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[patriotic fife and drum music]
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[mortar fire booming]
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[musket fire popping]
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After Yorktown...
after the British
surrender of Yorktown...
no major fighting occurred
in any theater of the war...
and the British
were doomed to lose the war
and to lose
the 13 colonies,
which, of course,
gained their independence.
Why did the British
lose the war?
There are many reasons
which we shall consider.
We must remember that the war
dragged on for another year.
There were
some Indian raids.
There was some fighting
with various Loyalist bands.
But the British
main bases
at Charleston and Savannah
eventually were evacuated
without serious
fighting or loss.
The Americans let them evacuate
Savannah and Charleston...
and the Americans
gained the independence
for which they'd fought
for seven long years.
The British concept of strategy
in the South was excellent.
They won several
of the major battles.
Possibly they should have
carried out that strategy
to a successful
conclusion.
One sometimes wonders
why they did not.
But the South--
and South Carolina,
particularly--
became the battleground
of freedom.
In South Carolina
there were almost 200
battles and skirmishes
and onfalls alone.
In North Carolina
and Virginia and Georgia,
there were
many more.
And so the South was the area
where the war was decided.
Stalemated
in the North,
with British forces poised in
Canada and New York to strike,
with the royal fleet
dominating the coast,
the British planned
to win the war in the South,
and they lost
that war in the South.
Francis Marion,
Thomas Sumter,
William Davie,
Elijah Clarke,
Nathanael Greene,
all the great partisan
fighters and commanders
who maintained opposition
against all odds
and against
all hope and chance
and, eventually,
won the victory,
which made us
the country we are today.
I think we should remember,
in this bicentennial year...
that we,
as a country,
were born in war
and blood and terror.
This was
a very hard birth, indeed,
and one to which
we may look back
with intense pride
and a great feeling...
of success
and satisfaction.
We won
the war.
Now let us go
to a plantation
in the Midlands
of South Carolina.
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When the British high command
in London and New York
decided in 1778 to transfer
major military operations
from the North to Virginia,
the Carolinas, and Georgia,
they already had been guilty
of a serious psychological error
in a long-range
Southern strategy.
The great warrior Indian
tribes of the South here,
in 1776, occupied much
of their ancient lands
from the mountains
to the Mississippi River.
These were not
primitive wandering folk,
but settled peoples
with comparatively
complex social systems.
They also could field their
warriors in the thousands,
and most of
the tribal fighting men
by the middle-18th century
were musket armed.
Extended contact
with the white man
had changed
in no way
the totally cruel nature
of Indian warfare.
The Cherokees,
the nearest of the big tribes
to the British settlements,
still held
their territories
in north Georgia
and upper South Carolina.
Through the work
of two very able royal agents,
John Stuart
and Alexander Cameron,
the Cherokees
in 1776
also were firm supporters
of the British government.
On the 3rd
of October 1775,
John Stuart wrote
to General Thomas Gage,
the British commander
in Boston,
that he opposed an
indiscriminate attack by Indians
on anti-British elements
in the South.
He would dispose of them in
executing any concerted plan,
and to act with and assist
their well-disposed neighbors.
This message
and its bearer,
a confirmed Loyalist
named Moses Kirkland,
were captured,
and the letter
published by order of
the Continental Congress
to demonstrate that the British
were willing to use savages
against the rebellious
colonists.
The last happened
to be quite true.
John Stuart
and Alexander Cameron
had arranged
for the Cherokees
to hit the southern frontier
from Virginia to Georgia
as a diversion in support of
a British amphibious assault
on the coast.
Such an attack occurred
on 28 June 1776,
when Admiral
Sir Peter Parker
and General
Sir Henry Clinton
mounted a joint operation
against Charleston,
South Carolina's
island cities, and defenses.
The Cherokee struck
along the entire southern
frontier on the 1st of July,
two days after the British
had been repulsed successfully
by Charleston's defenders.
If Peter Parker and Sir Henry
Clinton had been successful,
with so many of
South Carolina's defenders
tied down
at Charleston,
the Cherokee
coordinated assault
would have been
far more effective.
The southerners
of the backcountry, however,
held the British
responsible
for loosing the horrors of
Indian warfare on the frontier.
