Southern army, the Continental
After the defeat of
Gates in 1780,
Washington selected
Gen. Nathanael Greene to command the
Southern army.
Maj. Henry Lee's corps of horse and some companies of artillery were ordered to the
South.
The
Baron de Steuben was ordered to the same service; and
Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a patriot of
Poland, was chosen engineer of that department to supply the place of
Duportail, made prisoner at
Charleston.
Efforts were made to reorganize the
Southern army.
To supply the place of captured regiments, the Assembly of Virginia voted 3,000 men, apportioned among the counties, and a special tax was laid to raise means to pay bounties.
In addition to money offered, volunteers were each offered 300 acres of land at the end of the war and a “healthy, sound negro” or $200 in specie.
Virginia also issued $850,000 in bills of credit to supply the treasury.
North Carolina used its feeble resources to the same end. Drafts and recruits, and one whole battalion, came forward; and as Cornwallis retired
General Gates advanced, first to
Salisbury, and then to
Charlotte, where
General Greene took the command (Dec. 2). On the following day
Gates departed for the headquarters of
Washington to submit to an inquiry into his conduct at
Camden.
Greene found the troops in a wretched condition —clothes in tatters, insufficient food, pay in arrears producing discontent, and not a dollar in the military chest.
Subsistence was obtained only by impressment.
But he showed his usual energy and prepared for active operations even with such unpromising materials, arranging the army in two divisions, and posting the main body at
Cheraw, east of the
Pedee; while
Morgan and others were sent to take possession of the country near the junction of the
Pacolet and
Broad rivers.
See
Gates, Horatio;
Greene, Nathanael.
Southern Confederacy
