Chapter 7.3
The Path to Victory
The War Moves South
The British Change their Strategy: The War
Moves South
• After 3 years of fighting in the North, still no closer to victory
• Had captured many important Northern coastal cities, but didn’t have
troops to control the countryside
• Believed most Southerners were Loyalists
• Expected Southern slaves to escape and join them with the promise of
freedom…thousands do, not all gain freedom
Savannah and Charles Town Fall
• December 1778, Brits capture Southern
port of Savannah, GA & then most of GA
• 1780, Brits led by General Henry Clinton
surround forces at Charles Town, S.C.
• Americans Lose almost their entire
Southern Army
• Worst Defeat of the War!
• General Horatio Gates to form a new
Southern Army
• Baron de Kalb led the core of Continental
soldiers, Gates adds about 2,000 new and
untrained militia
• Head to Camden, South Carolina to
challenge Cornwallis (Clinton was back in
NY)
Battle of Camden: August 1780
• Gates and Army run into British troops
outside Camden
• In no condition to fight….out of
supplies, half-starved.
• Gates puts inexperienced militia along
part of the frontline instead of
experienced soldiers
• Panicked and fled
• Gates flees with them!
• De Kalb remains and fights until
mortally wounded
• Gates removed
• American spirits fall to a new low!
Guerrilla Warfare
• Americans were defeated at Charles
Town and Camden, but Brits still
couldn’t control the South
• Countryside was hostile and filled
with more rebel sympathizers than
Loyalists
• Attacks on British messengers, hard
to keep in touch with bases on the
coast
• Francis Marion “Swamp Fox”
• Led a band of about 20 men out of the
swamps, cutting British supply lines
General Greene Takes Charge
• Nathanael Greene put in charge of the
Southern Army
• Cowpens victory for the Americans,
proving they had mastered formal battle
tactics of the British
• Cornwallis pursues Greene’s main army
• Americans knew the land better and his
strategy was to lead them on a chase and
tire them out, only fight when they could
inflict severe losses on the British
• ****Cornwallis lost so many men at the
Battle of Guilford Court House that he
retreated to Wilmington on the coast
• Cornwallis realizes there are more active
Patriots than Loyalists in the South
End of the War: Setting A Trap
• 1781, Cornwallis, frustrated, turns to Virginia, where he
believes rebels are receiving their supplies from
• August 1781, set- up base at Yorktown, VA to receive
supplies from NY
• Washington takes opportunity to trap him on the peninsula
• Admiral de Grasse, operating with a powerful French fleet
offers to join the fight, Washington quickly accepts, marches
300 miles with Rochambeau’s French forces from New York.
Admiral De Grasse arrives from the West Indies and
blockades Chesapeake Bay
• Lafayette had arrived in March and sent a message of a
potential launch against Cornwallis’ forces, unknown to him,
the troops and French fleet were already on their way! He
commanded a division of American troops during the
assault on Yorktown.
• British ships can’t reach Yorktown or bring supplies
• British build redoubts (small forts) to protect themselves,
but cannons bombard Yorktown
• Cornwallis is surrounded and October 19, 1781, Yorktown,
Cornwallis surrendered about 8,000 troops
• French provide all of the seapower and ½ of the regular
troops in the assault on Yorktown.
• Last major battle of the war, although fighting continues in
the South and on the frontier…Washington manages to
keep his troops in place and states together
America: The Story of Us
• Yorktown: 6 Minutes, 39-45
• Note Joseph Plumb Martin
Classzone.com
• Animated Map
• Chapter 7: Battle of Yorktown
Why the Americans Won: See page 218
• Fighting for their lives, property, and political ideas
• Popular support was strong
• Leaders like Washington learned from their mistakes
• Foreign allies, French, British, Russians, etc.,
• France supplied money and troops, Spain & Russia expanded the war
• Communication, close to home, quicker decisions, made sure British
couldn’t live off the land
• Had fewer troops than the British, but filled the ranks with local militia. As
many as 250,000 altogether may have fought for the Patriots…by 1781,
British army had 54,000
Fond Farewells
• Late 1783 the last British ships and troops left New York City.
• Mixed emotions:
“There was as much sorrow as joy…We had lived together as a family of
brothers for several years, …had shared with each other the hardships,
dangers, and sufferings incident to a soldier’s life; had sympathized with each
other in trouble and sickness;… And now we were to be… parted forever.”
-Joseph Plumb Martin, quoted in The Revolutionaries
• Plumb Martin of Connecticut enlisted in 1776 at the age of 15. He experienced the terrible
winter at Valley Forge and the winning battle at Yorktown.]
• Washington wrote that the army’s endurance “through almost every possible
suffering and discouragement for the space of eight long years, was little short
of a standing miracle.”