The British Southern Strategy

The Americans rejected this diplomatic offer. With the French entering, the conflict in 1778 and having their eye on the British controlled West Indies the British government had no choice but to switch to a Southern Strategy. Not only would the British be able to defend the West Indies from the French, they would also be able to capture the tobacco and rice growing colonies of Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
             Britain's Southern Strategy originally fell to the command of Sir Henry Clinton. From New York City Clinton launched a large sea born attack, a British corps of 3,500 men from New York, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell, captured Savannah, Georgia (Wilson 145) in December of 1778. Campbell then marched inland and captured Augusta in early 1779. At the end of the 1779, loyalists along with British forces controlled costal Georgia; and had amassed over ten thousand troops in preparation for an assault on South Carolina. The year of 1780 brought many victories for the British forces, but constant fighting with Native Americans had made the local militias hardened, it would not be an exaggeration to say that when the British launched their large-scale invasion in 1780, they were entering a region that was in no small way already prepared to receive them militarily. (Sherman 5) During the early part of 1780, the British captured Charleston South Carolina; the eighteen months following that would prove to be a brutal stalemate between the British forces and the Americans. With hopes of breaking this stalemate British General Charles Cornwallis decided to take the battle to Virginia in 1781, this proved to be a fatal mistake.
             General Charles Cornwallis assumed control of the British forces shortly after the surrender of Charleston. Cornwallis then moved on to achieve victory at Camden, defeating General Horatio Gates, who had won a name for himself at the battle of Saratoga.