Chapter XXI.
SAVANNAH, CHARLESTON, AND PENSACOLA, 1778 TO 1781.
The alliance between France and the United States
increased the probability of the final independence of
the latter. It therefore became important to diminish
the amount of territory held by the Americans, even if
their main army could not be destroyed. Lord George
Germaine hoped that the thinly inhabited southern
provinces might speedily be reduced to obedience, and
the royal authority established from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Susquehanna River.[1]
There was a further advantage to be gained by occupying at once the Northern and the Southern States. The summer and autumn were the season of activity in the former, the winter and spring in the latter. The British general, who could move his troops by sea, might thus leave each department with only soldiers enough to act on the defensive when the weather limited the operations that could be conducted, and maintain a superiority in each, when such a superiority was most important.
On the 6th of November, 1778, about thirty-five hundred men, under Lieutenant-colonel Campbell, were embarked at New York. Two Hessian regiments were
of the expedition. The transports, delayed by bad
- ↑ Bancroft, vol. x. p. 284.
