The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780 (review)

Expanding on the work of Ira Gruber, Paul H. Smith, and John S. Pancake, David K. Wilson looks at the early Revolutionary War in the South and finds that the "Southern Strategy" that British policymakers established as their modus operandi in that region was fundamentally flawed. The "Southern Strategy" was "based on the concept of counterrevolution; it was a sociomilitary approach that relied on the Loyalists of the southern states to provide the bulk of the manpower to achieve victory" (p. xv). British policymakers believed that with the help of these Loyalists a relatively small force of British regulars could invade and subdue the South.

Wilson makes two important points. He disagrees with earlier historians and argues that the strategy itself was flawed and not just its execution. He also contends that British policymakers could have and should have recognized that flaw had they not been blinded by misconception, by false assurances from exiled Southern Loyalists and royal governors, and by a desire to wage an "economical" war. Such recognition, Wilson believes, would have allowed the British to adapt "their plans to the reality of the situation on the ground" (p. xv). He then examines major military engagements from the beginning of the war through the American defeat at Waxhaws on 29 May 1780—not just, as the title would suggest, in South Carolina and Georgia, but in Virginia and North Carolina as well—and demonstrates that in each engagement Southern Loyalist participation and effectiveness was far less than anticipated.

The bulk of the book, therefore, consists of battle narratives. The author examines each engagement in depth, including appending an order of battle that gives a detailed breakdown of the units involved and the numbers of men serving in them. Wilson relies almost exclusively on secondary sources and printed primary accounts for these narratives, but through a careful reading of those sources and accounts he is able to add insights and correct errors, particularly in the number of combatants and the composition of the opposing forces, that are a valuable addition to the scholarship.

While he is scrupulous in footnoting direct quotations, Wilson often does not provide citations when paraphrasing the words or ideas of an actor, leaving the reader unsure if the source is the actor himself or an observer. This reviewer also found it odd that Wilson chose to deal with "issues in . . . historiography" of the battle of Stono Ferry and the siege of Savannah in a final, separate chapter instead of in the chapters devoted to those engagements. While the discussion of those issues is both interesting and enlightening, Wilson could have easily and more logically integrated them into the battle narrative.

Finally, Wilson could have considered the question of neutrals more than he does. Did the British overestimate Loyalist sentiment in the South because they numbered as Loyalists people who were really neutrals? Were the Patriots more numerous, or were they simply better at mobilizing neutrals to support their military operations?

While Wilson's book may not stand as the definitive study of Britain's Southern strategy in the first years of the Revolution in the South, it is a valuable and readable addition to the literature.