Fall of Charleston, 12 May 1780.  In December, Sir Henry Clinton sailed from New York to recover Charleston, still held by the patriots. Opposing his force of 11,000 men was General Lincoln with a force of about 7000 Americans.  Lincoln and his troops became entrapped in the city by troops on the one side and ships on the other. The American forces held out for nearly two months, but on 12 May 1780, after a destructive bombardment, they were compelled to capitulate. The city of Charleston was pillaged by Hessians and British alike, and South Carolina suffered under a brutal warfare more than any other State.  Clinton and Cornwallis outlawed all people who would not take an ironbound oath to actively support the British people, and the outlaws were cruelly treated.

The Fall of Charleston,  as related by Simms (1844):  In February Francis Marion was dispatched to Bacon's Bridge on Ashley river, where Moultrie had established a camp for the reception of the militia of the neighborhood, as well as those which had been summoned from the interior.  The accumulation of troops at Bacon's Bridge was made with the view to the defense of Charleston, now threatened by the enemy.  Many concurring causes led to the leaguer of that city. Its conquest was desirable on many accounts, and circumstances had already shown that this was not a matter of serious difficulty. The invasion of Prevost the year before, which had so nearly proved successful; the little resistance which had been offered to him while traversing more than one hundred miles of country contiguous to the Capital; and the rich spoils which, on his retreat, had been borne off by his army, betrayed at once the wealth and weakness of that region. The possession of Savannah, where British Government had been regularly re-established, and the entire, if not totally undisturbed control of Georgia, necessarily facilitated the invasion of the sister province.  South Carolina was now a frontier, equally exposed to the British in Georgia, and the Tories of Florida and North Carolina.  The means of defense in her power were now far fewer than when Prevost made his attempt on Charleston. The Southern army was, in fact, totally broken up. The Carolina regiments had seen hard service, guarding the frontier, and contending with the British in Georgia. They were thinned by battle and sickness to a mere handful.  The Virginia and North Carolina regiments had melted away, as the term for which they had enlisted, had expired. The Georgia regiment, captured by the British in detail, were perishing in their floating prisons. The weakness of the patriots necessarily increased the audacity, with the strength, of their enemies. The loyalists, encouraged by the progress of Prevost, and the notorious inefficiency of the Whigs, were now gathering in formidable bodies, in various quarters, operating in desultory bands, or crowding to swell the columns of the British army. All things concurred to encourage the attempt of the enemy on Charleston. Its possession, with that of Savannah, would not only enable them to complete their ascendancy in the two provinces to which these cities belonged, but would probably give them North Carolina also. Virginia then, becoming the frontier, it would be easy, with the cooperation of an army ascending the Chesapeake, to traverse the entire South with their legions, detaching it wholly from the federal compact. Such was the British hope, and such their policy. There was yet another motive for the siege of Charleston, considered without reference to collateral or contingent events. Esteemed erroneously as a place of great security -- an error that arose in all probability from the simple fact of the successful defense of Fort Moultrie - it was crowded with valuable magazines. As a trading city, particularly while the commerce of the North remained interrupted, it had become a place of great business. It was a stronghold for privateers and their prizes, and always contained stores and shipping of immense value.

The temptations to its conquest were sufficiently numerous. Ten thousand choice troops, with a large and heavy train of artillery, were accordingly dispatched from New York for its investment, which was begun in February, 1780, and conducted by the Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, Sir Henry Clinton, in person. He conducted his approaches with a caution highly complimentary to the besieged. The fortifications were only field works, and might have been overrun in less than five days by an audacious enemy. The regular troops within the city were not above two thousand men. The citizen militia increased the number to nearly four thousand. For such an extent of lines as encircled the place, the adequate force should not have been less than that of the enemy. The fortifications, when the British first landed their `materiel', were in a dilapidated and unfinished state, and, at that time, the defenders, apart from the citizens, scarcely exceeded eight hundred men; while the small pox, making its appearance within the walls, for the first time in twenty years - an enemy much more dreaded than the British, -- effectually discouraged the country militia from coming to the assistance of the citizens. Under these circumstances, the conquest would have been easy to an active and energetic foe. But Sir Henry does not seem to have been impatient for his laurels. He was willing that they should mature gradually, and he sat down to a regular and formal investment.

It was an error of the Carolinians, under such circumstances, to risk the fortunes of the State, and the greater part of its regular military strength, in a besieged town; a still greater to do so in defiance of such difficulties as attended the defense. The policy which determined the resolution was a concession to the citizens, in spite of all military opinion.  The city might have been yielded to the enemy, and the State preserved, or, which was the same thing, the troops. The loss of four thousand men from the ranks of active warfare, was the great and substantial loss, the true source, in fact, of most of the miseries and crimes by which the very bowels of the country were subsequently torn and distracted.  It was the great good fortune of the State that Francis Marion was not among those who fell into captivity in the fall of Charleston.  He very nearly did so.

