Wilmington, North Carolina

WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA. 1 February-18 November 1781. British occupation. To provide a closer supply port for his operations into North Carolina, General Charles Cornwallis directed Lieutenant Colonel Nisbet Balfour, commandant at Charleston, to send a force to seize and hold Wilmington. Major James H. Craig took the town with four hundred regulars on 1 February, meeting little resistance. He captured the prominent patriots John Ashe and Cornelius Harnett, both of whom died in captivity, and won so much Loyalist support that the rebel leader, Colonel Joseph Hawkins, subsequently found it almost impossible to raise troops or supplies in Duplin County. Cornwallis retreated to Wilmington after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, arriving 7 April and leaving eighteen days later for Virginia. In July Craig commissioned David Fanning a colonel with orders to rally North Carolina's Loyalists, and this remarkable partisan leader subsequently used Wilmington as a sort of administrative base.

With a well-mounted and well-led body of regulars, mostly from his Eighty-second Regiment, and supported by local partisans, Craig himself conducted raids that compared favorably in speed of execution with those of Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. One of the most devastating of these raids was launched against New Bern in August 1781. During his occupation of Wilmington, Craig converted the Episcopal church into a citadel. The British commander prudently evacuated the town on 18 November 1781 to avoid being cut off by the column of regulars General Arthur St. Clair was leading south to reinforce General Nathanael Greene after the Yorktown surrender. Craig also evacuated all the region's Loyalists who asked to leave with the British to Charleston.

SEE ALSO Craig, James Henry; Hillsboro Raid, North Carolina; New Bern, North Carolina.

                              revised by Michael Bellesiles