Lord William Campbell (11 July 1730 – 4 September 1778) was a Scottish Royal Navy officer, nobleman and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Nova Scotia from 1766 to 1773.
In June 1775, at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Campbell became the last British Governor of South Carolina, a position for which he had lobbied hard, because his wife was from South Carolina.
Charged with bringing in the reins on the colony's revolutionaries, Campbell first decided to ignore the newly established Provincial Congress. The Provincial Congress was created in January 1775 in Charleston by former members of the South Carolina House of Commons as a separate ruling government independent of British authority and influence. Knowing the great rift between the aristocratic low-country and the backwoodsmen commoners of the backcountry, Campbell distributed pamphlets in mass numbers to backcountry citizens. The pamphlets stated that Charleston citizens kept lying and that the Provincial Congress could not be trusted.
Governor Campbell soon realized he could no longer reside and govern in safety in Charleston. Intimidation from Patriots resulted in public hangings, assaults, and business/home raids of suspected Loyalists. One home raided included that of Henry Laurens, who would go on to become the third President of the Second Continental Congress. Patriots were not afraid to intimidate or attack British officials, and several officials even fled the city to escape further persecution.
In 1775, Campbell fled his home at 34 Meeting Street in Charleston on a British warship, HMS Tamar, and returned to England. His departure marked the beginning of revolution in South Carolina and the end of British governance of the province.[2]