Chapter V: Part 1 (3)

With the militia out of the way, the British infantry had advanced on the Continentals and begun blasting volleys of musketry at them. The Continentals volleyed back. Smoke enveloped the battlefield. Tarleton later claimed the fire produced “much slaughter,” but it is doubtful that either side could see what they were shooting at after the first few rounds. The British continued to fire high, hitting few Continentals.

To Tarleton, the contest seemed “equally balanced,” and he judged it the moment to throw in his reserve. He ordered Major McArthur and his 71st Highlanders into the battle line to the left of the Fusiliers. This gave Tarleton over 700 infantrymen in action to the rebels’ 420. Simultaneously, Tarleton ordered the cavalry troop on the left to form a line and swing around the American right flank.

These orders, shouted above the thunder of musketry and the boom of the cannon, were promptly obeyed. On the crest of the hill, Howard saw the British threat developing. Once men are outflanked and begin to be hit with bullets from two sides, they are in danger of being routed. Howard ordered the Virginia militia on his right to “change their front” to meet this challenge. This standard battlefield tactic requires a company to wheel and face a flanking enemy.

A battlefield is a confusing place, and the Virginians, though mostly trained soldiers, were not regulars who had lived and drilled together over the previous months. Their captain shouted the order given him by Howard, and the men wheeled and began marching toward the rear. The Maryland and Delaware Continentals, seeing this strange departure, noting that it was done in perfect order and with deliberation, assumed that they had missed an order to fall back. They wheeled and followed the Virginians. On the opposite flank, the other company of Virginians repeated this performance. In 60 seconds the whole patriot line was retreating.

Behind the geographical crest of the hill, Morgan and Pickens had managed to steady and reorganize the militia. Morgan galloped back toward the military crest on which he assumed the Continentals were still fighting. He was thunderstruck to find them retreating. In a fury, he rode up to Howard and cried: “Are you beaten?”

Howard pointed to his unbroken ranks and told Morgan that soldiers who retreated in that kind of order were not beaten. Morgan agreed and told him to stay with the men and he would ride back and choose the place where the Continentals should turn and rally. The Old Wagoner spurred his horse ahead toward the geographical crest of the hill, about 50 paces behind their first line.

On the British side of the battlefield, the sight of the retreating Continentals revived hopes of an easy victory. Major McArthur of the 71st sought out Tarleton and urged him to order the cavalry reserve to charge and turn the retreat into a rout. Tarleton claimed that he sent this order to the cavalry, who were now at least 400 yards away from the vortex of the battle. Perhaps he did. It would very probably have been obeyed if it had arrived in time. The dragoons of the British Legion liked nothing so much as chopping up a retreating enemy.

But events now occurred with a rapidity that made it impossible for the cavalry to respond. The center of Tarleton’s line of infantry surged up the slope after the Continentals, bayonets lowered, howling for American blood. With almost half their officers dead or wounded by now, they lost all semblance of military formation.

Far down the battlefield, where he had halted his pursuit of the British cavalry, William Washington saw what was happening. He sent a horseman racing to Morgan with a terse message. “They are coming on like a mob. Give them another fire and I will charge them.” Thomas Young, riding with Washington, never forgot the moment. “The bugle sounded,” he said. “We made a half circuit at full speed and came upon the rear of the British line shouting and charging like madmen.”

Simultaneously, Morgan reached the geographical crest of the slope, with the Continentals only a few steps behind him. He roared out an order to turn and fire. The Continentals wheeled and threw a blast of concentrated musketry into the faces of the charging British. Officers and men toppled. The line recoiled.

“Give them the bayonet,” bellowed John Eager Howard.

With a wild yell, the Continentals charged. The astonished British panicked. Some of them, probably the Fusiliers, flung themselves faced down on the ground begging for mercy. Others, Thomas Young recalled, “took to the wagon road and did the prettiest sort of running away.”

At almost the same moment, the Highlanders, whose weight, if they had joined the charge, would probably have been decisive, received an unexpected blast of musketry from their flank. Andrew Pickens and the militia had returned to the battle. The backwoodsmen blazed at the Scotsmen, the riflemen among them concentrating on the screen of the cavalrymen. The cavalry fled and McArthur’s men found themselves fighting a private war with the militia.

