The Road to Yorktown
Savannah 1778-79
The British opened their campaign against the South with the capture of this city in late 1778. They went on to conquer Georgia and threaten the Carolinas. To retake the city, French and American infantry opened a siege in the fall of 1779. The British repulsed the allied attacks with great losses. Some of the hardest fighting swirled around Spring Hill Redoubt. Nothing remains of this earthwork. A plaque on Railroad Street is the only reminder of the battle.
Charleston 1780
The British laid siege to this city in spring 1780. Trapped inside was the entire Southern army, 5,000 troops under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. When Lincoln surrendered, it was one of the most crushing defeats of the war for the Continentals. Only a few evidences of the war remain, among them a tabby wall (part of the patriots’ defensive works) in Marion Square and a statue of William Pitt, damaged in the shelling, in a park in the lower city.
Waxhaws 1780
The only sizable force not trapped inside Charleston was a regiment of Continentals under Abraham Buford. Pursuing hard, Tarleton caught them on May 29, 1780, in a clearing. His dragoons and infantry swarmed over Buford’s lines. The result was a slaughter. Many Continentals were killed trying to surrender. The massacre inspired the epithet “Bloody” Tarleton.
Site located 9 miles east of Lancaster, S.C., on Rt. 522. Marked by a monument and common grave.
Camden 1780
After the fall of Charleston, Congress sent Gates south to stop the British. On August 16 he collided with Cornwallis outside this village. The battle was another American disaster. The militia broke and ran, and the Continentals were overwhelmed. This defeat was the low point of the war in the South. Historic Camden preserves remnants of the Revolutionary town. The battlefield is several miles north of town. This stone marks the place where the heroic DeKalb fell.
Kings Mountain 1780
When Cornwallis invaded North Carolina in autumn 1780, he sent Patrick Ferguson ranging into the upcountry. A band of “over-mountain” men—tired of his threats and depredations—trapped him and his American loyalists on this summit. In a savage battle on October 7, they killed or wounded a third of his men and captured the rest. The defeat was Cornwallis’s first setback in his campaign to conquer the South. Administered by NPS.
Guilford Courthouse 1781
Armies under Nathanael Greene and Cornwallis fought one of the decisive battles of the Revolutionary War here on March 15. In two hours of hard fighting, Cornwallis drove Greene from the field, but at such cost that he had to break off campaigning and fall back to the coast.
Located on the outskirts of Greensboro, N.C. Administered by the National Park Service.
Ninety Six 1781
Located on the main trading route to the Cherokees, this palisaded village was the most important British outpost in the South Carolina back country. Greene laid siege to the garrison here from May 22 to June 19, 1781, but could not subdue the post. A relief force raised the siege, which was soon evacuated and burned. The star fort and some buildings have been reconstructed.
Park administered by the National Park Service.
Eutaw Springs 1781
The last major battle in the lower South (September 8, 1781), Eutaw Springs matched Greene with 2,200 troops against 1,900 redcoats. The outcome was a draw. The British retreated to Charleston, and there they remained the rest of the war.
A memorial park stands on Rt. 6. just east of Eutawville, S.C. The original battlefield is under the waters of Lake Marion.
Yorktown 1781
Cornwallis’s surrender at this little port town on October 19, 1781, brought the war to an effective end. The victory was a consequence of the Franco-American alliance. French ships blockaded the harbor and prevented resupply, while Washington’s powerful force of Continentals and French regulars besieged the British by land. After a long bombardment and a night attack that captured two redoubts, Cornwallis asked for terms.
Administered by NPS.