Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99 (2021), 152-169

AN IMPRUDENT AND UNNECESSARY MEASURE: MAJOR PROBLEMS IN THE FIRST INVASION OF NORTH CAROLINA, SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1780

D OUGLAS R. D ORNEY J R .

On 6 August 1780, Lieutenant-General Charles Cornwallis, in a letter to the commander-in-chief of British forces in America, General Sir Henry Clinton, wrote that ‘it may be doubted by some whether the invasion of North Carolina may be a prudent measure, but I am convinced it is a necessary one’. 1 Cornwallis, who had been left in charge of British Regular, Provincial, and Loyalist forces in the American South, steadfastly held this view for the next nine months until he quit North Carolina altogether, questioning whether the former colony could ever be brought back under British control. The seven-week-long first invasion of North Carolina, from early September to the end of October 1780, was a strategic, political, and military failure significantly impairing, if not permanently damaging, British efforts in the theatre. This reversal of fortune came during the summer of 1780, when British control of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida was at its zenith. 2 By November, Loyalist Militia in the Carolinas were vastly diminished, Militia recruitment efforts all but ceased, most British posts across South Carolina had been or were under threat of attack, the supply train was exhausted, and most British forces were being challenged by a form of dynamic American Militia warfare. These major problems were occurring whilst the main military threat, the Continental Army, was reconstituting itself in North Carolina. A survey of the primary sources reveals that the failure of this first invasion was not a direct result of Major Patrick Ferguson’s decisive defeat at Kings Mountain on 7 October 1780. Rather, that battle was symptomatic, or an outcome, of several major problems already present or beginning to manifest themselves at the time of the invasion. Failure to recognise the repercussions of these problems in aggregate ultimately led to a second invasion and retreat, which resulted in the eventual abandonment of the Carolinas by Cornwallis. With the first retreat, British leadership in the South all but ceased to make serious attempts to pacify the American interior and actively recruit Loyalists, reverting instead to the 1776–1777 strategy of pursuing and destroying the Continental Army in a war-ending, decisive battle. 3 This reversion in strategy ultimately led to the 1 Cornwallis to Clinton, 6 Aug. 1780, in B.F. Stevens, The Campaign in Virginia, 1781: an exact reprint of six rare pamphlets on the Clinton-Cornwallis controversy, with very numerous important unpublished manuscript notes by Sir Henry Clinton, K.B., ….and a catalogue of the additional correspondence of Clinton and Cornwallis, in 1780- 81 (2 vols, London: 4 Charing Cross, Trafalgar Square, 1888), hereinafter The Campaign in Virginia , vol. I, pp. 237-238. 2 A note on terms: “British” and “American” are used in describing the two sides. The terms Whig, Tory, and Patriot have not been used for numerous reasons unless in direct quotations. 3 J.W. Shy, A People Numerous and Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), p. 233.

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