In the South, as in the North, the British won most of the battles and captured the leading seaports.
In late 1778, they seized Savannah, Georgia.
During the spring of 1780, they captured Charleston, South Carolina—along with 5,000 Patriot soldiers.
That summer, the British crushed another Patriot army at Camden, South Carolina.
Just as the British began their offensive in the South, Spanish forces under Bernardo de Gálvez made key attacks on British forts in the Gulf Coast region.
In 1780, they captured the British fort at Mobile, Alabama.
The next year, they took Pensacola, the capital of British West Florida.
These moves were intended to solidify Spanish power in North America, but they also diverted British troops from the offensive against the Patriots.
The Revolution led to emancipation in the North, where slavery was not critical to the economy, and slaves numbered only 5 percent of the population.
Although laws eventually banned slavery in the northern states, many northern masters sold their slaves to the South before they could become free.
Emancipation failed in the South, where slaves amounted to about one-third of the population and were essential to the plantation economy.
In Maryland and Virginia, some planters voluntarily freed their slaves, a practice known as manumission.
After 1800, however, southern states passed laws to discourage further manumissions.
Southern whites feared that freed blacks would seek revenge for past treatment as slaves.
However, by 1810, about 20,000 southern slaves had been freed, including 300 liberated by George Washington.
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