Gilbert, Oscar E./Gilbert, Cathrine R. True for the Cause of Liberty. The Second Spartan Regiment in the American Revolution

After their defeat at Saratoga in New York State in 1777, the British decided to pursue a southern strategy against the American insurgents, i.e. to "roll up" the rebellious colonies from Georgia through the Carolinas to Virginia. Instead, they unleashed a savage guerrilla war of raids, ambushes, assassinations and major field battles that rivalled those in the northern colonies. Untrained Patriot militiamen - occasionally reinforced by contingents from the Continental Line - faced Britain's Cherokee and Creek allies as well as Loyalist militia and British regular troops under the leadership of General Cornwallis and his two most capable subordinates, Patrick Ferguson and the ruthless Banastre "Bloody Ban" Tarleton. In October 1780, the Loyalist militia was virtually annihilated at King's Mountain, the battle that Lord Clinton, the British commander-in-chief, said was "the first link in a chain of events which followed one another in regular succession until they finally ended in the total loss of America". Further defeats at Blackstock's Farm and Cowpens and a Pyhrric victory at Guilford Courthouse wore down the British Southern Army and drove Cornwallis north, where he was surrounded at Yorktown and surrendered. This study uses battlefield analysis and the words of officers and enlisted men, drawn from pension records and little-known interviews, to bring to life the crucial role of a militia regiment - the 2nd Spartans of South Carolina - that fought in virtually every action of the savage war in the rear that decided the fate of America.