The British decision
to move their main
military efforts southward
was based on sound,
strategic reasoning,
although why they had not
done so earlier in the war
is difficult
to understand.
Pro-British feeling
was strong in South,
and Loyalist leaders had been
imploring the British for years
to make a major effort
in the Southern theater.
Saratoga,
fought in 1777,
had been
the first and last
big American victory
in the North,
but Canada remained safely
in British hands.
New York
and its environs
were strongly held
by the British,
and the royal fleet maintained
a reasonably tight blockade
along the coast
of the 13 rebellious colonies.
British raiding parties
hit northern ports
and American
military depots so hard
that George Washington was,
at times, almost in despair.
He even warned the
Continental Congress in 1779
that it might be necessary
to dissolve his army
and stop active warfare
for a year
until the country
and American fortunes,
with hoped-for
active military aid
from the French alliance
of 1778, could recover.
Sir Henry Clinton, therefore,
felt with considerable justice
that the war in the North
was at a stalemate,
which could end only
in a British victory.
In Sir Henry Clinton's
opinion,
Georgia
and South Carolina,
with the two big ports
of Savannah and Charleston,
were the key
to control of the South.
With Savannah and Charleston
in British hands,
His Majesty's forces,
cooperating with Loyalists,
could fan out
and occupy both states.
With Georgia
and South Carolina
occupied
and pacified,
the waverers and neutrals
could be brought over
and the two provinces
used as a secure base
for operations against
North Carolina and Virginia.
It was a good plan
in its general concept,
even a wise plan,
and might have
succeeded
except for incredible
British blundering
and an equally incredible
failure to establish
unity of command
and command planning.
Parenthetically,
it has been stated
in this
bicentennial year
that one monument which
a grateful nation should erect
is a memorial
to the British generals
who won
the Revolution for us.
The first part
of the plan
was executed by the British
with smooth efficiency.
Savannah, Georgia,
was taken on December 29, 1778.
Colonel Archibald Campbell,
the British commander
in this operation,
was not only
an excellent soldier,
but a wise, high-minded,
and honorable gentleman.
His treatment of the American
prisoners taken in the fighting
and his understanding attitude
toward the Georgians
of all political
convictions was such
that many came in
to swear allegiance
and enlist--
enlist--
in the Loyalist units
being formed.
Unfortunately
for the British cause
and fortunately
for the American,
Archibald Campbell
relinquished his command
to superior officers
far less perceptive.
Three weeks
after the victory,
Major General Augustine Prevost
arrived at Savannah
with reinforcements
from British Florida.
He promptly assumed
direction of the fighting
and sent Colonel Campbell
upriver to Augusta,
which he seized
and garrisoned.
Posts were established
through the state,
and by the middle
of February 1780,
Georgia
appeared to be
completely
under British control.
A strange and interesting
commentary on the war in 1779,
in the attitude
of many southerners
to the long, weary,
indecisive struggle,
was the offer made
by the city of Charleston
to Augustine Prevost
when he arrived
before its land defenses
with 3,000 men
in May of 1779.
On this occasion,
the port city,
so gallantly defended
against the British attack
in 1776,
proposed to remain neutral
for the duration of the war.
Almost a year later,
on May 6, 1780,
Charleston,
South Carolina, fell.
General Benjamin Lincoln
and the entire
American Army of the South
were captured
with the city.
Sir Henry Clinton
had insisted,
as part of
the surrender terms,
that all
the defenders
and the citizens
of the city of Charleston
should be considered
prisoners of war.
The Continental regulars
and their officers
were to be
confined.
The militia and citizens,
having submitted on parole,
would be allowed to return
to their respective homes.
Shortly after
the fall of Charleston,
Andrew Williamson
and Andrew Pickens,
commanding South Carolina
militia at Ninety Six,
surrendered to the British
under the same terms,
taking parole
for themselves and their men
as prisoners
of war.
Joseph Kershaw,
the militia commander
at Camden, South Carolina,
surrendered himself
and his troops
with the same
conditions.
The same terms
were offered by Henry Clinton
to the people
at large...
come in and swear allegiance,
with full pardon,
and serve loyally
with the King's forces
against the rebels,
or take parole
as prisoners of war.
Many persons,
especially in the coastal area
where the British power lay,
accepted the terms.
