† But none have attempted to investigate the impact of disease on the conduct of the campaigns in a systematic way. A few historians mention disease as an important factor in the campaigns, and others point to instances when the sickness of a particular officer or unit may have affected the outcome of an engagement. With some exceptions, historians of the Revolution have either ignored or understated the influence of disease on the war in the Lower South. In April 1781 Lord Cornwallis ( Figure 1) cited saving his army from another Carolina fever season as one of the main reasons for his decision to move north to Virginia and his fateful encounter at Yorktown that October.Įarl Cornwallis, Commander of British Forces in the South, 1780–81. Despite winning another key victory at Camden, British forces in the region sustained heavy casualties from disease in the summer and fall of 1780. To secure control over the Lower South required keeping thousands of their soldiers in what was then the unhealthiest region of British North America. Yet Clinton's southern strategy seriously undermined the health of his forces, and may have cost the British the war. It began well, with Sir Henry Clinton's capture of Charleston in May. It was the British that suffered the most significant losses from the region's fevers, however, particularly during the campaign of 1780. American military leaders mounted several costly and fruitless summer campaigns against British forces in Florida and Georgia. Yet that knowledge did not stop them from doing so.
From the outset of the American War for Independence, military leaders on both sides recognized the perils of warm weather campaigning in the feverish lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia.
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