Astonished and appalled, Tarleton sent an officer racing to the British Legion cavalry with orders for them to form a line of battle about 400 yards away, on the left of the road. He rode frantically among his fleeing infantry, trying to rally them. His first purpose was “to protect the guns.” To lose a cannon was a major disgrace in 18th-century warfare. The artillerymen were the only part of the British center that had not succumbed to the general panic. They continued to fire their grasshoppers, while the infantry threw down their muskets or ran past them helter skelter. Part of the artillery’s tradition was an absolute refusal to surrender. They lived by the code of victory or death.

Once past the surrendering infantry, the Continentals headed for the cannon. Like robots—or very brave men—the artillerymen continued to fire until every man except one was shot down or bayonetted.

The last survivor of the other gun crew was the man who touched the match to the powder vent. A Continental called on him to surrender this tool. The artilleryman refused. As the Continental raised his bayonet to kill him, Howard came up and blocked the blow with his sword. A man that brave, the colonel said, deserved to live. The artilleryman surrendered the match to Howard.

Up and down the American line on the crest rang an ominous cry. “Give them Tarleton’s quarter.” Remembering Waxhaws, the regulars and their Virginia militia cousins were ready to massacre the surrendered British. But Daniel Morgan, the epitome of battle fury while the guns were firing, was a humane and generous man. He rode into the shouting infantrymen, ordering them to let the enemy live. Junior officers joined him in enforcing the order.

Discipline as well as mercy made the order advisable. The battle was not over. The Highlanders were still fighting fiercely against Pickens’ men. Tarleton was riding frantically toward his Legion cavalry to bring them back into the battle. But the militia riflemen were back on the field and Tarleton was their prime target. Bullets whistled around him as he rode. Several hit his horse. The animal crashed to the ground. Tarleton sprang up, his saber ready. Dr. Robert Jackson, assistant surgeon of the 71st, galloped to the distraught lieutenant colonel and offered him his horse. Tarleton refused. For a moment he seemed ready to die on the chaotic battlefield with his men. Dr. Jackson urged him again. Springing off his horse, he told Tarleton, “Your safety is of the highest importance to the army.”

Tarleton mounted Jackson’s horse and rode to rally his troops. Fastening a white handkerchief to his cane, Jackson strolled toward the all-but-victorious Americans. No matter how the battle ended, he wanted to stay alive to tend the wounded.

Looking over his shoulder at the battlefield, Tarleton clung to a shred of hope. An all-out charge by the cavalry could still “retrieve the day,” he said later. The Americans were “much broken by their rapid advance.”

But the British Legion had no appetite for another encounter with the muskets of Andrew Pickens’ militia. “All attempts to restore order, recollection [of past glory] or courage, proved fruitless,” Tarleton said. No less than 200 Legion dragoons wheeled their horses and galloped for safety in the very teeth of Tarleton’s harangue. Fourteen officers and 40 dragoons of the 17th Regiment obeyed his summons and charged with him toward the all-but-disintegrated British battle line. Their chief hope was to save the cannon and rescue some small consolation from the defeat.

Stages of the Battle

Because the battle was a continuous flow of action from the opening skirmish to the pell-mell flight of the Legion dragoons at the end, the important maneuvers cannot all be shown on a single map. This sequence of maps diagrams the main stages of the battle.

Skirmishers drive back Tarleton’s cavalry, sent forward to examine the enemy’s lines, and then withdraw into Pickens’ line of militia. Without pausing, Tarleton forms his line of battle.

Green River Road
Route 11
Morgan’s camp
Washington’s cavalry
Visitor Center
Howard’s Continentals
Pickens’ militia
Skirmishers
17th dragoons
Legion dragoons
Tarleton’s main line
71st Highlanders
Scruggs House

The British advance on Pickens’ militia, who deliver the promised two shots each and fall back on the flanks. When they are pursued by British dragoons, Washington’s cavalry charges into action and drives them off.

Green River Road
Route 11
Morgan’s camp
Washington’s cavalry
Visitor Center
Howard’s Continentals
Pickens’ militia
17th dragoons
Tarleton’s main line
Legion dragoons
71st Highlanders
Scruggs House

Howard’s Continentals rout the British in the center, supported by cavalry on the left and militia on the right.

