The Sieges of Savannah and Charleston, or How the British Left the Colonies

The Siege of Charleston, 1780

In 1779, the British turned their attention from New England and the northeast colonies to what is now termed the Southern Campaign—and they started with Savannah, Georgia. Having taken that in December, they moved north to Charles Towne—Charleston of today—and laid siege to it for six weeks before that mighty port city buckled.

After the surrender at Yorktown, the British forces hunkered down in Charleston and Savannah, but made no further move to withdraw. As Patrick O’Kelley says, “Though the war was near the end, the fighting continued. Old scores needed to be settled, and this had to be done while there was still a war going on. The British in Savannah and Charlestown had to find food for the soldiers and for the refugees huddled near the walls of the cities. The Patriots knew that the sooner they could get the British to leave the two cities, the sooner the war would end, so they opposed any foraging parties coming out of the cities. This led to some intense fighting in the last days of the war.”

The siege of Charleston lasted from 1781 until December 1782. The retaking of Savannah had begun in January 1782 when Major General Anthony Wayne made a bold push against the British in Georgia. The British, thinking they were outnumbered (though they weren’t, by far), fell back to Savannah, and though Wayne did his best to play up the fears of the British, they held onto that city until July.

Last page of the Treaty of Paris, 1783

In the meantime, Greene had his own troubles with troops becoming mutinous in the face of nakedness and hunger. William Moultrie describes how every scrap of cloth was needed to hang about men’s waists, and this in an age where a man was considered “undressed” if he didn’t wear a waistcoat over shirt and breeches. Another officer asked if soldiers could be expected to do their duty, clothed in rags and fed on rice. Even partisan leader Francis Marion, the famed “Swamp Fox,” grew so weary of the constant fight that after one incident in September, he refused to put any more of his men’s lives on the line, so close to the expected departure of the enemy. In one case he and his men even stood guard on behalf of a British foraging party, presumably as much out of compassion as anything.

On July 11, the British officially evacuated from Savannah. Troops headed for Charleston and New York. Many loyalist refugees eventually went south to Florida. The British would drag their feet getting out of Charleston until December 14. British regulars and loyalists dispersed not only back to Britain, but to the Caribbean and Nova Scotia. (Many of Tarleton’s Green Dragoons were given holdings in Nova Scotia, but it was a rather austere location.)

Map of US and territories after the Treaty of Paris

The day after the British fleet sailed from Charleston, the Maryland Line of the Continentals decided their enlistment was over, but Greene told them firmly that the war was not yet finished. That would not happen until the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783, but the fighting in the Carolinas had ended at last.

At least where the British were concerned. Tensions and conflict would continue with the native tribes for years to come. And having cut their losses in the American colonies, the British had already focused their meager energies elsewhere in the world. This marked the end, however, of the colonial era in United States history.

(My thanks as usual to O'Kelley for his excellent work, Nothing But Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas.)

Dispelling Colonial Myths: a reenactor myth started it all

Beautiful Drayton Hall ... occupied by the British

Living in the Charleston area for more than two decades can give one an interesting perspective on history. Not only have I gained a different slant on the Civil War than my Midwest school education gave me, but the richness of colonial history rooted here took me quite by surprise.

I’d been bitten by the reenacting bug a year before when attending a Civil War reenactment, but in May 2005 a new and intriguing historical event came on the scene, the 225^th  anniversary commemoration of the Siege of Charleston. This grand reenactment spanned all three major Ashley River plantations: Middleton Place, Magnolia Gardens, and Drayton Hall. Each plantation had its own encampment, and each had its own admission price, and after deciding we didn’t have the time (or energy!) to hit all three of them, my family picked Drayton Hall, simply because it was the one of the three we hadn’t seen before.

Love the expressions! And the uniforms ... :-)

Thus my introduction to the British Legion, since none of the American (patriot) camps were at this location. During our exploration of the British camps, one friendly young reenactor cheerfully bestowed all sorts of useful and interesting information upon us.

A neat cluster of muskets

One nugget in particular caught my interest. The British soldiers, he said, often brought their wives along to help with the work of caring for the army—laundry and nursing and suchlike—and they were the ones the term “campfollower” originally applied to. Only later, especially during the Civil War, did it become synonymous with prostitutes who followed the army for their livelihood, although some of that happened during the Revolution as well.

The overlap of historical and modern

The young man proceeded to tell us that if a woman was unlucky enough to be widowed, the British army gave her a mere three days to attach herself to another man before abandoning her to whatever fate might dish out.

Three days.

My imagination fired at that, and the story premise behind Loyalty’s Cadence was born.

Later, I would join an 18^th century research email list, frequented by historians and reenactors of the period, and I discovered this was not the case at all. The British army had very detailed regulations for the care of campfollowing wives, and the standard policy was, in the case of widowhood, to provide for her return to England, if she so wished. (I’m sure in the field, there was much room for difference of interpretation, but that’s another discussion.) I was indignant to find I’d been handed a common “reenactor myth,” told for the sake of sensationalizing history.

Standing guard at the house

As if history needs sensationalizing.

Thus also began my quest to find the truth in research, or at least as close to it as is possible through the reports of people who see events through the lenses of very different experiences and opinions.

And if I write with too much sympathy of the British and loyalist cause, I suppose it can be blamed on the fact that we chose Drayton Hall that muggy May day in Charleston. :-)

 

(Another highlight of the 225^th Anniversary of the Siege of Charleston: a lecture, complete with visual aids, on colonial battlefield medicine. Useful stuff, for a writer, though his description of amputation left me very queasy. That, too, was inspiring in its own way!)

All photos are my own.