The British Southern Campaign in the American Revolution

Cornwallis Takes Charleston and Sir Henry Clinton Returned to New York

By the end of 1779, Sir Henry Clinton, British commander of North American forces during the latter part of the Revolutionary War, turned his attention south, dispatching a sizeable force to take Charleston. The South Carolina campaign, begun with much promise, rapidly deteriorated into a type of guerrilla warfare with atrocities committed by both sides. Much of this was due to Lord Cornwallis, the southern commander after Sir Clinton returned to New York.

 

Clinton Moves against Charleston, South Carolina

 

According to Sir Henry Clinton’s memoirs, the taking of Charleston had long figured in his overall strategy to win the war against the American rebels. Loyalist support was thought to be strongest in the South, notably in the Carolinas. Finally, recent British successes in Georgia seemed to confirm a southern campaign might swiftly change the course of the entire war.

 

Charleston was defended by 5,000 men, many from militia units, under the command of Major General Benjamin Lincoln. (some sources cite the number of defenders at 7,000) Clinton left New York with almost 100 ships under the command of Vice Admiral Arbuthnot and nearly 8,000 troops. His second in command was Lord Cornwallis, who had only returned from England following the death of his wife.

 

The Siege of Charleston

 

After suffering losses on the seas, the British landed south of Charleston on John’s Island. The siege would last 42 days. General Lincoln, well aware that his forces could not successfully defend the South’s largest city, made plans to evacuate the Continentals while escape was still possible.

 

However, according to General William Moultrie’s journal entry of April 26, 1780, leading Charleston citizens threatened to open the gates to the city and “cut up his [Lincoln’s] boats,” if he evacuated his troops. What some military historians call Lincoln’s decisive mistake probably resulted in the largest single military defeat of the war.

 

At the same time Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s “British Legion,” composed primarily of saber-wielding cavalry, pacified the countryside, cutting off supply routes such as at Biggin’s Bridge, north of Charleston. Admiral Arbuthnot’s warships easily sailed past Forts Johnson and Moultrie. Charleston would endure a relentless bombardment from both land and sea.

 

The fall of Charleston

 

Lincoln surrendered Charleston on May 12, 1780. Although the Continentals were taken prisoner, civilians and militia soldiers were allowed to return to their farms, some officers even allowed to keep their swords. Clinton returned to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis and 4,000 men. Before he left Charleston, however, Sir Henry Clinton issued an order that was to prove fatal to the British cause.

 

Clinton, in essence, forced all provincial inhabitants to take an oath of loyalty to the Crown or be branded as rebels. Militiamen that had returned home viewed their repatriation as duplicity. Many neutral citizens that had not taken sides were now forced into a decision. Clinton’s order was the first step in the coming rural warfare that would culminate in some of the bloodiest atrocities of the war.

 

The Second Fatal Blunder

 

The second blunder occurred when Colonel Tarleton’s cavalry overtook the Virginia Infantry, commanded by Colonel Buford. Buford was heading north to join rebel forces in North Carolina. The encounter resulted in a bloodbath. Tarleton gave no quarter as surrendering men were cut down with saber. The wounded were bayoneted.

 

This atrocity galvanized Patriot forces in the Carolinas as men rushed to join the opposition, including a young Andrew Jackson who had helped to treat the few fortunate survivors of the massacre. Rebels attacked the homes and wives of Loyalists; Tories and British raiding parties retaliated. Many innocent civilians died. As historian Walter Edgar comments, the British stirred up a hornet’s nest. Much of the blame rests with Cornwallis, who allowed field commanders extensive freedom of movement and chose not to intervene.

 

Sources:

 

Walter Edgar, Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution (HarperCollins, 2001)

Christopher Hibbert, Redcoats and Rebels: The American Revolution Through British Eyes (New York: Avon Books, 1991)

The Spirit of Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by its Participants Edited by Henry S. Commager and Richard B. Morris (Castle Books, 2002)

 [Copyright of this article is owned by Michael Streich; reprints require written permission]

 Conspiracy Stories? Do they Fit into History?

