Originally published in the Summer 2021 issue of the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research ( Vol. 99, No. 397) 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 Regul