Hollow Victory

The Battle of Hobkirks Hill holds no privileged place in America’s memory. Few today have heard of it, and it has not inspired the tributes among chroniclers of the American Revolution that would preserve it alongside its more famous counterparts. We don’t even know who fired the first shot. Yet when the war was over, Sir Henry Clinton, the British Army’s North American commander, declared the battle to be “perhaps the most important victory of the whole war.” When Lord Rawdon’s garrison defeated General Nathanael Greene’s Continental forces on April 25, 1781, the battle indeed turned the tide of the war—but not in Britain’s favor. The crown’s victory would prove hollow, as Greene’s strategy of engagement and tactical retreat marked the beginning of the end for Britain’s campaign to retain control of the South.

In this final installment in a trilogy on the major engagements of Nathanael Greene’s 1781 Southern Campaign—Cowpens, Guilford Bridge, and Hobkirks Hill—award-winning historian Lawrence E. Babits offers the first comprehensive tactical assessment of the campaign around Camden that eventually freed nearly all of South Carolina from British control. Drawing on an impressive array of sources, Babits combines veterans’ intimate accounts with on-the-ground geographic analysis of the battle. Babits reveals how an overlooked battle played a vital role during the Revolutionary War by reestablishing America’s hold on the southern states.