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British general Clinton had returned to New York in June 1779. Six months later, he and some 8,000 soldiers headed down to Charleston, South Carolina. It was a stormy thirty-eight-day voyage. Many of the British troops’ horses, supplies, and artillery were lost as their ship, the Anna, “was blown across the Atlantic,” noted Mark M. Boatner III in the Encyclopedia of the American Revolution.
Charleston was the major political and economic center of the South, home to 2,000 wealthy planters and their families—the richest group of people in America. Clinton’s spirits brightened at the thought of a sure victory in Charleston. From there he sought to conquer the rest of the South.
Clinton finally moved against Charleston on February 11, 1780. The siege lasted three months. American General Benjamin Lincoln (1733–1810) and his 5,000 men were trapped and outnumbered by British sailors, redcoats, and Hessians. Lincoln recounted his story, which was excerpted by Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris in The Spirit of Seventy-Six: The Story of the American Revolution as Told by Participants. He vividly recalled the night of May 10, describing the enemy shells as “meteors crossing each other and bursting in the air; it appeared as if the stars were tumbling down.” The general continued: “The fire was incessant almost the whole night; cannon-balls whizzing and shells hissing continually amongst us; ammunition chests … blowing up; great guns bursting, and wounded men groaning along the lines. It was a dreadful night!” By May 12, they could hold out no longer, and Lincoln surrendered. British capture Charleston and its 5400-man garrison (the entire southern American Army) along with four ships and a military arsenal. British losses are only 225. The loss of Charleston was the worst defeat in the entire war; it would remain America’s biggest loss until the World War II Battle of Bataan (occurred in the spring of 1942; a battle for a key island in the northern part of the Philippines that ended in Japanese victory and the capture of thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war). The Carolinas now lay open to the British.
