Cowpens

Cowpens National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior National Battlefield South Carolina Daniel Morgan was trying to elude a British trap when he marched his army onto thisfieldon the afternoon of January 16, 1781. That morning, as his men cooked breakfast in camp on Thicketty Creek, scouts brought news that Banastre Tarleton had crossed the Pacolet River, six miles south, and was coming up fast. Morgan broke camp immediately and ordered his soldiers down the road. Their destination: the Cowpens, a frontier pasturing ground on the road to a ford across the Broad River six miles away. Morgan was in a precarious position. If he crossed the river, most of his militia would probably desert him. If Tarleton caught the Americans on the road or astride the river, they could all be cut down. Morgan chose to stand and fight, and the terrain at the Cowpens offered him some advantages. Daniel Morgan was a self-made man. Before he was 20 he was hauling freight on poorly defined roads over the mountains of Virginia. During the French and Indian War he served as a teamster in the British army and accompanied Gen. Edward Braddock's ill-fated 1755 expedition against Fort Duquesne. In 1756 he struck a British officer and was sentenced to 500 lashes with a cat-o'-nine tails, a punishment that had killed lesser men. He later claimed that the British still owed him one lash. When the Revolutionary War began, he led a unit of Virginia sharpshooters to Boston, where they joined the Continental Army and, in the winter of 1775, took part in an abortive attack on Quebec. Captured and exchanged, Morgan recruited another unit of Virginia sharpshooters and joined Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates's army in time to play a decisive role in winning the two battles of Saratoga on September 19 and October 7, 1777. In July 1779, both- The Battle oi Cowpens ered by rheumatism and sciatica, he took a leave of absence and returned to Virginia. Morgan rejoined the army in September 1780 after Gates, who had been given command of Continental forces in the South, suffered a disastrous defeat at Camden, S.C. Promoted to brigadier general, Morgan was commanding a corps of light troops when Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene replaced Gates in early December and set about recovering American military fortunes. Greene's strategy was to divide his own army and force the British to split theirs. To accomplish this, he sent Morgan with a detachment known as the "flying army" into western South Carolina to operate on the British left flank and rear, threatening their outposts and giving "protection to that part of the country and to spirit up the people." To remove the threat that Morgan's presence created, the British commander in the South, Maj. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, sent Banastre Tarleton with the British Legion and some of his best light troops. Tarleton, the son of a British merchant, had purchased his commission in the British Army. The Legion was known for its brutality in cutting down unarmed or fleeing soldiers. Tarleton himself was widely hated in South Carolina, having earned the nickname "Bloody Tarleton" after his troops butchered Col. Abraham Buford's surrendered Continentals at Waxhaws in May 1780. When Cornwallis sent his 26-year-old cavalryman after Morgan, he helped set the stage for a confrontation between two of the Revolutionary War's most colorful commanders. Morgan knew that Tarleton's force was approximately double his own. To help even the odds, he sent for militia units from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia—men who had fought at Musgrove's Mill, Kings Mountain, Kettle Creek, and Williamson's Plantation, men who had fought in fierce hand-to-hand combat with Indians to protect their homes. These were men of great courage and experience, but Morgan knew they were no match for British battle tactics. The rifles they carried would not mount a bayonet, making them defenseless in the face of a bayonet attack or a mounted charge by dragoons with slashing sabers. Their strength lay in their prowess with their rifle, a weapon of far greater range and, in their hands, deadlier and more accurate than the British muskets. Morgan kept this in mind as he devised a plan of battle to match the strengths of his men and the terrain. Morgan chose to fight in an open wood on ground that sloped gently toward the south, the direction from which the British would approach. At the far end of the field were two low crests separated by a wide swale. A dirt road curved through the area. Morgan formed his troops in three lines straddling the road. In the front line he placed 315 sharpshooters in small groups. Their job: slow Tareton's advance with well-aimed fire, then fall back. A hundred fifty yards behind the skirmishers he put the Carolina and Georgia militia, under Andrew Pickens. Morgan asked them for two volleys at a killing distance, and then they were free to file off the field. About 150 yards behind Pickens, stretching along the forward crest, were his crack Maryland and Delaware Continentals and veteran Virginia militia, about 600 men commanded by John Eager