Greene's Southern Campaign Reaches Georgia

By April 1781, Nathanael Greene's campaign of strategic pressure had eroded British control of the Carolina interior. Cornwallis had marched north toward Virginia after Guilford Courthouse. The British posts at Ninety Six, Camden, and Augusta were suddenly exposed — surrounded by territory the British could not effectively patrol and dependent on supply lines that Patriot partisans were systematically cutting.

Greene assigned the Augusta operation to Andrew Pickens and Light-Horse Harry Lee while he moved against Ninety Six himself. The coordination demonstrated the maturation of Patriot strategic thinking in the south: instead of chasing the British main army, Greene was strangling their network of interior posts one by one. Augusta was the Georgia link in that network.