The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (104 page)

Morgan may have selected an inappropriate site, according to conventional standards, but he made it serve extraordinarily well. There was no escape for his troops in that lonely meadow. Morgan may or may not have made his decision to fight with the propensity of the militia for flight clearly in his mind. Whatever he was thinking, he devised tactics which inspired praise -- and imitation -- from others in the next two months.

The battle lasted until a little after 10:00 a.m. By noon Morgan had his troops with their prisoners on the road. He expected that the destruction of Tarleton's force would bring a swift reaction from Cornwallis, and he did not want to be overwhelmed while savoring his triumph.

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The prisoners were an encumbrance, and in a few days they would be split off from his column and sent to the Virginia interior. Morgan crossed the Little Broad the next day and three days later, January 21, the Little Catawba at Ramsour's Mill. Two days after that he led his soldiers across the Catawba at Sherrill's Ford. where he allowed them to rest.
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Cornwallis sat at Turkey Creek on the day of the battle awaiting Leslie. The news of the defeat reached him the next day, and on January 19 he set out to run Morgan to earth. He set out in the wrong direction on the wrong road. He knew whom he was looking for, but not where he had gone, a lapse in British intelligence all too common in the southern campaign It revealed a fact he found especially disagreeable: he was in the enemy's country and though he had money to buy intelligence there were few sellers. Thinking that Morgan had probably driven southward in order to take Ninety-Six, Cornwallis wasted a day marching northwestward. When he discovered his error he shifted direction and got on the road to Ramsour's Mill where earlier, had he been better informed and faster in motion, he might have intercepted Morgan.
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The day Cornwallis reached Ramsour's Mill, January 25, brought the news of Morgan's victory at Cowpens to Nathanael Greene at the camp on the Pee Dee. Greene realized immediately that Cornwallis would pursue Morgan and realized too that a British army stripped of its cavalry and far from its magazine might be vulnerable to attack. He resolved therefore to join his army to Morgan's. The preparations for such a movement would take several days, and Greene lusted for action. He contained himself for two days, issuing a rash of ordersIsaac Huger to bring the army from the Pee Dee to Salisbury, North Carolina, the commissaries at Salisbury and Hillsboro to prepare to evacuate stores and prisoners to Virginia, Quartermaster Carrington to collect boats on the Dan River. Then with a small escort Greene galloped off to find Morgan.
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Cornwallis meantime was issuing very different kinds of orders. Like most armies of the century his traveled in a column bloated with baggage and noncombatants. Officers ordinarily carried several fine uniforms, food and wine, equipment of every sort, including at times furniture and fancy dishes and glassware. They also brought along their servants and sometimes their wives and children, though more often they brought

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women not their wives and the children of these women. To permit the rapid pursuit of Morgan, Cornwallis ordered that his army should slim down, destroy its baggage, including tents, most of its wagons, and prepare to live off the country. On January 27, he ordered the troops served an extra gill of rum. What could not be consumed on the spot, he poured into Carolina soil. The next day, as he resumed his pursuit, Cornwallis gave his men the unhappy word that supplying them with rum "for a time Will he Absolutely impossible" and recommended to them that since provisions would be none too plentiful that they learn "to bruise the Indian corn or to Rasp it after it has been soaked."
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The stripped-down army, sans rum but still carrying its women and children, had first to get over the Catawba, now threatening to overflow its banks after a recent heavy rain. It crossed in masterful style on February 1 at Cowan's Ford after a feint upstream at Beattie's. There were four places at which the Catawba might have been forded by the British, and Morgan had directed that North Carolina militia, under General William Davidson, cover them all. Davidson, however, had only 300 men. He was with the small force at Cowan's Ford on the morning of the crossing and lost his life attempting to stop it. Greene, who had reached Morgan the day before, waited for the militia to rally at Tarrant's Tavern near by. Intimidated by the apparent power of the British, many of these men had slipped away for home.
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Greene had sent Morgan ahead to the Trading Ford on the Yadkin, which was very high. Boats assembled by Kosciuszko ferried his army over on the night of February 2 with an enemy party pressing close behind. Near the ford an advance party of British cavalry under Charles O'Hara caught the American rear guard and beat it up. Even in this action the British took little satisfaction, for the American rear guard did not fight but, in the language of the Carolinians contemptuously recorded by O'Hara, "Split and Squandered -- that is run away."
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On the afternoon of the next day Cornwallis reached Salisbury. Seven miles away just across the Yadkin the Americans sat resting. The river was rising, and the British were tired and almost out of provisions.
The

