Early British Success in the South

At the end of 1778, a British expedition easily took Savannah, Georgia, and by the spring of 1779, a royal governor once again commanded Georgia.

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In 1780, General Henry Clinton, who had replaced General Howe who retired , along with the ambitious general Charles Cornwallis sailed south with 8,500 men.

General Clinton

General Cornwallis

In their greatest victory of the war, the British captured Charles Town, South Carolina, in May 1780 and marched 5,500 American soldiers off as prisoners of war.

In 1780, many of the unfortunate prisoners became part of a new experiment in the way that the British dealt with their burgeoning number of captives. The British anchored ships off various harbors they controlled and crowded the American POWs aboard. Conditions on all the prison ships were ghastly, but the worst of all these “hell ships” was the notorious HMS Jersey.

The prisoners would later recall that they had nothing to wear but rags, and that the ship was teeming with vermin and filth. Each day they were issued “moldy biscuit filled with worms, damaged peas, condemned beef and pork, sour flour and meal, rancid butter, sometimes a little filthy suet, but never any vegetables.”

Prisoners were allowed to go above deck during the day, but at night, their British captors ordered them below, yelling “Down, rebels, down!” In the morning they were let out with the order, “Rebels, turn out your dead!”

Many men broke under the misery and hardship of captivity on the hulks. Of the 1900 prisoners held in Charleston, more than 500, “maddened by torture and almost heart-broken on account of the sufferings of their families,” enrolled in the royal militia to get off the ships and were sent to do service in Jamaica.

Clinton then left for New York, leaving Cornwallis to command the British forces in the South and to conquer South and North Carolina.

As the redcoats advanced, they were joined by thousands of African Americans who had escaped from Patriot slave owners to join the British and win their freedom.

In August, Cornwallis’s army smashed American forces at Camden, South Carolina, and within three months the British had established forts across the state.

However, when Cornwallis and his forces advanced into North Carolina, Patriot bands (organized by Nathaniel Greene) attacked them and cut British communication lines.

The continuous harassment forced the British to retreat to South Carolina.