Green River Road
Route 11
Morgan’s camp
Howard’s Continentals
Washington’s cavalry
Visitor Center
Tarleton’s main line
Pickens’ militia
71st Highlanders
17th dragoons
Legion dragoons
Scruggs House

How to read these battle diagrams

British positions are shown in RED, American in BLUE. Open boxes show former positions, arrows movement. Clashes are shown by stars. Modern features, included for orientation, appear in gray.

The painting conveys a close sense of the original terrain with its
scattered hardwoods and undulating ground that Morgan turned to good
use. The axis of the battlefield, then as now, is the old Green
River Road, which runs diagonally across the scene. The diverging
road at left was not there at the time of the battle.]

They never got there. Instead, they collided with William Washington’s cavalry that had wheeled after their assault on the rear of the infantry and begun a pursuit of the scampering redcoats, calling on them to surrender, sabering those who refused. Washington shouted an order to meet the British charge. Most of his horsemen, absorbed in their pursuit of the infantry, did not hear him. Washington, leading the charge, did not realize he was almost unsupported. The burly Virginian, remembering his humiliating defeat at Lenuds Ferry in May 1780, had a personal score to settle with Banastre Tarleton. He headed straight for him.

Tarleton and two officers accepted Washington’s challenge. The Virginian slashed at the first man, but his saber snapped at the hilt. As the officer stood up in his stirrups, his saber raised for a fatal stroke, Washington’s bugler boy rode up and fired at the Englishman. The second officer was about to make a similar stroke when the sergeant-major of the 3d Continental Dragoons arrived to parry the blow and slash this assailant’s sword arm. Tarleton made a final assault. Washington parried his blow with his broken sword. From his saddle holsters, Tarleton drew two pistols in swift succession and fired at Washington. One bullet wounded Washington’s horse.

By this time Tarleton saw that the battle was totally lost. The riflemen were running toward his horsemen, and their bullets were again whistling close. The Highlanders were being methodically surrounded by Pickens’ militia and Morgan’s Continentals. Summoning his gallant 54 supporters, Tarleton galloped down the Green River Road, a defeated man.

On the battlefield, the Highlanders were trying to retreat. But Howard’s Continentals and Washington’s cavalry were now between them and safety. Through the center of their line charged Lt. Col. James Jackson and some of his Georgians to try to seize their standard. Bayonet-wielding Scotsmen were about to kill Jackson when Howard and his Continentals broke through the 71st’s flank and saved him. Howard called on the Highlanders to surrender. Major McArthur handed his sword to Pickens and so did most of the other officers. Pickens passed the major’s sword to Jackson and ordered him to escort McArthur to the rear.

Captain Duncasson of the 71st surrendered his sword to Howard. When Howard remounted, the captain clung to his saddle and almost unhorsed him. “I expressed my displeasure,” Howard recalled, “and asked him what he was about.” Duncasson told Howard that Tarleton had issued orders to give no quarter and they did not expect any. The Continentals were approaching with their bayonets still fixed. He was afraid of what they might do to him. Howard ordered a sergeant to protect the captain.

Around the patriots main position, a happy chaos raged. In his exultation, Morgan picked up his 9-year-old drummer boy and kissed him on both cheeks.

Others were off on new adventures. Cavalryman Thomas Young joined half a dozen riders in pursuit of prisoners and loot down the Green River Road. They must have embarked on this foray shortly after most of Tarleton’s cavalry had deserted him and before Tarleton himself quit the battlefield after the encounter with Washington.

“We went about twelve miles,” Young said in his recollections of the battle, “and captured two British soldiers, two negroes and two horses laden with portmanteaus. One of the portmanteaus belonged to a paymaster ... and contained gold.” The other riders decided this haul was too good to risk on the road and told Young to escort the prisoners and the money back to Cowpens. Young had ridden several miles when he collided with Tarleton and his 54 troopers. Abandoning his captures, Young tried to escape. He darted down a side road, but his horse was so stiff from the hard exercise on the battlefield, the British overtook him.

“My pistol was empty so I drew my sword and made battle,” the young militiaman said. “I never fought so hard in my life.” He was hopelessly outnumbered. In a few clanging seconds, a saber split a finger on his left hand, another slashed his sword arm, a third blade raked his forehead and the skin fell over his eyes, blinding him. A saber tip speared his left shoulder, a blade sank deep into his right shoulder, and a final blow caught him on the back of the head. Young clung to his horse’s neck, half conscious.