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next four days they took as much ease as they could in the rain and mud and sent out foraging parties. On February 8, Cornwallis swung his army to the west to Shallow Ford, a broad spot always shallow enough for horses and men. By moving away from his enemy Cornwallis did not believe that he was giving him a chance to slip downstream and over to the Dan River, the last barrier to safety in Virginia. Rather, he thought that Morgan's army would itself have to move to the west in order to ford the Dan. As was often the case, Cornwallis's intelligence had supplied him with false information -- that no boats were available farther down where the Dan was too deep to be forded.

Morgan seemed to live up to Cornwallis's expectations on February 4 by beginning a march northward. But then in a sudden turn he moved rapidly eastward to Guilford Court House, a distance of forty-seven miles covered in two days. There he met Huger and the main American army which had been diverted from Salisbury on Greene's order. At just about the same time Lee's Legion rode in. Greene once more had his army in one piece.

A few weeks earlier Greene had told Morgan that while retreat was disagreeable it was not disgraceful. He now seems to have concluded that it was so disagreeable that it must stop. Cornwallis had not drawn his admiration; Cornwallis was of a pushing disposition, inclined, like his subordinate Tarleton, to impetuous action. And impetuous action might lead to capital misfortune, Greene thought. A council consisting of Otho Williams, Huger, and a tired and sick Morgan did not agree, and when asked by Greene didn't they all think it was time to stop running and start fighting, they all said no. The council was undoubtedly right, for the troops were tired, badly clothed and equipped, and just barely outnumbered the enemy, a much better disciplined army.
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The decision made to continue to run, Greene proceeded to run. The run, however, was now more dangerous than ever, for no river separated Cornwallis at Salem and Greene at Guilford Court House, twenty-five miles apart. Deception is as helpful as speed in such a situation, and Greene resolved to trick Cornwallis into thinking that he would cross the Dan at the upper reaches of the river. He therefore detached Otho Williams with the best infantry and cavalry of his army, 700

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men, to lead Cornwallis away from Irwin's Ferry where the resourceful Carrington had gathered boats to float his men across.

Williams, one of the underrated officers in the American army, performed his assignment brilliantly. Cornwallis took the bait, assuming that Williams's force was the van of the main army. The chase proved exciting and exhausting; for four days Tarleton and O'Hara nipped at the rear guard provided by Lee's Legion. The roads, half frozen at night, made muddy and rough in the day from rain and thaws, and cut up by refugees who were fleeing the British as they had over much of North Carolina, exacted a toll from shoes. Before it was over Williams's men were leaving bloody tracks on the ground. Greene's route displayed the same marks. On February 13, Greene made it to the Dan, and just behind him Otho Williams. Both crossed safely. Cornwallis's army stood on the opposite bank gazing once again at a crossing for which they had no boats.

Why did Cornwallis give up the pursuit? He might after all have repeated the whole dreary business, marching to the upper Dan where there were passable fords. A combination of circumstances seems to have prevented him from resuming the chase: he was over 200 miles from Camden where he had left supplies and men with Rawdon; he recognized that there was no clear way to force Greene to give battle; his men were tired, footsore, often hungry, and the people of the countryside had not overwhelmed them by the warmth of their welcome. Then there was the possibility -- a strong one -- that if he pushed Greene deep into Virginia, he pushed him into strength. Steuben was in Virginia, and he had been filling Continental battalions.

Remaining where he was on the Dan promised nothing, so Cornwallis slowly led his army to Hillsboro, where on February 20, he issued a proclamation inviting loyal Americans, with their weapons and a tenday supply of provisions, to join him in the great task of restoring constitutional order. A copy of the proclamation made its way over the Dan immediately. Shortly after, Greene received reports that Cornwallis's appeal had drawn a very favorable response, with so many loyalists flocking to the British colors that seven independent companies had been formed in one day.

The proclamation actually produced few recruits. As Charles O'Hara, one of Cornwallis's brigadiers, observed, the chase of Greene brought "some eclat and credit to our arms." A few people in the neighborhood turned up "to stare at us" but, "their curiosity once satisfied," went home. During the long hard days of the pursuit the British had not