It was New Englanders, not southerners, who stood up with weapons and opposed the British to begin the Revolution, and the war was fought for three years in the north before the British even had an army in the south, when they sent troops from New York to capture Charleston.
To be fair, the Maryland and Delaware militia were among the most well trained at Boston.
The southern soldiers were indeed critical before Boston, and in the sad defeats at New York they were used as a fire brigade to hold off the british to permit others to escape.
Whereas at Boston they had the tea party, in Charleson SC, the tea was unloaded, and no one would buy it. It sat in a corner of the warehouse and moldered. In Richmond, it wouldn’t even be unloaded.