Sir Henry Clinton,
on the 3rd of June 1780,
committed a major error
of judgment
to rank with encouraging
a Cherokee attack
on the southern
frontiers.
He issued a proclamation
which declared that all--
all-- inhabitants
of the province
who were prisoners
on parole
should, from and after
the 20th of June 1780,
be freed and exempted
from all such paroles
and be reinstated
to all the rights and duties
of citizens
and inhabitants.
The same proclamation
further stated
that all citizens
so described
who did not return
to their allegiance
and a due submission
to His Majesty's government
should be considered as rebels
and enemies to the same
and be treated
accordingly.
All those who'd taken parole
after the fall of Charleston
considered that their duty
was performed
and they could spend
the remainder of the war
quietly at home.
The South Carolinians
had surrendered honorably
under conditions
honorably offered.
Now, a pledge had been broken
by the British commander,
and men on parole
were ordered by proclamation
to take up arms
against their own people
or be considered rebels
and treated accordingly.
Having issued
his proclamation,
Sir Henry Clinton returned to
his command base in New York,
leaving
Lord Charles Cornwallis
with about 4,000 British
and Loyalist regulars
to complete the final
subjection and organization
of a South Carolina
beginning to boil
with resentment.
Feelings
among the inhabitants,
particularly the Scots-Irish
settlers in the Waxhaws,
already were raw
because of the conduct
of that dashing and ruthless
British cavalry commander,
Banastre Tarleton.
On May 29, 1780,
just after
the fall of Charleston,
Banastre Tarleton
pursued and caught
at the Waxhaws
in South Carolina
Lieutenant Colonel
Abraham Buford,
retreating northward
with the 3rd Virginia Regiment,
and the remnants of
William Washington's cavalry.
Two hundred and sixty-three
of Buford's command
were either killed outright
or badly wounded and captured.
Banastre Tarleton's action
at the Waxhaws, thus,
set the tone
for the fighting to come.
Many settlements
in South Carolina,
separated by
the great river swamps,
were so isolated that the war
hardly had touched their lives.
Now it came to them
as it had to the Waxhaws.
Some British
field commanders,
such as Major James Wemyss
of the 63rd Regiment,
considered
all dissenters
from the established
Church of England
to be real
or potential rebels.
James Wemyss burned the
dissenting church at Indian Town
in what was then
Saint Mark's Parish
because he considered
all Presbyterian churches
to be
"sedition shops."
Again,
at the Waxhaws,
the minister to
the Scots-Irish community
had his house
and books burned
by British troops
on patrol in that area.
In a few
short months,
the British
had antagonized thoroughly
and in many cases
forced into open rebellion
men who would have been
quite content
to remain at home
as paroled prisoners of war.
In the same period,
the British managed
to shock, anger, and estrange
large elements
of Scots-Irish Presbyterians
and Welsh Baptists
by, as I have said,
attacking their churches,
the very center
of settlement life.
The ruthless brutality
of Banastre Tarleton
undoubtedly
frightened some.
Most South Carolinians
and Georgians
were only made thoroughly
angry and vengeful.
The hard, dour
Scots-Irish Calvinists,
the Welsh Baptists,
the Huguenot
and English planters
now took the field
with Francis Marion,
Thomas Sumter,
Elijah Clarke,
and William Davie.
There still
were many persons
in the Carolinas
and Georgia, however,
who supported the royal cause
for personal advantage
or, in most cases,
honest political conviction.
Here again, the British
high command in the South
was guilty
of blundering miscalculation.
The only chance--
the only chance--
of British success
lay in a steady,
methodical subjugation
and organization of Georgia
and South Carolina.
It was not enough to defeat
Patriot armies in the field
and establish a network
of garrison outposts.
Those already loyal
to the British cause
must be encouraged
and protected...
while the people as a whole
had to be convinced
of the inevitability
of British victory,
and the latter
never was accomplished.
Lieutenant
Roderick McKenzie
of the British
71st Highland Regiment,
who served
with courage and distinction
through most of
the fighting in the South,
wrote in
August of 1781,
"We cannot
with reason
"expect those
that are loyal
"will declare
their sentiments
"until they find us
so strong in any one place
"as to protect them
after having joined.
