![Sproule, Geo. F. A sketch of the environs of Charlestown in South Carolina. [N.P, 1780] Map.](https://www.thenmusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/iiif-service_gmd_gmd391_g3914_g3914c_ar155700-full-pct_25-0-default-copy.jpg)
The southern states remained quiet until early 1778, following the British defeat at Saratoga and French declaration of war. British forces dispatched by commander in chief General Clinton broke the strategic impasse by seizing Savannah and most of Georgia in late 1778 and early 1779. Clinton planned to use Savannah to support operations northwards, but his efforts were opposed by the arrival of Continental reinforcements under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. Confused fighting took place the Georgia-South Carolina border as a consequence. Patriot militiamen destroyed a force of Carolina Loyalists at Kettle Creek in February 1779–a loss offset by American defeats at Brier Creek in March, the near-capture of Charleston during Maj. Gen. Augustine Prevost’s foraging raid, and a bloody American repulse at Stono Ferry in June 1779. Prevost’s report of the disorganized American response to his raid prompted Clinton to unleash his long-planned expedition to seize Charleston.
"I had long determined . . . on an expedition against Charleston . . . to save [Georgia] from falling into the hands of the rebels . . . the universal dejection occasioned in the rebel country by the late miscarriage of the French . . . before Savannah . . . strongly at this time invited me to it. My intention had been to put the Chesapeake and Carolina expeditions in motion together early in October [1779] that we might have the whole winter and following spring before us to carry our operations to their proper extent. And I was not without hopes . . . that the spirit of rebellion might be thoroughly subdued in the two Carolinas, and such a hold afterwards taken of the Chesapeake as should prove at least a barrier between them and the northern states. But the visit of a superior French fleet to the American coast . . . obliged the Admiral and me to confine our thoughts…to the security of . . . His Majesty’s American possessions."
Lt. Gen. Henry ClintonWilliam B. Wilcox. “The American Rebellion: Sir Henry Clinton’s Narrative of his Campaigns, 1775-1782, with an Appendix of Original Documents.” New Haven: Yale, 1954, p. 151.