Chapter 14

The fact that I was able to view the progress of the war from the perspective of the future, I already knew what would work for the American Patriots and what would not work.

I had a fairly good grasp on the fact that Washington had come dangerously close to losing the entire prospect of being a free nation away from the rule of an absentee King in London with his fixation on keeping New York City Harbor out of the hands of the British Regular forces. He had worked with the British Army long enough back in the French and Indian Wars to know how they operated and he should have been astute enough to see he didn’t have any hope of staying in the main city and cutting the British land forces away from their logistical support from the British navy.

In a way, I was looking ahead when I suggested that my unit relocate to the southern colonies in order to harass the British Regular Army in the field down south. The battle was shaping up to be fought on the fields and farms of the Carolinas and in Virginia and the entrance to the interior wilderness where the Indians and the French had greater influence than the English speaking settlers with an inclination to stay close to the waters of the Atlantic The British Navy had already been up and down the Saint Lawrence seaway and up into the Great Lakes knowing that they had naval superiority in that region as well as along the entire eastern coastline of the new nation. It was a period when the British Navy was supreme in most areas and they presented the greatest threat to the success of the American Patriot cause.

After the successes in New York at Ticonderoga and Saratoga, the capture of the British Artillery allowed Washington to threaten the British forces in Boston forcing them to accelerate their exodus from that scenic city to the wilds of Halifax and the northern climes. I knew that the movement up to the Nova Scotia region was simply a feint by the British High Command hoping to throw off the Continental Army into falling into a trap being carefully set in New York City proper and up into the Hudson valley logistical lines that stretched all the way from Canada to the Atlantic Ocean.

I knew that Washington’s attention needed to be diverted down to the south and the battle of Cowpens was sort of a teaser of the capabilities of the Patriot forces to interdict and destroy the enemy once he was removed from the protection of the British Fleet.

At the same time, The French were currying favor with the Continental Congress with infusion of much needed capital and they provided a large store of ammunition, arms and powder to the Continental Army waiting to engage the British far away from their source of supply in New York City. It was a lack of foresight on the British side to congregate their forces in the New York City Harbor area hoping to entrap Washington to engage on their territory and not in some strange “other worldly” place in the southern colonies. The simple truth was that the southern colonies had vast resources of food, arms and manpower to contest the British invasion and the loyalty to the King was only as real as the ability of the British forces to maintain control and convince the majority that they would be the ultimate winner in the war for freedom. It was up to the masses of people in residence in those states to either support the Patriot cause or to scurry over and join the British forces to defeat the Continental Army as Rebels with no basis for existence.

I had a certain amount of respect for Lord Cornwallis who was sort of caught in the middle of things with waning support from Whitehall as the entire war effort was becoming an issue with the government and with the common people who were wondering how much money they were willing to spend in order to save face over the loss of entire continent under development. The main areas of contention that revolved around the “second class” citizen aspects and the “taxation without representation” issues were key to the conduct of the war and the political and military goals were intertwined so closely that there was little chance of separating them even if people in power decided that course of action was the best route out of the conflict.

There was no doubt in my mind that Cornwallis was totally convinced of the rightness of his mission to crush the upstart Americans. I was also certain that he was so much the gentleman that he had an innate desire to give them a least a sporting chance by restraining some of his forces from being overly exuberant in their string of heavily reinforced victories along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, some of the less inhibited and boisterous officers under his command like Carleton had the same attitude as if they were in a backward country where there were no schools or churches and they treated the American populace like vermin to be exterminated for the greater glory of the British Army. Even the unconnected officers in the officer’s mess took a wide berth around those examples of vicious murderers and earned the respect of their men for being more humane in their conduct on the battlefield.

For some reason, Howe continued to keep the British fighting ships close to New York Harbor because he was suspicious of Washington’s designs on the city itself.

I knew that this error in judgement would be enough for the French to suggest to Washington that he formulate a “Southern Strategy” that would catch the bulk of the British land forces far enough away from Naval support that would in turn allow the French Navy to assist the fledgling American Continental Army in an important victory over the regular British Army at a time when European circles began to suspect that the King was headed to a staggering loss of an entire continent from his expanding Empire.