"Our taking posts
at different places,
"inviting the Loyalists
to join us
"and then evacuating
those posts
"and abandoning
the people
"to the fury
of their bitterest enemies,
"has deterred them
from declaring themselves
"until affairs take
a decisive turn in our favor.
"We shall then find the people
eager to show their loyalty.
"While the issue
remains doubtful,
we should not
expect it."
Lord Charles Cornwallis
was to find this all too true
as he marched
through North Carolina
in pursuit
of Nathanael Greene.
The failure
of the British
to establish unity of command
and command planning
has been cited
as another reason
for their failure
in the South.
This had been
an important factor
in early campaigns
in the North.
Sir Henry Clinton believed,
quite correctly,
that Georgia
and South Carolina
were the keys to victory
in the South.
Lord Cornwallis,
who succeeded Henry Clinton
as commander in chief
in the Southern theater,
thought differently.
He felt,
instead,
that wealthy
and populous Virginia
was the key
to a sound southern strategy.
Seize and control
Virginia,
and the rest of the South
could be conquered
with comparative ease.
Unhappily for the British
chance of victory,
Lord George Germain,
the secretary of state
for American colonies,
at the seat of power
in London,
agreed with Cornwallis,
not with Clinton.
After Sir Henry Clinton
returned to New York
following the fall
of Charleston,
Cornwallis
acted accordingly.
His first attempt to invade
North Carolina was checkmated
by Patrick Ferguson's
savage defeat
at Kings Mountain
on October 7, 1780.
This action destroyed
an important element
of Lord Cornwallis's
light troops,
and he fell back
to winter quarters
in Winnsboro,
South Carolina.
On January 17, 1781,
at the Cowpens
in South Carolina,
Banastre Tarleton's command
was smashed totally
by Daniel Morgan.
Again,
Lord Charles Cornwallis
lost valuable
and essential units
for the necessary,
fast-moving campaign.
In spite
of two grim lessons,
British field commanders
consistently underrated
American fighting ability,
even after they were taught
otherwise by experience.
Lord Charles Cornwallis
advanced into North Carolina
in pursuit of Nathanael
Greene's retreating army.
He left South Carolina
and Georgia
inadequately garrisoned
and patrolled,
with a general population
turning against their conquerors
and the southern partisans
holding the hinterland
and rampaging along
the British supply lines.
Lord Cornwallis,
on March 15, 1781,
met Nathanael Greene
and won the Pyrrhic victory
of Guilford Courthouse
in North Carolina.
He then made
his final and fatal error,
for falling back to the coast
at British-held Wilmington
with his badly hurt
and battered army,
Cornwallis decided
to move his main operations
from Wilmington up to the
Petersburg area of Virginia,
where a strong British force
already was stationed.
He did this without
consulting Sir Henry Clinton,
his commander
in chief,
who bitterly condemned
Charles Cornwallis's decision.
When Cornwallis
marched north,
Nathanael Greene marched
back into South Carolina,
and the war
in the South
essentially was lost
by the British,
even before the final siege
and capture of Yorktown
on October 19, 1781.
After the comparatively
easy captures
of Savannah
and Charleston,
the British, thus,
committed one serious
error after another.
As that
distinguished Marine,
Brigadier General
Samuel Griffith,
says in his introduction
to a translation
of Mao Tse-tung's
"On Guerilla Warfare,"
"Historical experience suggests
that there is very little hope
"of destroying a revolutionary
guerilla movement
"after it has survived
the first phase
"and has acquired
the sympathetic support
of a significant segment
of the population."
Since it became
increasingly clear
that the British could not
protect their adherents
or control
the hinterland,
an ever-growing number
of southerners
supported
the partisans
and kept the war
alive in the South.
Only a handful of British
officers ever understood
or tried to understand
the men they fought
or the land in which
the fighting took place...
its intense
summer heat,
its incapacitating
diseases,
the vast swamps
and forests,
the wide, deep,
and unbridged rivers,
and the impenetrable laurel
thickets of its mountains.
Here was a natural country
for guerilla warfare
and an almost
impossible terrain
for classic European
operational concepts.
Both sides
made blunders,
but the British mistakes
could not be remedied.
The British lost
the war in the South,
and the climactic
Franco-American victory
in the South
at Yorktown,
at Yorktown, Virginia,
assured our independence.
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