Nathanael Greene Retakes the Carolinas

In late April 1781, Lord Charles Cornwallis made the painful decision to abandon the Carolinas and Georgia, and took his 2,000 veteran soldiers to Virginia. General Nathanael Greene’s strategy to wear down and frustrate Cornwallis had worked masterfully, as Cornwallis wrote he was “quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures.” The remaining British outposts in the southern colonies were left in the capable hands of Colonel Francis Rawdon, but they were not mutually supporting. Greene recognized this fatal flaw and immediately began to reconquer them one at a time.