Howard. Behind that crest, he stationed the cavalry, 125 men under William Washington, with orders to protect the militia and be ready to ride into the fight. Just before dawn the British came into full view of the Americans. After sending cavalry forward to drive in the skirmishers, Tarleton formed his line of battle—infantry astride the road; on each flank, 50 dragoons; in reserve, a brigade of Highlanders and 200 cavalry. It was still dark when Tarleton started his men toward the American line 400 yards away. As the British came within range, the militia delivered a deadly fire, dropping two-thirds of the officers, then funneled back through the Continental line. The dragoons on the British right pursued the militia for a ways but were driven back in a fierce charge by Washington's cavalry. The British surged onto the third line, and the fighting became pitched. When the advance faltered, Tarleton ordered up the Highlanders, who soon threatened to outflank the American right. At this point began a confused tangle of events that soon brought the fighting to a dramatic conclusion. When Howard ordered his right to fall back and form a new front, the order was misinterpreted and the whole line began to retreat. Seeing this maneuver, Morgan rode up and chose new ground for the Continentals to rally on. Reaching that point, they faced about and fired point-blank at the closing redcoats, then plunged into the staggered ranks with bayonets. As this was happening, Washington's cavalry rode again into the swirling fight, while on the British left, Pickens's militia opened a galling fire on the dragoons and Highlanders. British resistance quickly collapsed. A few dragoons rallied to Tarleton, but they could do nothing effective and followed the Legion cavalry, which never got into the fight, in a pell-mell dash off the field. The battle was over in an hour. British losses were staggering: 190 dead, more than 200 wounded, and nearly 600 captured. Also captured with the British were a number of German mercenaries and slaves. Morgan's losses were 24 killed and 104 wounded. The "Old Waggoner's" unorthodox tactical masterpiece had indeed "spirited up the people," not just those of the backcountry Carolinas but those in all the colonies. In the process, as Morgan later told a friend, he had given Tarleton and the British a "devil of a whipping." Cover: Howard's Continentals slash their way through Banastre Tarleton's infantry at the Battle of Cowpens. Painting © by Don Troiani, Southbury, Conn. The Southern Campaign, 1778-1781 New Hope for the Revolution By the time the Battle of Cowpens was fought, the lower South had become the decisive theater of the Revolutionary War. After the struggle settled into stalemate in the north, the British mounted their second campaign to conquer the region. British expeditionary forces captured Savannah in late 1778 and Charleston in May 1780. By late that summer, most of South Carolina was pacified, and a powerful British army under Lord Cornwallis was poised to sweep across the Caro- linas into Virginia. This map traces the marches of Cornwallis (in red) and his wily adversary Nathanael Greene (in blue). The campaign opened at Charleston in August 1780, when Cornwallis marched north to confront Horatio Gates moving south with a Continental army. It ended at Yorktown in October 1781 with Cornwallis's surrender of the main British army in America. In between were 18 months of some of the hardest campaigning and most savage fighting of the war. The Continental Congress voted to award silver medals to Howard and Washington and a gold one to Morgan for their service at Cowpens. The medal shown here is a bronze reproduction of the one given to Morgan. The original was lost. Chain of Command The Generals Daniel Morgan Morgan was an explorer and settler, a teamster by trade, experienced at fighting Indians, and something of a genius at leading men in battle. When, at the age of 45, he took command of Nathanael Greene's light troops in 1780, he was already well-known for his military abilities, having fought with distinction at Quebec in 1775 and at Saratoga in 1777. After Morgan left the army in February 1781 due to illness, Greene remarked: "Great generals are scarce —there are few Morgans to be found." Morgan's Army Tarleton had a reputation for being ruthless and fearless in battle. An offspring of British gentry, he was schooled at Oxford University, and at 21 became an officer of dragoons. He volunteered for service in America and campaigned with some distinction in the north. In his mid-20S he found himself commander of the British Legion, a mobile striking force of mounted infantry whose ruthlessness earned him the nickname "Bloody Tarleton." He was disliked by most of his fellow officers. Banastre Tarleton Tarleton's British Legion Andrew Pickens Militia Commander John Eager Howard William Washington Continental Commander Cavalry Commander Militia Continentals Cavalry Morgan's militia were tough and experienced. Some 200 were ex-Continentals from Virginia under Maj. Francis Tripl e t ! Others were recruits from Georgia and the Carolinas commanded by that wily partisan Col. Andrew Pickens. Morgan knew the worth of these troops and