In August 1780, following the second defeat of an American army in South Carolina within one summer, the British government seemed to have regained control of Georgia and South Carolina. If for some reason peace talks had begun at that moment, there was a real possibility that both colonies would have remained under control of the King, along with Florida and Canada. But just a year later, the British Army controlled only the towns of Charleston and Savannah, and the perennial dream of a “Southern Strategy” by which Britain would first win the south and then the rest of the colonies was in ashes…and this was before Yorktown finally ended hopes of maintaining a loyal North America.

John Buchanan has written about the first phase of these events in his book The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The Revolution in the Carolinas, which follows events through the the second half of 1780, and up through the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, on March 15, 1781. Now he takes up the story again, as the British Army marches away from that bloody field, shadowed by Major General Nathanael Greene and his Southern Army. So begins The Road to Charleston: Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution, just published by the University of Virginia Press, which completes Buchanan's story of the American Revolution in the South.