♪ Voice: There are few generals that have run oftener than I have done, but I have taken care not to run too far and commonly have run as fast forward as backward to convince our enemy that we were like a crab that could run either way.

Nathanael Greene.

Narrator: One by one, all across the Lower South, British outposts either surrendered to Patriots or were abandoned-- Fort Watson, Camden, Orangeburg, Fort Motte, Fort Granby, Fort Galphin, Georgetown, Augusta.

[Cannon fires] General Greene fought 3 full-scale battles with the British-- at Hobkirk Hill, Ninety Six, and Eutaw Springs-- and lost them all, but he inflicted such heavy casualties each time that the enemy was forced to withdraw closer and closer to Charleston.

"We fight," Greene said, "get beat, rise, and fight again."

♪ He couldn't have done it without local Patriot militias.

Francis Marion's outfit eluded British cavalry by hiding in the swamp so successfully that Banastre Tarleton said, "As for this old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him."

♪ As Britain's grip on the region weakened, the anarchy that had characterized the backcountry for months spiraled into chaos.

Partisans on both sides seemed bent on being more cruel than those on the other.

They tortured and murdered captives, burned homes and flogged their owners, raped women and hanged their husbands.

Gangs of bandits held up travelers and plundered farms.

Voice: With us in the North, the difference is little more than a division of sentiment.

But here, they prosecute each other with little less than savage fury.

You can have no idea of the distress and misery that prevail in this quarter.

Nathanael Greene.

♪ Narrator: By the end of the summer of 1781, the British would be penned up in just 3 coastal towns in the Carolinas and Georgia-- Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah.

London's Southern strategy was falling apart.