The siege of Charleston, in consequence of the firm bearing of the besieged, and the cautious policy of the British Government, was protracted long after the works had been pronounced untenable. It was yielded unwillingly to the conqueror, only after all resistance had proved in vain.  It fell by famine, rather than by the arms of the enemy.  The defense was highly honorable to the besieged. It lasted six weeks, in which they had displayed equal courage and endurance.  The consequences of this misfortune leave it somewhat doubtful, whether the determination to defend the city to the last extremity, was not the result of a correct policy; considering less its own loss, and that of the army, than the effect of the former upon the rustic population. Certainly, the capture of the army was a vital misfortune to the southern States; yet the loss of the city itself was of prodigious effect upon the scattered settlements of the country.  The character and resolve of the capital cities, in those days, were very much the sources of the moral strength of the interior.  Sparsely settled, with unfrequent opportunities of communion with one another, the minds of the forest population turned naturally for their tone and direction to the capital city.  The active attrition of rival and conflicting minds, gives, in all countries, to the population of a dense community, an intellectual superiority over those who live remote, and feel none of the constant moral strifes to which the citizen is subject. In South Carolina, Charleston had been the seat of the original `movement', had incurred the first dangers, achieved the first victories, and, in all public proceedings where action was desirable, had always led off in the van. To preserve intact, and from overthrow, the seat of ancient authority and opinion, was surely a policy neither selfish nor unwise. Perhaps, after all, the grand error was, in not making the preparations for defence adequate to the object. The resources of the State were small, and these had been diminished woefully in succoring her neighbors, and in small border strifes, which the borderers might have been taught to manage for themselves. The military force of the State, under any circumstances, could not have contended on equal terms with the ten thousand well-appointed regulars of Sir Henry Clinton.  The assistance derived from Virginia and North Carolina was little more than nominal, calculated rather to swell the triumph of the victor than to retard his successes.  If the movements of the British were slow, and deficient in military enterprise, where Sir Henry Clinton commanded in person, such could not be said of them, after the conquest of Charleston was effected.  The commander-in-chief was succeeded by Earl Cornwallis, whose career was certainly obnoxious in the extreme.  

Charleston in possession of the enemy, they proceeded with wonderful activity to use all means in their power, for exhausting the resources, and breaking down the spirit of the country. Their maxim was that of habitual tyranny -- "might is right". They seemed to recognize no other standard. The articles of capitulation, the laws of nations, private treaty, the dictates of humanity and religion, were all equally set at naught. The wealth of private families, -- slaves by thousands, -- were hurried into the waists of British ships,  as the legitimate spoils of war. The latter found a market in the West India islands; the prisoners made by the fall of Charleston were, in defiance of the articles of capitulation, crowded into prison-ships, from whence they were only released by death, or by yielding to those arguments of their keepers which persuaded them to enlist in British regiments, to serve in other countries. Many yielded to these arguments, with the simple hope of escape from the horrors by which they were surrounded. When arts and arguments failed to overcome the inflexibility of these wretched prisoners, compulsion was resorted to, and hundreds were forced from their country, shipped to Jamaica, and there made to serve in British regiments.  Citizens of distinction, who, by their counsel or presence, opposed their influence over the prisoners, or proved themselves superior to their temptations, were torn from their homes without warning, and incarcerated in their floating dungeons. Nothing was forborne, in the shape of pitiless and pitiful persecution, to break the spirits, subdue the strength, and mock and mortify the hopes, alike, of citizen and captive. (Simms 1844)

Desperate Condition of the Patriots.  The patriots in Georgia and South Carolina were now at rock bottom.  The fall of Charleston, in May 1780, added to the general sense of despair, and the state had no financial or other resources remaining.  Several brave spirits, Twiggs, Clarke, Dooly, Few, Jackson and others, kept together small bands of Georgians in the northern part of the state, protecting the inhabitants as best they could from the Indians and Tories. Of this sort of warfare, the Georgia historian, Charles C. Jones, says: "Merciless was the war waged between Royalists and Republicans. The former, inflamed with hatred and eager for rapine, spared neither age nor sex. Ruin marked their footsteps, and their presence was a signal for theft, torture, murder, and crimes without a name. Revenge and retaliation prompted the Republicans to many bloody deeds which can scarcely be excused even in a defensive war."  The patriots were out of cash, out of men, and nearly out of options.  The receipts issued by the states (and the Continental Congress) were essentially worthless, and those who took them must have been practically saints!  The script (paper money) issued by the colonies, the "Continental," depreciated to the point that Samuel Adams supposedly paid $2,000 for a suit of clothes and a hat!   The expression "Not worth a continental" was in use long after the cessation of hostilities.   The inability of Congress or the states to pay the army or militia was, shall we say, unpopular! A mutiny nearly occurred with General Gates, but General Washington prevented serious trouble.  A few discontented soldiers in Pennsylvania so frightened the feeble Continental Congress that it fled from Philadelphia to Princeton.  The patriot cause was in very serious trouble at this point.  Heaven help us, we almost remained British!

South Carolina.  The British forces overwhelmingly controlled South Carolina, and the Patriots there were for a time left to their own devices. This was accomplished with surprising spirit and determination through the active operations of small bands of patriots led by men who later became famous in the romance of partisan warfare, men who worked one day and fought the next.  Among those who thus distinguished themselves in numerous attacks upon the enemy were General Francis Marion (the much beloved "Swamp Fox"), Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens, whose successful activities soon attracted volunteers from neighboring colonies.  In Georgia patriots rallied under the standard of Elijah Clarke.  Opposed to these American leaders were the dashing but cruel Tarleton, and Major Ferguson, leader of the Tories, also called Loyalists and Royalists.  Francis Marion was anointed the "Swamp Fox," and Sumter as the "Game Cock," by British officers on account of their unique fighting qualities.  Marion hid out in the swamps and made sudden raids on British supply trains, disappearing back into the swamps!  Thanks to the Swamp Fox, the British simply could not supply their interior forts!