Washington and Tarleton Duel

One of the battle’s most colorful incidents occurred at the very end.
As defeat enveloped his army, Tarleton tried to rally his cavalry to
the support of the infantry. His Legion dragoons, ignoring his orders
and threats, stampeded off the field. Only the disciplined veterans of
the 17th Dragoons followed him into battle. They ran head-on into the
Continental dragoons of Lt. Col. William Washington. As sabers
flashed, Washington found himself far in advance of his unit. What
happened next is described in a passage from John Marshall’s famous
_Life of George Washington_, written when the event still lingered in
the memory of contemporaries: “Observing [Washington about 30 yards in
front of his regiment], three British officers wheeled about and
attacked him; the officer on his left was aiming to cut him down, when
a sergeant came up and intercepted the blow by disabling the
sword-arm, at the same instant the officer on his right was about to
make a stroke at him, when a waiter, too small to wield a sword, saved
him by wounding the officer with a pistol. At this moment, Tarleton
made a thrust at him, which he parried, upon which the officer
[Tarleton] retreated a few paces and discharged his pistol at him....”

It is this account that probably inspired the artist William Ranney in
1845 to paint the vigorous battle scene spread across these pages.
Washington and Tarleton (on the black horse) raise their swords in the
center while Washington’s servant boy levels his pistol at the far
dragoon. While the painting errs in details of costume—Washington and
his sergeant should be dressed in white coats, not green, and the
British should be in green, not red—it catches the spirit of the duel.

He was battered and bleeding, but his courage saved his life. With the peculiar sportsmanship that the British bring to war, they took him off his horse, bandaged his wounds, and led him back to the main road, where they rejoined Tarleton and the rest of his party. One of the Tory guides that had led the British through the back country to Cowpens recognized Young and announced he was going to kill him. He cocked his weapon. “In a moment,” Young said, “about twenty British soldiers drew their swords, cursed him for a coward wishing to kill a boy without arms and a prisoner, and ran him off.”

Tarleton ordered Young to ride beside him. He asked him many questions about Morgan’s army. He was particularly interested in how many dragoons Washington had. “He had seventy,” Young said, “and two volunteer companies of mounted militia. But you know, they [the militia] won’t fight.”

“They did today,” Tarleton replied.

10

On the battlefield at Cowpens, Surgeons Robert Jackson of the 71st Highlanders and Richard Pindell of the 1st Maryland were doing their limited best to help the wounded of both sides. There were 62 patriots and 200 British in need of medical attention, which consisted largely of extracting musket balls, if possible, bandaging wounds, and giving sufferers some opium or whiskey, if any was available. The battle had also cost the British 110 dead, including 10 officers. Only 12 patriots were killed in the battle, though many more died later of wounds. But it was the number of prisoners—some 530—that underscored the totality of the American victory.

Even as prisoners, the British, particularly the Scots, somewhat awed the Americans. Joseph McJunkin said they “looked like nabobs in their flaming regimentals as they sat down with us, the militia, in our tattered hunting shirts, black-smoked and greasy.”

Other patriots were not content to inspect their exotic captives. William Washington was having a terse conference with Andrew Pickens. They agreed that there was still a good chance to catch Tarleton. But they needed enough men to overwhelm his 54-man squadron. Washington changed his wounded horse for a healthy mount and rounded up his scattered dragoons. Pickens summoned some of his own men and ordered James Jackson to follow him “with as many of the mounted militia as he could get.”

Down the Green River Road they galloped, sabers in hand. But Tarleton the cavalryman was not an easy man to catch. He rode at his usual horse-killing pace. A few miles above William Thompson’s plantation on Thicketty Creek, they found the expedition’s baggage wagons abandoned, 35 in all, most of them belonging to the 7th Regiment. The fleeing cavalry of the Legion had told the 100-man guard of the defeat. The officer in command had set fire to all the baggage that would burn, cut loose the wagon horses, mounted his infantry two to a horse, and ridden for the safety of Cornwallis’s army. Abandoned with the baggage were some 70 black slaves. A short time later, a party of loyalists, fugitives from the battlefield, reached the baggage train and began to loot it. They were not long at this work before Tarleton and his heartsick officers and troopers came pounding down the road. They did not ask questions about loyalty. They cut down the looters without mercy.

