Henry Clinton

General Sir Henry Clinton was British commander-in-chief in America from 1778 to 1782, and presided over the losing half of the war. He was the son of a governor of New York, grew up partly in the colonies, and entered Parliament through a cousin's patronage. He arrived at Boston in 1775 with Howe and Burgoyne and was present at Bunker Hill, where he argued unsuccessfully for landing behind the American position instead of attacking it frontally - a pattern that repeated. He was an able planner and a difficult colleague, convinced he was right and usually unable to persuade anyone, and he quarrelled with every superior and subordinate he had. He took the command after Saratoga, evacuated Philadelphia, and captured Charleston in 1780 in the most complete British victory of the war. It was also his last. He conducted the secret correspondence with Benedict Arnold that was to deliver West Point, and lost his adjutant John André to the gallows when it failed. His relationship with Cornwallis then broke down entirely, and the confusion over whether Cornwallis was to hold Yorktown or move produced the surrender that ended the war. Each blamed the other in print for years afterwards. He was appointed governor of Gibraltar in 1794 and died before taking up the post. He wrote a long and defensive account of the war that was not published until 1954. Historians have generally treated him more kindly than his contemporaries did: his strategic judgements were frequently sound and his inability to get anyone to act on them was the problem. His papers, bought by an American collector, are now at the University of Michigan and are a principal source for the British side of the war.

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