An Imprudent and Unnecessary Measure: Major Problems in the First Invasion of North Carolina, September–October 1780
- Doug Dorney
- 4 days ago
- 1 min read
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 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.
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