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On Southern Fronts
In the lower South, the British found effective Indian allies in the Cherokee, who, despite suffering early defeats at the hands of the American militia in 1776, continued to raid the frontier. As the war ground on, the British regular army, which had generally neglected the South following early failures there, began to shift attention to the region by late 1778. The British reasoned that the region had a higher percentage of Loyalists than any other part of America and also offered more of the raw materials—indigo, rice, cotton—valued by the British.
In December 1778, British forces subdued Georgia, then, during 1779, fought inconclusively along the Georgia-South Carolina border. A combined French and American attempt to recapture British-held Sava
With the Tidewater towns in British hands, the Piedmont shouldered the task of carrying on the resistance. Such legendary guerrilla leaders as the “Swamp Fox” Francis Marion and Thomas Sumter cost the British dearly. Then, on October 7, 1780, a contingent of Patriot frontiersmen—most from the Watauga settlements in present-day eastern Te
Triumph at Yorktown
Fresh from his seaboard conquests, Cornwallis was now pi
Cornwallis, effectively neutralized, withdrew to the coast. Greene returned to South Carolina, where he retook every British-held outpost, except for Charleston and Sava
Cornwallis had withdrawn to Virginia, where he joined forces with a raiding unit led by the most notorious turncoat in American history, Benedict Arnold. Cornwallis reasoned that Virginia was the key to possession of the South. Therefore, he established his headquarters at the port of Yorktown. General Washington combined his Continental troops with the French army of the Comte de Rochambeau and laid siege to Yorktown on October 6, 1781. Simultaneously, a French fleet under Admiral de Grasse prevented escape by sea. Seeing the situation, General Clinton dispatched a British naval squadron from New York to the Chesapeake, only to be driven off by de Grasse. Washington and Rochambeau relentlessly bombarded Yorktown. At last, the British general surrendered his 8,000 troops to the allies’ 17,000 men on October 19, 1781. As Cornwallis presented Washington with his sword, the British regimental band played a popular tune of times. It was called “The World Turned Upside Down.”
The Least You Need to Know
George Washington’s greatest accomplishments were to hold his armies together during a long, hard war, to exploit British strategic and tactical blunders effectively, and to make each British victory extremely costly.
The Revolution did not end in American victory, so much as in the defeat of England’s will to continue to fight.
The Revolution was instantly perceived as a worldwide event—a milestone in the history of humankind.
Word for the Day
Following the practice of the day, King George III paid foreign mercenary troops to do much of his fighting in America. The Hessians came from the German principality of Hesse-Kassel. Although not all of the German mercenaries employed in the war came from this principality, most of them did. The name was applied to all the hired soldiers—about 30,000 in all—who fought in most of the major campaigns, usually answering to British commanders. Some Hessians stayed here after the war and became American citizens.
Word for the Day
The Tidewater is the traditional name for the coastal South. In colonial times the Piedmont (literally, “foot of the mountains”) was the region just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Tidewater was the more settled and affluent region, whereas the Piedmont was the poorer, more sparsely settled frontier region.
Real Life
Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) was born in Norwich, Co
From Many, One
(1787-1797)