Tarleton too was riding for Cornwallis’s camp, but he had more than safety on his mind. He assumed the British commander was just across the Broad River at Kings Mountain in a position to rescue the 500 or so men Morgan had taken prisoner. Perhaps Tarleton met a loyalist scout or messenger somewhere along the road. At any rate, he heard “with infinite grief and astonishment” that the main army was at least 35 miles away, at Turkey Creek.

This news meant a change of route. The British decided they needed a guide. Near Thicketty Creek they stopped at the house of a man named Goudelock. He was known as a rebel. But Tarleton probably put a saber to his throat and told him he would be a dead man if he did not lead them to Hamiltons Ford across the Broad River, near the mouth of Bullocks Creek. Goudelock’s terrified wife watched this virtual kidnapping of her husband.

About half an hour after Tarleton and his troopers departed to the southeast, Washington, Pickens, and their dragoons and militia troopers rode into Goudelock’s yard. They had stopped to extinguish the fires the British started in the baggage wagons and collect some of the slaves the enemy had abandoned. The Americans asked Mrs. Goudelock if she had seen the British fugitives. Yes, she said. What road did they take? She pointed down the Green River Road, which led to Grindal Shoals on the Pacolet. Like a great many people in every war, she was more interested in personal survival than national victory. If the Americans caught up to Tarleton, there was certain to be a bloody struggle, in which her husband might be killed. Mrs. Goudelock preferred a live husband to a dead or captured British commander.

The Americans galloped for the Pacolet. Not until they had traveled 24 miles on this cold trail did they turn back. By then, it was much too late. Tarleton was safely across the Broad River at Hamiltons Ford. But the American pursuit helped save Thomas Young, the captured militiaman. When Tarleton and his men, guided by the reluctant Goudelock, reached the ford, it was almost dark. Someone told them the river was “swimming.” Someone else, perhaps a loyalist scout, rode up with word that Washington and his cavalry were after them. Considerable confusion ensued, as Tarleton and his officers conferred on whether to flee down the river to some other ford, attempt to swim the river in the dark, or stand and fight. Everyone stopped thinking about Thomas Young and another prisoner, a Virginian whom the British had scooped up along the road. The two Americans spurred their horses into the darkness, and no one noticed they were gone.

Tarleton crossed the Broad River that night and spent the next morning collecting his runaway dragoons and other stragglers before riding down to Cornwallis’s camp at Turkey Creek. The British commander already knew the bad news. Some of the Legion cavalry had drifted into camp the previous night. But Tarleton, as the field commander, was required to make a detailed report.

According to Joseph McJunkin, whose father had been taken prisoner by the British and was an eyewitness, Cornwallis grew so agitated he plunged his sword into the ground in front of his tent and leaned on it while listening to the details of the disaster. By the end of Tarleton’s account, the earl was leaning so hard on the hilt that the sword snapped in half. He threw the broken blade on the ground and swore he would recapture the lost light infantry, Fusiliers, and Highlanders.

The general exonerated Tarleton of all culpability for the defeat at Cowpens. “You have forfeited no part of my esteem, as an officer,” he assured Tarleton. Cornwallis blamed the loss on the “total misbehavior of the troops.” But he confided to Lord Rawdon, the commander at Camden, that “the late affair has almost broke my heart.”

On the same morning that Tarleton was making his doleful report, Washington and Pickens returned to Cowpens. On their ride back, they collected several dozen—some versions make it as many as 100—additional British soldiers straggling through the woods. At the battlefield they found only the two surgeons caring for the wounded and a handful of Pickens’ men guarding them. Daniel Morgan, knowing Cornwallis would make a determined effort to regain the prisoners, had crossed the Broad River on the afternoon of the battle and headed northwest toward Gilbert Town. Pickens and Washington caught up to him there, and Morgan gave Pickens charge of the prisoners, with orders to head for an upper ford of the Catawba River. Decoying Cornwallis, Morgan led his Continentals toward a lower ford of the same river. In an exhausting five-day march, often in an icy rain, both units got across this deep, swift-running stream ahead of the pursuing British. The prisoners were now beyond Cornwallis’s reach. They were soon marched to camps in Virginia, where the men Morgan helped capture at Saratoga were held.