deployed them in a way that made the most of their strengths and minimized their weaknesses. They rewarded him w i t h a victory still marveled at more than t w o centuries later. Lt. Col. John Eager Howard's mixed battalion of Maryland and Delaware Continentals fought with great courage at Cowpens and afterwards. Nathanael Greene called Howard "as good an officer as the world affords." The Maryland Continentals was one of the few regiments to fight in both the Northern and Southern campaigns. By war's end, the Delaware Continentals attained a reputation as one of the elite light infantry units of the Southern Army. Few officers saw more combat than Lt. Col. William Washington, a distant cousin of the commanding general. A veteran of numerous battles and skirmishes, he and his Third Continental Dragoons were the main reserve at Cowpens. Posted in rear of the northernmost ridge, where ground cover was sufficient to protect them from hostile observation and fire, they were sufficiently near "as to be able to charge the enemy, should they be broken." Militia Continental Cavalry Morgan: Independence National Historical Park Tarleton: National Portrait Gallery, London Pickens: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D C Howard: Maryland Historical Society Washington: independence National Historical Park Soldiers: All Don Troiani Legion Cavalry 16th Light Infantry 7th Royal Fusiliers This green-uniformed unit was the mounted arm of Tarleton's British Legion. As constituted at Cowpens, it was a mixture of tories and former American soldiers enlisted after Camden and armed w i t h saber and pistol and attitude. This specialized detachment from the 16th Regiment of Foot was composed of men selected for their agility and endurance. These were all crack troops, most of whom had been fighting in America since the beginning of the war. Although drawn from the 7th Regiment of Foot, one of the oldest regiments in the British Army, this battalion was composed of untested new recruits whose only previous military experience had been as garrison troops at Ninety Six. Legion Cavalry Light Infantry Royal Fusilier Royal Artillery Highlander Royal Artillery 71st Highlanders 17th Light Dragoons Eighteen royal artillerymen were responsible for the t w o light cannon that accompanied Tarleton's force. These guns, which may have been captured from the patriots at the Battle of Camden, helped to boost Tarleton's confidence in confronting Morgan at Cowpens. Known as Fraser's Highlanders, this elite regiment was raised specifically for duty in America and saw extensive service in the Northern Theater before being transferred to the South in 1780. The regiment f o u g h t valiantly at the siege of Savannah and in subsequent operations in South Carolina. The excellence of this regiment made it the first cavalry corps selected for service in America in 1775. Detachments were present in most of the important engagements throughout the war. The men were a model of discipline for other cavalry troops raised by the British in America during the war. l^.ffiTTiCT^I^^ Cowpens National Battlefield is 11 miles n o r t h w e s t of I-85 a n d Gaffney, S.C., and t w o miles southeast o f U.S. 221 and Chesnee, S.C. The entrance is southeast of t h e intersection o f S.C. 11 and 110. The park is o p e n f r o m 9 a.m. t o 5 p.m. daily. Make your first stop t h e visitor center, which contains a fiber optic map program and a museum w i t h authentic Revolutionary War w e a pons and a full-size reproduction of a British 3-pounder "Grasshopper" cannon. A n audio-visual program, "Daybreak at t h e Cowpens," is shown on t h e hour f r o m 9 a.m. t o 4 p.m. daily for a small fee. The three-mile loop road around t h e perimeter of t h e battlefield features wayside exhibits, overlooks w i t h short trails t o t h e historic Green River Road, and t h e battlefield. The loop road and picnic area are closed at 4:30 p.m. A 1.5-mile self-guiding Battlefield Trail w a l k i n g t o u r begins and ends at t h e rear of t h e visitor center. The historic Green River Road along which t h e battle was f o u g h t is part of t h e w a l k i n g trail. It is t h e only p o r t i o n of t h e original road t h a t still exists. t h e buildings and must be leashed and attended at all times. Failing t o crate, cage, or restrain a pet on a leash is a violation of federal law. Regulations and Safety Tips • Use caution driving t h e loop road. Leashes must not exceed six feet in length. • Picnics are p e r m i t t e d only Please remember t h a t you share t h e road w i t h pedestrians, bicyclists, in t h e picnic area. • It is a violation of federal law t o climb o n m o n u delivery trucks, t o u r buses, m o t o r ments. homes, and motorcycles. • Park only in designated areas. • Bicycling is a popular activity. Bicycles are For More Information allowed on t h e loop road and park- Cowpens National Battlefield ing areas only. Bicyclists must wear P.O. Box 308 helmets and must travel in the same Chesnee, SC 29323 direction as traffic. A bicycle rack is 864-461-2828 provided in t h e visitor center parkwww.nps.gov/cowp OGPO:2004- 3O4-337/0OO25 ing lot. • Pets are not allowed in Printed on Recycled Paper