Southern Strategy: "Whenever the King's Troops move to Carolina"

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James Simpson, the British attorney general for the colony of South Carolina, journeyed to Georgia and collected information from residents of the back country of South Carolina to judge the levels of Loyalist politics and support. His report encouraged Sir Henry Clinton that shifting to the Southern Strategy in 1778 held hopes for success and Loyalist support. 

I therefore thought it proper to represent to them that. . . altho' the Province was to be overrun, and Charles Town reduced by the King's Troops, yet unless Government was to be so firmly established as to give security to them without the protection of the Army (and which could only be effected by the Efforts of the People themselves), the Success would be far from complete. And if upon a future emergency the Troops were withdrawn, and they should suffer the party who now predominated again to prevail, their situation would probably be very deplorable. But to this they replied, "they had no apprehension on that score, that they were numerous and able enough to protect themselves if they were once restored to an equality with their oppressors by being supplied with Arms and Ammunition, both of which they are quite destitute, and which they allege is the sole cause of their present submission. . . . "

On the whole I do not hesitate to declare to your Lordship that I am of the opinion whenever the King's Troops move to Carolina they will be assisted by very considerable numbers of the inhabitants; that if the respectable force proposed moves thither early in the Fall the reduction of the country without risk or much opposition will be the consequence. . . .