Patriot militia on September 15 seize Fort Johnson, the principal fortification overlooking the Charleston harbor.

Governor William Campbell dissolves the provincial assembly, and fearing for his personal safety, flees to the Royal Navy sloop of war HMS Tamar, leaving the Patriot Council of Safety in control of the provincial capital.

His departure marks the beginning of revolution in South Carolina and the end of British imperial rule over the colony.

The Council of Safety had begun improving and expanding Charleston's coastal defenses; eventually this culminates in a bloodless exchange of cannon fire between Patriot positions and Royal Navy ships in the harbor on November 11 and 12.

Matters had also escalated after the seizure by Loyalists in October of a shipment of gunpowder and ammunition sent by the Council of Safety and intended for the Cherokee.

The council had responded by organizing a large-scale expedition to recover the munitions.

On November 8 it had voted to send Colonel Richard Richardson, the commander of the Camden militia, to recover the shipment and arrest Loyalist leaders.

While Richardson gathered his forces, Major Andrew Williamson, who had already been recruiting in the back country, had learned of the gunpowder seizure.

He arrives at Ninety Six early on November 19 with five hundred and sixty men.

Finding the small town to be not very defensible, he establishes a camp on John Savage's plantation, provided a field of fire for the force's three swivel guns.

He begins fortifying the camp, ordering the construction of an improvised stockade.

Loyalist recruiting has been more successful: Williamson has learned that Captain Patrick Cuningham and Major Joseph Robinson ware leading a large Loyalist force (estimated to number about nineteen hundred) marching out to face the Loyalists.

The Loyalists arrive the next day, and surround the Patriot camp.

The leaders of the two factions are in the midst of negotiating an end to the standoff when two Patriot militiamen are seized by Loyalists outside the stockade.

This sets off a gunfight that lasts for about two hours.

The two sides resume firing at each other at long range the next morning.

The Loyalists attempt to set fires, creating a smokescreen they can use to approach the stockade.

This attempt is frustrated by the wet ground.

The Loyalists next construct a large wooden shield behind which they seek to bring incendiaries closer to the fort, but they only succeed in "[setting] Fire to their own Engine themselves", according to one account, and it is not proof against the Patriot's guns.

On the afternoon of November 21 the Patriots hold a war council, in which they decide to sortie that night.

They are preparing for this action at sunset when a Loyalist approaches with a parley flag.

Nothing is decided in the discussion beyond an agreement to meet the next morning.

The Loyalists, in the meeting of the morning of November 22, agree to withdraw across the Saluda River and the Patriots agree to destroy the fort.

Both sides are to return prisoners taken since November 2 and not interfere with each other's communications with their respective political leaders.

The Patriot leaders are also required to surrender their swivel guns, although they will be returned three days later.

The truce also includes reinforcements for both sides, terms that the Council of Safety claims do not apply to Colonel Richardson's force.

The reasons why the Loyalists had chosen to negotiate the truce are unknown.

Governor Campbell describes the Loyalists as lacking in effective leadership, and historian Martin Cann speculates that it may have been caused by Colonel Richardson's preparations or approach.

Richardson had mobilized twenty-five hundred men, which will grow by the end of November to more than four thousand.

This force will scour the back country, arresting or driving away most of the Loyalist leadership.

The campaign will effectively end on December 22, when fifteen inches (thirty-eight centimeters) of snow will fall on the area.

Richardson's men, unprepared for the snow, will make a difficult trek back to the lowlands.

Some of the Loyalist leaders who escape Richardson's expedition, including most notably Thomas Brown, will flee to West Florida where they will join regular and irregular forces serving with the British.

These events will result n the end of large-scale Loyalist activity in the southern Appalachians, although what is in many ways a civil war will become progressively more brutal in the following years.

Ninety Six will become a British outpost after the 1780 Siege of Charleston, and will be besieged in 1781 by forces under the command of Nathanael Greene.

Although Greene will be forced to lift that siege by the approach of a relief force, the British will abandon Ninety Six not long afterward.

Clinton arrives at Cape Fear on March 12, expecting to find the European convoy already here.

He meets with the royal governors of North and South Carolina, Josiah Martin and William Campbell, and learns that the recruited Scottish Loyalists had been defeated at Moore's Creek Bridge two weeks earlier.

Clinton also receives pleas for assistance from the royal governor of Georgia, James Wright, who had been arrested, then escaped to a navy ship.

Parker's fleet had had an extremely difficult crossing. Battered by storms and high seas, the first ships of the fleet did not arrive at Cape Fear until April 18, and Cornwallis had not not arrived until May 3.

After several weeks there, in which the British troops raid Patriot properties, Clinton, Cornwallis and Parker conclude hat Cape Fear is not a suitable base for further operations.

Parker had sent out some ships on scouting expeditions up and down the coast, and reports on the partially finished condition of the Charleston defenses are sufficiently promising that the decision is made to go there.