ABSTRACT
When d’Estaing’s fleet sailed away to the West Indies in the autumn of 1779, Clinton saw a chance to strike at the south. Georgia was held by the British already. He bombarded the city from the sea before he landed, and made a wary, circling movement. The patriots of Carolina rather played into his hands. Satisfied that Charleston was now safe for Britain and that the local loyalists would help to keep it so, Clinton turned it over to General Cornwallis and sailed back to New York, taking about half the British and German troops with him. Congress was hard put to it to find men for a counterstroke, but it called in some of the famous Delawares and Marylanders from the north, and a few excellent officers. Cornwallis, pleased with his success, exploited it without mercy. In October he sent a thousand loyalists under Ferguson to storm the Watauga settlement in what is now Tennessee..
