by Terry Golway
Greene and Morgan linked up on January 30 after a perilous, soggy ride of more than a hundred miles through loyalist country. Greene had hoped that Cowpens would inspire local militia units to turn out as a confrontation with Cornwallis neared. But during his ride through the countryside, Greene discovered that there had been no such outpouring. “The people have been so harassed for eight months past and their domestick matters are in such distress,” he wrote to Congress, “that they will not leave home; and if they do it is for so short a time that they are of no use.” He deplored the lack of patriotism, but he had neither time nor energy to expend on regrets. Cornwallis was nearby, and Greene knew his enemy would attack as soon as he could. The Americans had to move quickly or be crushed.
Greene understood that he had one very important advantage. Although he was being chased, he at least would be moving north, toward his supply centers in Virginia. Cornwallis, on the other hand, was moving farther away from his supply base in South Carolina–and he was marching with light troops newly stripped of their tents, their baggage, and their provisions. The more Greene marched, the wearier Cornwallis would become. His rum-less troops could be forced to wander through the winter landscape of North Carolina, made to ford the region’s rambling rivers, made to climb up and down slippery hills. Greene’s strategy soon became evident: he would bait Cornwallis into a chase. Morgan was skeptical of Greene’s plan, preferring his own idea of retreating into the countryside of South Carolina. He said he would not be responsible for the disasters he foresaw. “Neither will you,” a testy Greene replied. “For I shall take the matter upon myself.”
Greene sent Morgan on his way north, staying behind by the Catawba River in hopes of recruiting new militia forces. The mission was in vain, however, and when Greene heard that Cornwallis was across the river, he rode hard to Salisbury to catch up with Morgan. According to legend, as he arrived at Steele’s Tavern in Salisbury, an exhausted Greene met an army acquaintance who was stunned to find the commander of the Southern Department traveling by himself.
“What! Alone, general?” the acquaintance supposedly said. “Yes,” Greene replied, “tired, hungry, alone and penniless.” As Greene’s biographer Theodore Thayer pointed out, it’s hard to believe that Greene actually rode without even a small guard. But the glum summary of his condition sounds entirely true. The wife of the tavern’s proprietor was moved by the sight and words of this downcast general. She disappeared from her guest’s sight for a moment, then reappeared bearing two bags of coins. “You need them more than I do,” she told Greene. Damp-eyed, Greene accepted the offering of a patriot.
Rather than wait for the the other wing of his army to arrive in Salisbury, Greene changed the location of the planned linkup to the town of Guilford Court House, farther north in North Carolina. The British continued to match Greene step for step, and at one point, Cornwallis believed he had Greene trapped with his back to the Yadkin River. But the command of detail that had marked Greene’s service as a quartermaster served him well in the field; he had boats ready to take him across the river–literally in the nick of time. When Cornwallis reached the Yadkin, now stripped of boats, the Americans were camped on the other side. To vent his fury, Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire on the American camp, with little effect. According to eyewitnesses, Greene was writing letters when a ball landed near his headquarters. “His pen never rested,” the eyewitness reported.
The linkup at Guilford Court House, hampered by steady winter rains, was complete on February 9, when Greene held a rare council of war with three subordinates: Morgan, Brigadier General Isaac Huger, and Colonel Otho Williams. It must have pained Greene even to look at Morgan, for the hero of Cowpens was ailing again: he was thin after his march through the backcountry, and his rheumatism was flaring up once more. Shortly after the council, Morgan retired from the army, depriving Greene of one of his best field commanders.
