had sent General William Lee Davidson with 900 men. When Davidson was killed in the river, the Americans retreated. Greene was weakened, but he continued his delaying tactics, fighting a dozen more skirmishes in South and North Carolina against Cornwallis's forces. About 2,000 British troops died in these engagements. Greene summed up his approach in a motto that would become famous: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." His tactics have been likened to the Fabian strategy of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the Roman general who wore down the superior forces of the Carthaginian Hannibal by a slow war of attrition. Greene eventually felt strong enough to face Cornwallis directly—near New Garden, North Carolina (modern day Greensboro, North Carolina). Although Cornwallis was the tactical victor in the Battle of Guilford Court House, the casualties his army suffered forced him to retreat to Wilmington, North Carolina, for resupply and reinforcements. While Cornwallis was unable to completely destroy Greene, he recognized that most of the supplies that the American forces were relying on were coming from Virginia, a state that up to this point in the war had been relatively untouched. Against the wishes of Clinton, Cornwallis resolved to invade Virginia in the hopes that cutting the supply lines to the Carolinas would make American resistance there impossible. This theory was supported by Lord George Germain in a series of letters that left Clinton out of the decision-making process for the Southern Army, despite his nominally being its overall commander. Without informing Clinton, Cornwallis marched north from Wilmington into Virginia to engage in raiding operations, where he eventually met the army commanded by William Phillips and Benedict Arnold, which had engaged in raiding activities there. These raids resulted in massive destruction of tobacco fields and curing barns, as the colonists used tobacco to fund their war efforts. The British destruction of about 10,000 hogsheads of tobacco (roughly 10 million pounds) in 1780 and 1781 became known as the Tobacco War. When Cornwallis left Greensboro for Wilmington, he left the road open for Greene to begin the American reconquest of South Carolina. This he achieved by the end of June, in spite of a reverse sustained at Lord Rawdon's hands at Hobkirk's Hill (2 miles north of Camden) on April 25. From May 22 to June 19, 1781 Greene led the siege of Ninety-Six, which he was only forced to abandon when