[Illustration: The British opened their campaign against the South with the capture of this city in late 1778. They went on to conquer Georgia and threaten the Carolinas. To retake the city, French and American infantry opened a siege in the fall of 1779. The British repulsed the allied attacks with great losses. Some of the hardest fighting swirled around Spring Hill Redoubt. Nothing remains of this earthwork. A plaque on Railroad Street is the only reminder of the battle.] Charleston 1780 [Illustration: The British laid siege to this city in spring 1780. Trapped inside was the entire Southern army, 5,000 troops under Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. When Lincoln surrendered, it was one of the most crushing defeats of the war for the Continentals. Only a few evidences of the war remain, among them a tabby wall (part of the patriots’ defensive works) in Marion Square and a statue of William Pitt, damaged in the shelling, in a park in the lower city.] Waxhaws 1780 [Illustration: The only sizable force not trapped inside Charleston was a regiment of Continentals under Abraham Buford. Pursuing hard, Tarleton caught them on May 29, 1780, in a clearing. His dragoons and infantry swarmed over Buford’s lines. The result was a slaughter. Many Continentals were killed trying to surrender. The massacre inspired the epithet “Bloody” Tarleton. Site located 9 miles east of Lancaster, S.C., on Rt. 522. Marked by a monument and common grave.] Camden 1780 [Illustration: After the fall of Charleston, Congress sent Gates south to stop the British. On August 16 he collided with Cornwallis outside this village. The battle was another American disaster. The militia broke and ran, and the Continentals were overwhelmed. This defeat was the low point of the war in the South. Historic Camden preserves remnants of the Revolutionary town. The battlefield is several miles north of town. This stone marks the place where the heroic DeKalb fell.] Kings Mountain 1780 [Illustration: When Cornwallis invaded North Carolina in autumn 1780, he sent Patrick Ferguson ranging into the upcountry. A band of “over-mountain” men—tired of his threats and depredations—trapped him and his American loyalists on this summit. In a savage battle on October 7, they killed or wounded a third of his men and captured the rest. The defeat was Cornwallis’s first setback in his campaign to conquer the South. Administered by NPS.] Guilford Courthouse 1781