A Year With George Washington
On March 8, 1778, Lord Germain (George Sackville), Colonial Secretary in London, sent British General Henry Clinton orders for a change of direction in the conduct of the Revolutionary War. His orders were that the British were to focus on the south, where Germain estimated loyalists to be more numerous.
Actions in the north are to be limited to small raids and coastal blockades.
Clinton met with initial success in the South, taking Savannah in December, followed by Augusta in January of 1779, and Charleston in 1780.
Soon after receiving Germain’s letter, Clinton replaced General Sir William Howe as commander of British forces in North America. Clinton himself soon tried to resign, even sending an aide to England with a request that he be recalled. King George III emphatically refused to grant him his request, exclaiming that Clinton was “the only man who might still save America.”
George Washington had plans of his own in the south when he appointed his trusted General Nathanael Greene to lead the southern army. Lord Germain’s impression that there existed more loyalists than patriots in the south turned out to be an error in judgment, and with the smashing victories at King’s Mountain in October of 1780 and Cowpens the following January, Germain and Clinton’s Southern strategy disintegrated.
Following British General Lord Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in October of 1781, Clinton was replaced as Commander-in-Chief by Sir Guy Carleton, who, after a few inconsequential engagements with patriot forces, oversaw the redrawal of British Troops from America and the end of the war.