This final retreat, a vital maneuver that consolidated the field victory at Cowpens, worsened Morgan’s sciatica. From the east bank of the Catawba, he warned Greene that he would have to leave the army. “I grow worse every hour,” he wrote. “I can’t ride or walk.” As the rain continued to pour down, Morgan had to abandon his tent and seek the warmth of a private house. Greene immediately rode from Cheraw Hills and took personal command of the army. By the time Morgan departed for Virginia on February 10, he was in such pain that he had to be carried in a litter.

A grateful Congress showered the Cowpens victors with praise and rewards. Morgan was voted a gold medal, and Howard and Washington were voted silver medals. Pickens received a silver sword. Perhaps the most immediate result of the battle was in the minds of the people of the South. The victory sent a wave of hope through the Carolinas and Georgia. It also changed attitudes in Congress toward the southern States. John Mathews of South Carolina told Greene that “the intelligence ... seems to have had a very sensible effect on _some folks_, for as this is a convincing proof that something is to be done in that department ... they seem at present to be well disposed to give it every possible aid.”

The news had an exhilarating effect on Greene’s half of the southern army. He ordered a celebration and praised Morgan extravagantly in the general orders announcing the victory. A friend on Greene’s staff sent a copy to Morgan, adding, “It was written immediately after we heard the news, and during the operation of some cherry bounce.” To Francis Marion, Greene wrote, “After this, nothing will appear difficult.”

This optimism soon faded. To the men in the field, Cowpens did not seem particularly decisive. Banastre Tarleton was soon back in action at the head of the British cavalry. On February 1, from his sick bed, Morgan wrote a despairing letter to Gov. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, describing the retreat of the Southern army before Cornwallis. “Our men [are] almost naked,” still too weak to fight him. “Great God what is the reason we can’t have more men in the field? How distressing it must be to an anxious mind to see the country over run and destroyed for want of assistance.”

The civil war between the rebels and the loyalists continued in South Carolina, marked by the same savage fratricidal strife. “The scenes were awful,” Andrew Pickens recalled. Young James Collins, in his simple, honest way, told the militiaman’s side of this story. Summing up his role at Cowpens, Collins said he fired his “little rifle five times, whether with any effect or not, I do not know.” The following day, he and many other militiamen received “some small share of the plunder” from the captured British wagons. Then, “taking care to get as much powder as we could, we [the militia] disbanded and returned to our old haunts, where we obtained a few days rest.” Within a week, Collins was again on his horse, risking his life as a scout and messenger.

Only years later, with a full perspective of the war, did the importance of Cowpens become clear. By destroying Tarleton’s Legion, Daniel Morgan crippled the enemy’s power to intimidate and suppress the militia. Cornwallis was never able to replace the regulars he lost at Cowpens. He had to abandon all thought of dividing his field army—which meant that British power did not extend much beyond the perimeter of his camp. When he pursued Greene’s army deep into North Carolina, the partisans in South Carolina rose in revolt. Eventually, Cornwallis was forced to unite his decimated, half-starved regiments with the British troops in Virginia, where they were trapped by Gen. George Washington’s army at Yorktown in October 1781.

In South Carolina, meanwhile, Nathanael Greene combined militia with his small regular army in the style Morgan had originated at Cowpens. Though Greene was forced to retreat without victory at Guilford Courthouse (March 15, 1781), Hobkirks Hill (April 25, 1781), and Eutaw Springs (September 8, 1781), the British army suffered such heavy losses in these and other encounters that they soon abandoned all their posts in the back country, including the fort at Ninety Six, and retreated to a small enclave around Charleston. There they remained, impotent and besieged, until the war was almost over.

It took nine years for the U.S. Treasury to scrape together the cash to buy Daniel Morgan the gold medal voted him by Congress for Cowpens. In the spring of 1790, this letter came to the Old Wagoner at his home near Winchester, Virginia:

_New York, March 25, 1790_

Sir: _You will receive with this a medal, struck by the order of the
late Congress, in commemoration of your much approved conduct in the
battle of the Cowpens and presented to you as a mark of the high sense
which your country entertains of your services on that occasion._

_This medal was put into my hands by Mr. Jefferson, and it is with
singular pleasure that I now transmit it to you._

_I am, Sir &c.,
George Washington_