The Man Who Lost America?

How much blame does General Cornwallis deserve for Britain losing the American colonies?

On occasion, Lord Cornwallis has been called "The man who lost Britain the American Colonies". This is a completely unfair statement. Had the British King and Parliament followed the advice and voting of Lord Cornwallis, it is possible the colonies would never have rebelled. As for his war record, Cornwallis proved himself a good battlefield commander. His success in the Northern campaign kept Britain in the war, where a lesser commander could have lost it. Although he has to take a large chunk of the blame for the surrender at Yorktown, the blame is not wholly his. Had General Clinton been quicker to send reinforcements, perhaps the situation could have been salvaged. Also, where was the vaunted British Navy to come in and drive off the French that pounded him from the sea?

As always, history is much too complicated to reduce to simple statements, and large events are rarely the product of one man's decisions. That said, Lord Cornwallis demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the War for American Independence as it was played out in the Southern Colonies. In colonies such as the Carolinas, the War was as much a civil war as a revolution. This point is best illustrated by the Battle of King's Mountain. Only one British Army Officer fought in the battle, everyone else was American, Loyalist and Patriot. None the less, King's Mountain proved a crushing defeat for the British. It was the last time the British would be able to organise loyal Americans into a fighting company.

Cornwallis never seemed to fully realize the implications of this civil war. As he marched his army through the Carolinas vainly chasing the organized Colonial forces, much of the real war was being fought around him, a war the loyalists were losing. Had Cornwallis taken his time and used his highly trained regular troops to help subdue given areas before marching onward, it is likely he would have suffered less from partisan attacks and secured his supply lines.

Also, in retrospect the War of American Independence tends to be viewed as an all or nothing affair. But at the time, the colonies were strongly independent of each other. Each colony was fighting more for its own independence than for any idea of a unified America. Had Cornwallis conducted his campaign more slowly and methodically, it is possible that the southern colonies could have been retained by Britain even if the northern ones were lost.

We'll never know of course. Cornwallis made the best decision he could with the knowledge he had at his disposal. In the end, he lost his army and this proved the end of the war. But it was still a close fight.

In my next article, I plan to take a closer look at the battle that prompted Cornwallis to supposedly utter the words, "One more such victory and we are done for."