When Cornwallis First Invaded Carolina

By John Hood

RALEIGH — Most Americans know that George Washington was not only the first president elected under the United States Constitution but also the general placed in overall command of Patriot forces during the Revolutionary War.

Ask Americans to name the overall British commander during the conflict, however, and many would struggle to answer. Among those who did, the most common answer would surely be General Charles Cornwallis — and it would be an erroneous one.

This answer constitutes an injustice to at least five men. First of all, Cornwallis was never in overall command of British forces. At the beginning of the war, that task fell to General Thomas Gage. After sustaining heavy British losses at Bunker Hill, he was replaced by General William Howe. After winning a series of battles against Washington in New York and Pennsylvania, Howe resigned in 1778. His replacement, General Henry Clinton, served until 1782, and was succeeded by General Guy Carleton during the final months of the war.

The fifth man denied his due by our faulty historical memory is Cornwallis himself, who is mainly remembered as a loser forced to surrender a large British army at Yorktown. He was a far better soldier than that. During a lengthy military career that took him to Ireland, western Europe, North America, and India, Cornwallis won almost every battle he fought and proved an able administrator and diplomat, as well.

As a young member of Parliament during the 1760s, he actually voted against the Stamp Act and accused the government of mistreating the American colonists. When war came, however, Cornwallis resolved to do his part.

While even history buffs associate him primarily with Britain’s second (and more successful) invasion of the Carolinas in 1780, that was not the general’s first visit here. The first British invasion of the region began in March 1776 when General Henry Clinton arrived off the coast of Wilmington with a small army. He was expecting to find two groups of reinforcements waiting for him: a column of Loyalists marching southeast from the Carolina backcountry and an army of redcoats sailing west from Britain under the command of Clinton’s subordinate, Charles Cornwallis.

The Loyalists never showed up. Halted at the February 27 battle of Moores Creek Bridge, some were killed and nearly all the rest were captured or dispersed. As for the redcoats, bad weather delayed their arrival until early May. At that point, Clinton was still toying with the idea of trying to reestablish British authority over North Carolina and restore royal governor Josiah Martin to power here.

It was 250 years ago this week, then, that Clinton gave General Cornwallis his first assignment: leading 900 British redcoats in an assault on Brunswick Town, north of what is now Southport. It had been the main rebel base in the region. On May 17, 1776, Cornwallis and his men left the British flotilla “in the most secret manner imaginable” and “in the dead of the night,” as Clinton put it, surprising the defenders of the town.

Unbeknownst to Clinton and Cornwallis, however, most of the Patriots had already evacuated. Cornwallis scored his first tactical victory of the war but it had no strategic import — something he and other British commanders would do many more times.

Over the next few days, Patriots and redcoats skirmished while Clinton fumed. Frustrated at his lack of progress in North Carolina, he decided his best course of action would be to sail further south and attack Charles Town (now Charleston), by far the most populous and prosperous city in the Carolinas. With that port in British hands, he thought, the rest of the region would inevitably fall.

It didn’t work. Clinton failed to take Charleston in 1776. Charles Cornwallis did take the city four years later, but it proved no guarantee of ultimate victory. That wasn’t his fault, though. Blame the politicians of London, who should have listened to young Cornwallis back in 1765 and treated Americans with more respect.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).