Siegeworks in the Backcountry

In the spring of 1781, two British strongpoints in Augusta, Georgia, and Ninety Six, South Carolina, fell under simultaneous pressure from Patriot forces. Under the brilliant, tenacious generalship of Nathanael Greene and an unprecedented logistical network stretching from Philadelphia to the Carolina frontier, Continental forces and partisan fighters forged an alliance that gave them for the first time the ability to continuously attack both sites simultaneously for nearly a month. Augusta fell first, and when the British evacuated the village of Ninety Six shortly after a relief column broke the American siege, they conceded what Greene had already proven on the battlefield: the backcountry was lost. As much as the siege of Yorktown, Greene’s campaign helped decide the end the war. Had the British retained effective control of the Carolina and Georgia backcountry, peace negotiators might have kept them as Crown colonies. Greene’s successful capture of both Augusta and Ninety Six made that argument impossible to pursue.

Siegeworks in the Backcountry: The Fall of Augusta, Ninety Six, and the End of the American Revolution by distinguished historian Lawrence E. Babits tells the gripping story of the campaign that drove British forces from the Carolina and Georgia backcountry and sealed the fate of the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War. The sieges occurred against a background of theater-level warfare managed by British and American leaders in London, New York, Charleston, Philadelphia, as well as various state capitals. Greene’s correspondence reflects a continual struggle with national civilian and military leadership while he managed an often quarrelsome group of Southern leaders nominally under his command. The twin sieges are also notable for the fact that the soldiers in both armies were, with few exceptions, Americans, serving as British Provincials or loyalist militia on the one side, or Continentals and Whig partisans and militia on the other. Drawing on meticulous research, including archaeological reports and pension applications, this account goes beyond battlefield tactics to reveal the political stakes behind the fighting and the stories of the men who lived and died for American liberty. For readers of the American Revolution, military strategy, and Southern history, this is the definitive account of a campaign too long overshadowed by Yorktown—and just as decisive.

Lawrence E. Babits earned degrees from the University of Maryland and Brown University. A veteran, he has studied the American Revolutionary War for over fifty years. He is a battlefield archaeologist with extensive experience in reenacting and musketry. He has published four books on the Revolutionary War as well as numerous articles. Now retired, Babits resides in Greenville, NC.