52. The Southern Strategy

The main theatre of war, however, the theatre that decided victory or defeat, was not the North or the West. The South’s great travail had begun.

As John Shy has shown in a brilliant essay on British strategy during the Revolutionary War, that strategy proceeded in three successive stages.* The first stage, from the Coercive Acts in early 1774 until the end of 1776, was seen by the British as a quick police action, or punishment operation, against the main rebel center of Boston, after which the other colonies and even rural Massachusetts would quickly come to heel. But this strategy proved counterproductive, and the rebellion spread throughout the American colonies.

After the outbreak of the war, and with their troops bottled up in Boston, the British proceeded to the second stage of their strategy: a conventional inter-State war against the rebel Continental Army. When this strategy collapsed at Saratoga, they withdrew to bases at New York and Newport, and reconsidered their strategy. By late 1778, they had decided on seizing the nettle of new large-scale revolutionary war by conducting a full-scale campaign of counter-revolutionary and counter-guerrilla “pacification.” The idea now was that, instead of going from north to south as before, they would start in the deep south, and slowly move north, not moving until their rear had been thoroughly pacified by Tory self-defense units and Tory instruments of government. This strategy depended upon the characteristic British overestimation of the extent of Tory sentiment among the American populace, especially in the South. It was a typical failure of imperialists in deluding themselves that the colonized masses are loyal, and that revolutions are only made by a malevolent minority of fanatics.

As Shy sums up the new strategy: “The basic concept was to regain complete military control of some one major colony, restore full civil government, and then expand both control and government in a step-by-step operation conducted behind a slowly advancing screen of British regulars. From a police operation, and then a classical military confrontation, British strategy had finally become a comprehensive plan of pacification directed against a revolutionary war.”*

In this strategy, the first task was to capture Georgia, the weakest and least populous of the southern states, and also the one which could be readily attacked from the great British East Florida base St. Augustine. Georgia could also be approached readily by sea, where the British were dominant, and could then be used to supply the embattled British islands in the West Indies. The British plan was to drive northward, rolling up one state after another, depriving the northern and middle states of the benefits of the southern export trade, and blockading the North into submission. The southern Tories, protected from rebel fanatics by the presence of British troops, would then surely be able to resume stable government in their states. The British evidently did not learn from their disillusioning experiences with Tory strength in the North. As Alden writes: “Spokesmen for the Loyalists, insistent throughout the War of Independence that they formed the bulk of the population of the 13 states, were staunch in asserting their eagerness to pick up arms for Britain in areas as yet untouched by British troops. When the redcoats were in Boston, they were told they would be welcomed with open arms in New York; on Manhattan, they were informed that the Tories in New Jersey and Pennsylvania would rise as soon as they appeared; in Philadelphia, it was said that the supporters of the Crown in Maryland and Delaware needed only minimal assistance to throw off the yoke imposed upon them by their patriot neighbors... [; but] as [the British commanders] moved into the American interior they had found themselves surrounded by hostile militia rather than throngs of allies. In England, however, it was easier to accept Loyalist assertions at face value.”**

While the proportion of Tories in Georgia and the Carolinas was certainly higher than the average in the North, it was scarcely as high as the British liked to believe. More than overconfidence, however, was involved in the reliance upon the Tories and the consequent strategy they stubbornly insisted upon. Domestic political opposition in Britain revived and swelled after Saratoga, and the balance of power in Parliament was held by the country gentry. These nominally Tory, but instinctively libertarian, gentry were most deeply impressed with the tax burden upon themselves. Larger and wider war meant higher taxes on them, and there was the danger to the crown that they would let their aversion for taxation overcome their naive patriotism and join the opposition. Their main enthusiasm for the war had lain in the prospect of placing part of the imperial tax burden upon the Americans, but this was shattered by Lord North’s abandonment of the plan to tax America in early 1778.

