In November 1777 the British army in America shifted to a southern strategy and the 71st was among the regiments that travelled by sea to participate in the capture of Savannah, Georgia. The Southern campaign continued in Georgia throughout 1778. In February 1779 , the record shows that Lt. Col. Duncan Macpherson distinguished himself in the Battle of Boston Creek as commander of its 1st battalion. That regiment was with General Cornwallis throughout the following months as he pursued the American forces northward to Yorktown, Virginia where they were trapped by a French naval blockade and a combined American and French army that led to their defeat in October 1781. However, Duncan of Cluny was not among the prisoners taken after that battle because he had been intercepted at sea in 1779 by an American privateer while enroute back to Britain with dispatches. He was taken to Boston as a prisoner where he remained on parole until being released in November 1780 to travel to New York. Presumably he remained there in paroled status until the British forces returned home after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September 1783.

      In 1784 as a Lt. Col. of the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards (later the Scots Guards) and in attendance at the Chelsea Board he was able to secure pensions for most of the 175 Fraser Highlanders (out of 2200 who left Britain) who survived the American war. His headstone in the Cluny cemetery tells us that he "served his country for upwards of thirty years . . .". This suggests that he remained in the army until the time of his marriage in 1798 at age 50.

      In 1804 a Colonel Thornton from Yorkshire published a journal of his visit to Badenoch and other parts of the Highlands some twenty years earlier. Following are some excerpts from the Colonel's lively sketch of the rejoicings which took place at Pitmain -- the old coaching stage near Kingussie -- on the occasion of the restoration of the forfeited estates of Cluny to Colonel Duncan Macpherson.

      On the 17th of September Colonel Thornton tells us that he received "a very polite invitation from Colonel Macpherson and the clan requesting me to dine with them the next day, which was set apart for general festivity and rejoicing on account of a late public event, considered by them as a most advantageous revolution in their favour."