From the military and diplomatic points of view, the turning point of the war came with Gen. John Burgoyne’s signing of the Convention of Saratoga in October 1777 and the resulting decision of the French government in February 1778 to enter into an alliance with the Americans. The coming into the war of France, and then Spain, as enemies placed new and heavy burdens on Britain. The defeat of Burgoyne and the approaching entrance of France into the conflict caused alarm in London and led to the sending of the Carlisle Commission to offer the Americans autonomy within the empire, a proposal that failed to attract the Congress. It also forced the British army and navy in America to remain on the defensive during most of 1778.

The shape of things to come loomed when a French fleet from Toulon under Charles-Hector, comte d’Estaing, crossed the Atlantic, temporarily depriving Britain of easy control of North American waters. However, the French admiral failed to achieve anything. Immediately before d’Estaing’s arrival, Admiral Richard Howe and Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, who had succeeded William Howe, executed an order to evacuate Philadelphia. With the bulk of the army, Clinton had marched across New Jersey, beaten off an attack by Washington in the Battle of Monmouth, and had safely reached New York, where he was joined by Lord Howe. Washington and d’Estaing laid plans for a land and sea attack upon New York but could not execute them. They were also prevented from carrying through a joint assault upon Newport. The French fleet sailed off to the West Indies. Reappearing in North American waters in 1779, d’Estaing participated in a Franco-American assault upon Savannah that was bloodily repulsed by a British garrison. In 1780, after the British had evacuated Newport, a French squadron established itself there, with a small French army. The possibility that the French navy might secure control, even temporarily, of American waters and cooperate effectively with the patriots seriously disturbed Clinton.

Mindful of the French menace, Clinton, who had on occasion displayed brilliance and dash as a subordinate, was cautious as a commander in chief. He made hardly more than a gesture of attacking Washington, who hovered about New York from 1778 to 1781. Except in the far south, Clinton waged a war of endurance, to which he added extensive raiding operations in Connecticut and Virginia and efforts to seduce American leaders. What would have been the ultimate outcome of such a policy uniformly and steadily applied is difficult to say. By 1780 the Continental currency had become worthless, and the Congress was unable to pay its soldiers regularly. Supplies had to be requisitioned from the states. Even so, it is by no means certain that Britain would have outlasted the patriots in a war of endurance, for the British also felt financial strain. The war might have ended less rapidly and less dramatically, but with the same result.

War in the south

As it happened, Clinton did not insist that his cautious policy be executed in the southern states. He permitted Lord Cornwallis to embark upon aggressive adventures in the southern interior, for there were many loyalists in the Carolinas and Georgia, and the patriot forces were weak in those states. At the end of 1778, a British expedition under Clinton’s orders captured Savannah, and it became increasingly apparent to Clinton that larger British forces could take Charleston. In the spring of 1780 an army under Clinton with an accompanying fleet surrounded the city and compelled its surrender, together with more than 5,000 patriot soldiers. Its fall stunned the patriots of South Carolina and Georgia, and patriot resistance in the two states temporarily collapsed. Stimulated to further activity, Clinton established garrisons in a number of forts in their interior. Compelled to return to New York, he left Cornwallis in command in the far south, telling him to defend the new conquests and to undertake no ventures so expensive that the British grip on South Carolina and Georgia would be endangered. He also informed Cornwallis that he might take command of British raiding contingents in Virginia, in the event that it became advisable to do so.

Had Clinton remained in the far south, the British army there would have been primarily devoted to preservation of the gains already made, but Cornwallis was of different stuff. He was brave and bold, a fighting man rather than a thoughtful one. The British hold upon South Carolina and Georgia was soon threatened, the patriots of the two states turning to partisan warfare, with larger patriot forces advancing to their assistance from northward. At Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780, Cornwallis routed an American army under Gen. Horatio Gates moving out of North Carolina. His easy victory persuaded him to invade the interior of North Carolina. When a detachment of 1,000 loyalists that advanced with him was surrounded and destroyed in the Battle of King’s Mountain in the fall of that year, he had to fall back. He might then prudently have remained on the defensive, in consonance with the spirit, if not the letter, of his orders. Instead, receiving reinforcements, he drove a second time into the interior of North Carolina. Nor did he stop when a British detachment of more than a thousand men under Col. Banastre Tarleton was routed by Gen. Daniel Morgan at Cowpens in January 1781.

Cornwallis aggressively pursued Morgan, and, when Morgan joined Gen. Nathanael Greene, who had assumed command of the Continental troops in the South, he drove on after Greene. He pursued Greene to the Virginia boundary, although his own army was wasting away from hardship and disease. When he at last turned back, Greene, reinforced, followed him. At Guilford Courthouse, in March, Cornwallis with about 1,900 men, less than half the troops with whom he had started, attacked Greene with 4,500 men and finally forced him back. However, Cornwallis could not stay in the interior of North Carolina. Prudence and his orders rather clearly dictated that he retreat and defend the British conquests in South Carolina and Georgia. Instead, he led the remains of his army to the North Carolina seacoast and then to Virginia to undertake a new adventure, consigning the task of protecting the British gains in the far south to his subordinates.