Conspiracy theories and historical fact do not mix. Conspiracy theories arise out of speculation, often the “what ifs” or “what really happened?” Conspiracy stories are frequently fueled by insufficient data or contradictory evidence about a particular event. Often, this data is sealed for decades, prohibiting an unbiased scrutiny of the facts.

 

Was there a man on the “grassy knoll” in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Did FDR receive British intelligence reports of a pending attack on Pearl Harbor? Why weren’t the “dots” connected before the events of 9/11? It is precisely such questions – which often cannot be sufficiently answered, that lead to speculation. But speculation is not history.

 

The Sinking of the Lusitania May 1915

 

Decades after the end of World War One, scholars wrote about the criminal sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat, killing over 1,200 men, women, and children. It was an unprovoked attack against an unarmed passenger vessel carrying no war contraband. Yet over fifty years after the event, official archives were opened and it was found that the ship had, in fact, been transporting munitions to Britain, a factor in its swift sinking. Later dives on the wreck confirmed this.

 

Colin Simpson’s book, The Lusitania, published in 1972, relied on the new opened archives yet probably did more to close one chapter of semi-conspiracy while opening several more, including the role of Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. That Churchill manipulated the event in order to bring the U.S. into the war is well within his character. Yet to suggest that he orchestrated the sinking for that purpose is yet another conspiracy theory.

 

Pearl Harbor and the JFK Assassination

 

Conspiracy theorists suggest, among other things, that Churchill knew about the impending attack on Hawaii but elected not to warn Franklin Roosevelt. Similar theories hold that British intelligence did pass on the information but that FDR chose not to act on it. John Toland, not a historian in the conventional sense, wrote Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath in 1982. His book explores the many anomalies of information and intelligence before the attack. The implication is that someone in Washington, DC must have known or had a pretty good idea.

 

The same types of implications are brought to bear regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, despite the conclusions of the Warren Report and the FBI findings at the time. To this day, many Americans dispute the official reports, blaming organized crime, the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, and the Soviet Union. There were enough motives to engulf many, yet every attempt to “prove” a theory opens the doors to further conspiracy stories. 

In the 2007 movie Shooter, Bobby Lee Swagger and Nick Memphis drive to an out of the way house to see the advice of Mr. Rate. During their conversation, Rate mentions the Grassy Knoll and the shooting of those boys within hours. When Memphis asks him how he knew this he replied, "Still got the shovel...That's how a conspiracy works...The world ain't what it seems." Shooter plays on conspiracy theories and that's why people love the film. It's a recurring movie in Cable channels.

 

Conspiracy Stories are Distracting

 

In the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen jumps out of bed and begins to audibly recount the events of the Kennedy assassination. His wife immediately attacks him verbally, saying that he is using the event to keep them from having sex. In many ways, Woody Allen got it right: conspiracy theories are not history; they are the banter of distraction.

 

One of the questions University of Pennsylvania historian Steven Hahn asks in his recent article on Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (“A Rebellious Take on African-American History,” Chronicle Review, August 7, 2009) is “Why are there historical subjects we so easily avoid or disown, even when they are of genuine significance?” Hahn is not suggesting historians embrace conspiracy theories, but his article focuses on looking at old history in a new way, asking new questions and looking in other directions.

 Avoiding the abuse of historical analysis means the blood, sweat, and tears of good research and good questions. Conspiracy theories are the stuff of dinner table discussion by “middle America,” the folks who have but a smattering of historical understanding yet treat the “dots” preceding 9/11 as a reality-based soap opera. Not the stuff of real history. 

One of the most believed contemporary conspiracies involves Donald Trump. Both sides have created their own stories. Entire books are devoted to these, such as American Kompromat (Craig Unger, Dutton,2021) which implies that Trump was a useful idiot (to use a phrase from Lenin). And the use of such terms as the "Big Lie" also promote conspiracy theories. And these are not unique, but are peppered in American history (Election of 1876 as an example). Historical truth can be subject to interpretation, but not the facts that produced those truths.

