protect his read while he could turn his defenses to the landward side (again, very much like the Jamestown colonists had done). The ships would also provide a handy escape, should it come to that. By September 1781, the French and American troops coming from New York joined forces with von Steuben and Lafayette's men. Then, Admiral de Grasse's fleet of 27 ships, 74 cannon, and an additional three thousand French soldiers arrived in Chesapeake Bay. The Royal Navy was trapped and Cornwallis surrounded. General Clinton, still in New York, had been devastatingly slow to realize what the Americans intended. In desperation, he sent a naval squadron from New York to break through and rescue the trapped Cornwallis. He could do little more, since most of the British fleet was in the Caribbean. Admiral de Grasse had no trouble fending off Clinton's rescue squadron. Then he turned his naval guns on the redcoats at Yorktown. From his siege positions on land, Washington also directed a steady barrage of artillery fire against the British, producing a deafening road both day and night. The noise dazed the redcoats and prevented them from sleeping. On October 17, 1781, Lord Cornwallis admitted the helplessness of his situation and surrendered. (Out of shame and disgust, Cornwallis refused to surrender personally; rather, he sent a subordinate out to participate in the ritual handover of the sword to the victor Washington. Then the eight thousand British troops marched out of their fortifications, with the band playing the tune "The World Turned Upside Down," to surrender their arms. Many flung them down with contempt before the Americans whom they considered inferior. It was, all in all, a very bad show of manners on the part of the British.) |
|||
| Victory |
Despite the stunning turn of events at
Yorktown, fighting continued in some areas. Loyalists and
patriots continued to make war on each other in the South for another
year. Bloody warfare among the Indians also meant more deaths
along the frontier. The British occupation of Charleston,
Savannah, and New York continued. But after Yorktown the British
gave up all hope of military victory against their former
colonies. On March 4, 1782, Parliament votes to cease "the
further prosecution of offensive war on the Continent of North America,
for the purpose of reducing the Colonies to obedience by force."
The war of independence had been won. What Gen. Washington and his French and Spanish allies had won, American diplomats had to preserve. Three men represented the United States at the peace talks in Paris: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. At first glance, this was an odd trio. The elderly Franklin, witty and sophisticated, had spent most of the war years in Paris, where he earned a deserved reputation as an admirer of French women and French wines. John Adams, competitive, self-absorbed, and socially inept, did not hide his distaste for Franklin's flamboyance. Neither man found much comfort in the presence of the prudish, aristocratic John Jay of New York. Yet they proved to be a highly effective combination. Franklin brought a crafty skill and a love of strategy to the team as well as a useful knowledge of French politics. Adams provided the backbone, for in the face of any odds he was stubborn, determined, fiercely patriotic, and a watchdog of American interests. Jay was calm, deliberate, and though not as aggressive as his New England colleague, matched Adams in patriotism and integrity. European political leaders expected the American to fare badly against the more experienced British and French diplomats. But Franklin, Jay, and Adams were far from naive. They were all veterans of wartime negotiations with European governments, having pursued loans, supplies, and military support. And they understood what was at stake at the peace table. They knew that their chief ally, France, had its own agenda and that England still wavered on the degree of independence America had actually won at Yorktown. Thus, despite firm orders from Congress to rely on France at every phase of the negotiations, the American diplomats quickly put their own agenda on the table. They issued a direct challenge to Britain: you must formally recognize American independence as a precondition to any negotiations at all. The British commissioner reluctantly agreed. Negotiations continued for more than a year, with all sides debating, arguing, and compromising until the terms of the treaty were finally set. In the Treaty of Paris of 1783 the Americans emerged with two clear victories. First, although the British did not give up Canada as the Americans had hoped, the boundaries of the new nation were extensive. Second, the treaty granted the United States unlimited access to the fisheries of Newfoundland, a particular concern of New Englander John Adams. It was difficult to measure the degree of success on other issues, however, since the terms of carrying out the agreements were so vague. For example, Britain ceded the Northwest Territory, but the treaty failed to address approval of this transfer of power by Indians of the region and it failed to set a timetable for British evacuation of the forts in the territory. The treaty contained only the most general promise that the American government would not interfere with collection of large prewar debts southern planters owed British merchants. The promise to urge the states to return confiscated property to loyalists was equally vague. The peacemakers were aware of the treaty's shortcomings and its lack of clarity on key issues, but this was the price for avoiding stalemate and dangerous confrontation on controversial issues. Franklin, Adams, and Jay knew the consequences might be serious, but for the moment the preferred to celebrate rather than worry. |
|||
Proceed to Constitution and New Nation |