The southern strategy, however, was calculated to appeal to the budget-conscious gentry. It meant that the war in America could be carried on and supposedly won with the absolute minimum of additional expense to Great Britain: the American Tories themselves would supply the manpower! Bemused also by the overestimate of Tory strength, and influenced by the sentimental argument that Britain had the duty to come to the support of its suffering loyal subjects overseas, the gentry agreed to continue supporting the war effort, thereby irrevocably committing the crown to a strategy heavily reliant on Tory contributions to the war. This commitment itself reinforced and propelled the British tendency to overrate the Tories. As Professor Paul Smith concludes:

Consequently, the administration became dangerously dependent upon the American Loyalists. The weakness of Britain’s reliance upon the southern Loyalists was that [it]... unwisely combined political and military considerations. It was one matter to base a single operation on the expectation that widespread civilian support would appear; if that operation failed, another maneuver could be tried. It was quite a different matter to use this argument to secure Parliamentary support for the War; if the anticipated civilian support failed to materialize at any time, the same dubious strategy would have to be repeated endlessly in other areas for no other reason than to maintain the necessary political support.

As Britain came to depend increasingly upon the Loyalists to justify continuance of the War against the colonies... it became impossible for officials in the ministry to formulate a grand strategy independently of their image of conditions in the colonies. In order to maintain a Parliamentary majority, the administration tethered its strategy to the chimera of Loyalist support. Moreover,... it fell victim to every unfounded report that American resistance was crumbling.”*

The opposition attacks in Parliament reached a peak in the spring of 1779, increasing emphasis on American Tories and on the southern strategy. By early 1779, the British government had expended hundreds of lives and millions of pounds on the American war, and it was certainly no nearer to success than at the outset. Naval and army losses had been severe during 1778, the year when the war had become worldwide. Only the iron determination of George III to carry on despite all opposition and all setbacks prevented the North ministry from toppling.

The Whig General Howe tried to salvage his reputation by opening up the entire question of the wisdom of the war to subdue America.* At the inquiry voted by Parliament, Gen. Charles Grey effectively told the country that the goal of crushing the American Revolution was completely impractical without a huge increase of public expenses—an increase that would not be tolerated by the country gentry. The administration rebutted with Gen. James Robertson, their most important witness. Grey had correctly maintained that the great bulk of the American people supported the Revolution, but Robertson countered with the thesis that “more than two-thirds” of the American people were against, or at least would not actively support, the Revolution. He argued, in effect, that the bulk of its American subjects were really docile and happy under the benign rule of their imperial masters; only a small minority of fanatical zealots (“outside agitators” had not yet been invented) tyrannized the bulk of the people. Therefore, all that would be necessary to win would be to land a “British presence” in the country to relieve the people of the pressure exerted by the league of fanatics, and the public would flock to the imperial banner; the British needed only to arm the American people “in their own defense.” He concluded that “the object of the war was to enable the loyal subjects of America to get free from the tyranny of the rebels, and to let the country follow its inclination, by returning to the King’s government.”

It was Robertson’s testimony that enabled the government to turn back the opposition’s challenge, but this line of argument committed the government even more heavily to the American Tory-southern strategy, and made it ever more dependent upon victories in the South.

To meet any British threat to the South, Washington had sent there, as head of the Southern Department, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, who arrived at Charleston in December 1778. Lincoln was amiable, mild-mannered to the point of insipidity, and widely beloved, but as an officer he was undistinguished. Before being raised to this post, he had never won a single battle. Posing no threat to the commander in chief’s office or prestige, this good-natured mediocrity was picked for a vital command while Washington’s vindictiveness and jealousy were forcing America’s best generals into semi-retirement or out of the service altogether.

* John Shy, “The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War,” in S. Kurtz and J. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1973), pp. 129–45.

* Shy, “The Military Conflict,” p. 140.

** Alden, The American Revolution 1775–1783. p. 227.

* Paul H. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats (Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 98.

* Cf. Smith, Loyalists and Redcoats, pp. 115ff.