(Copyright of this article is owned by Michael Streich and any reprints must have written permission).

 

 Swing States in National Election History

Every Vote Counts

In the election of 1884, Republican candidate James Blaine lost to Grover Cleveland because 1,149 New York voters selected the Democrat over Blaine. As one historian noted, “If 575 people had voted the other way in New York, Blaine would have become president.” In that election, 10,052,706 votes had been cast across the nation. The New York vote demonstrated that every vote in an election counts. Today, when parties talk about “getting out the vote,” they are mindful of historical elections like the 1884 campaign.

 

States that make a Difference in Key Elections: New York in 1884

 

In 1884, the “swing state” was New York. Had Blaine won the popular vote, the state’s 36 electoral votes would have made Blaine president. 401 electoral votes were in play in 1884. With New York’s 36, Blaine’s electoral vote total would have been 218 over Cleveland’s 183, more than half needed to secure the presidency. So how did Blaine lose?

 

Several factors caused Blaine’s loss of New York. Most specifically, Blaine failed to denounce an anti-Catholic phrase used by a Protestant minister during an October 29, 1884 campaign function in New York, days before the election. The Reverend Samuel D. Burchard referred to the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”

 

Response to Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion

 

New York’s Irish Catholics were outraged. One of the persistent stereotypes of Irish immigrants involved drinking to excess. The reference to Romanism was an obvious slur against the Catholic religion. The bitter anti-Catholicism of the American Know-Nothing Party of the early 1850s was still a vivid reminder of religious intolerance and prejudice.

 

“Rebellion” was a reminder that the Democrats were responsible for the Civil War. Burchard was “waving the bloody shirt,” a common post-war tactic of Republicans. When asked by a reporter why he lost, Blaine replied, “I should have carried New York by 10,000 votes if the weather had been clear and Dr. Burchard had been doing missionary work in Asia Minor or China.”

 

Contested Votes and Stolen Elections in American History

 

One of the most significant election results of 2010 involves the write-in campaign of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski who lost the Republican primary election to Joe Miller. Miller was endorsed by Sarah Palin and received substantial support from the Tea Party Express. But Murkowski refused to admit defeat and mounted a write-in campaign.

 

Called a sore loser, she managed an almost impossible task and defeated Miller in the general election with more than 10,000 votes. It was an example of the political dictum that every vote counts.

 

In the 2000 presidential election, George Bush was declared the winner but only after appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court led to a split decision favoring Bush. The Democrat, Al Gore, actually received more popular votes than Bush. The 2000 election, decided in Florida, has often been compared to the “stolen election” of 1876.

 

Questions still persist regarding the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. Allegations of voter fraud in the Chicago, Illinois region as well as certain Texas precincts suggest that Nixon actually won the election, but refused to demand a recount or an investigation into the irregularities.

 

The Importance of Voting on Election Day

 

Historical examples demonstrate the importance of voting. Many past elections might have demonstrated different outcomes if enough people avoided the argument that “my vote will not make a difference.”  There are other factors that affect election results. But in the end, what matters is how the citizens vote and if they exercise their duty as citizens in a free democracy.

 

Sources:

 

Paul F. Boller, Jr., Presidential Campaigns From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Charles W. Calhoun, “James G. Blaine and the Republican Party Vision,” The Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Ballard C. Campbell, editor (Scholarly Resources Inc., 2000)

Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial America: A People’s History of the Post-Reconstruction Era, Volume 6 (Penguin Books, 1990)

[Article first published January 2011 in Suite101. Copyright of this article is owned by Michael Streich. Any reprints in any form require written permission]

 

 Carl Schurz: German-American and GOP Hero

Schurz Helped Found the Republican Party 

Carl Schurz debarked the City of London with his wife Margarethe on September 17, 1852. Arriving in New York, Schurz, only twenty-three, left behind enough adventure for an entire lifetime. An exile in the wake of the European Revolutions of 1848 – in which he figured prominently, Schurz’s passion for politics, debate, and equality would lead to a career as a journalist, United States Senator, Cabinet Secretary, and the conscience of the Republican Party in the post-Civil War years.

 

Early Career as a Student Revolutionary

 

Revolutionary activity spread throughout Europe following the overthrow of the French government under Louis Philippe. This was particularly true within the German Confederation. German university students had a history of protest, rooted in the reactionary policies of Austria’s Prince Metternich and the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The seeds of liberal dissent were frequently associated with the student fraternities or unions – Burschenschaften, of which Carl Schurz was a member in Bonn.

 

As a leader in the Democratic Society and inspired by his mentor-professor Gottfried Kinkel, Schurz abandoned his studies to write revolutionary articles and help bring about a unified German state under the principles of liberal constitutionalism. Ultimately, he rejected any compromise with monarchy and favored a democratic republic.

 

In 1849 Schurz joined the Revolutionary Army, although his military experience was practically non-existent. When the Prussian army invested Rastatt, Schurz and two friends managed to escape to France and then on to Switzerland. His friend and mentor, Professor Kinkel, however, had been captured, tried and convicted, and imprisoned in Berlin at the Spandau prison.

 

The Daring Rescue and Flight to America

 

Schurz risked his own life to return to Germany. With assistance from friends and Kinkel’s wife, as well as money from wealthy sympathizers, Schurz bribed a prison guard and freed his teacher. Fleeing Germany, they settled in London, returning to Europe briefly to visit France and Switzerland. But by 1851, the new French leader who was to become the Emperor Napoleon III was already preparing the end of liberal government.

 

Returning to London, Schurz conversed with other European revolutionaries like Giuseppe Mazzini, Louis Kossuth, and Louis Blanc. He met and married Margarethe Meyer and made the decision to immigrate to America. The United States in 1852 was a political cauldron of sectional rivalries that began in earnest following the 1848 Mexican Cession. The Compromise of 1850 was only two years passed when Schurz arrived.

 

1852 was a presidential election year and the waning Whig Party had nominated the aging General Winfield Scott to oppose the Democrat, Franklin Pierce. It was also the year Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Within the next four years a new party would emerge, the Republicans, and Schurz would be one of the rising stars.

 

Military and Political Career

 

During the Civil War, several German immigrants that had fought in the 1848 revolutions would be given commands. Schurz, a friend of President Lincoln, was named a general but his performance was poor. The late historian T. Harry Williams referred to Schurz as “ebullient and incompetent.”

 

Schurz became far more successful as a leader in the post-war Republican Party. He stood against the corruption of the Grant administration and led the mugwumps or conscience Republicans, moderates determined to reform the party. Under President Rutherford B. Hayes, Schurz joined the Cabinet. The late Harvard historian Frederick Merk called him “the great reform Secretary of the Interior” for his role in fighting for Native American rights.

 

When the United States embraced imperialism in the late 19^th century, Schurz supported the Anti-Imperialist League. Commenting on the Spanish-American War in Harper’s Weekly (April 16, 1898), Schurz referred to the “ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism” and reminded his readers that the real patriot was one who endeavored to save “his country from a great calamity.”

 

Schurz died in New York in 1906. Had he been born in America, he might have become a U.S. President. As an immigrant and a fiercely loyal patriot, Schurz once wrote: “Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”

 

Sources:

 

Charles Breunig, The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789-1850 (W.W. Norton & Company, 1970)

Hans L. Trefousse, Carl Schurz (Fordham University Press, 1998)

 

Quotes about Schurz:

 

 Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (W.W. Norton, 1978)

T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952)

[Article first published March 2010 in Suite101. Copyright owned by Michael Streich and or his estate; any reprints require written permission.]