Greene told his subordinates that the recombined army had fewer than fifteen hundred Continentals and about six hundred militia, many of whom, he said, were “badly armed and distressed for the Want of Clothing.” Chasing them, Greene reckoned, were as many as three thousand troops under Cornwallis. A dreadful choice presented itself: this weak army could turn and fight against overwhelming odds, or it could continue to retreat through North Carolina and into Virginia, a distance of some seventy miles, then it would cross the Dan River, near the main American supply depots, and see whether Cornwallis continued his pursuit or turned away. Rejecting the first option, Greene knew that the alternative–continued retreat–would mean the concession of North Carolina to Cornwallis. It was a mortifying scenario, particularly after Cowpens, but it was the only real choice Greene believed he had. Still, he was loath to decide the issue on his own. Ever conscious of his reputation, of rumors and slanders casually whispered in the parlors of Philadelphia, he wanted consensus so that no enemy–Thomas Mifflin and his ilk–could say that Nathanael Greene lacked the will to stand and fight. He put the question to the other three officers (Morgan, Hugar, and Williams): should they fight Cornwallis now and so risk the army itself, or should they retreat into Virginia? The other officers agreed with Greene’s gloomy assessment. “[It] was determined that we ought to avoid a general Action at all events,” they wrote.
After the council of war broke up, Greene sadly informed Washington that he would abandon North Carolina. It was yet another blow in a bleak season for the Continental army. Greene explained: “We have no provisions but what we receive from our daily collections. Under these circumstances I called a council who unanimously advised to avoid an action and to retire beyond the Roanoke [in Virginia].” Greene made sure to include a copy of the council’s proceedings, so that Washington could see that the retreat was not just his idea.
But now Greene had to beat Cornwallis, only thirty-five miles away, to the Dan River. At several points during the chase so far, Cornwallis had covered as much as twenty miles in a day. If Cornwallis caught up with Greene before they reached the river, the Americans would be crushed.
The race for the Dan began on February 10, when Greene once again divided his force, sending some seven hundred under Colonel Williams to stay between the main American force and Cornwallis, whose line of march was roughly parallel with Greene’s. The British commander was about to be outfoxed again, for he believed that Greene would have to cross one of the Dan’s upper fords, and the British were deployed accordingly. But Greene already had arranged for boats to be waiting for him downriver at Irwin’s Ferry.
Williams’s screening force confused Cornwallis long enough for Greene to make good his escape toward the river. He and his men were exhausted; Greene told Williams that he had slept only about four hours in four days of marching. But the frantic pace of the march paid off on February 14, when Greene’s army safely crossed the Dan to conclude one of the most brilliant strategic retreats of the war. Greene sent a welcome message to Williams, who had carried out his assignment with great success: “All our troops are over and the stage is clear. I am ready to receive you and give you a hearty welcome.”
The Americans had crossed four rivers and marched two hundred miles since Cowpens, all the while drawing Cornwallis farther from his supplies, all the while avoiding the general action that might have ended in defeat not just of the army but of the Revolution itself. Alexander Hamilton, an admirer of Greene, said of the march to the Dan:
To have effected a retreat in the face of so ardent a pursuit, through so great an extent of the country, through a country offering every obstacle, affording scarcely any resources; with troops destitute of every thing ... to have done all this, I say, without loss of any kind, may, without exaggeration, be denominated a masterpiece of military skill and exertion.
Even the British were impressed: Tarleton would later write that every move Greene made “from the Catawba to Virginia, was judiciously designed and vigorously executed.”
Cornwallis, on the other side of the Dan and wary of the r
oving patriot partisans in his rear and on his flanks, waited several days and then ordered his men to march back to North Carolina. In a letter to London, he explained that his army was “ill-suited to enter ... so powerful a province as Virginia.” He was ill-suited because he was ill-supplied and hardly better off than his ragged enemy. He had been outgeneraled by the self-taught soldier from Rhode Island, but at least Greene was in Virginia now. North Carolina was cleared of the Continental army, though not the stubborn bands of patriot guerrillas. Cornwallis ordered his men to march sixty miles south to Hillsborough, North Carolina, where he issued a proclamation declaring victory and laying the groundwork for a restoration of Crown rule in the province.
The British didn’t know it, but Nathanael Greene–resupplied and rested–had no intention of remaining safely over the Dan while his enemies celebrated his retreat. On February 22, just a few days after Cornwallis began his march to Hillsborough, Greene recrossed the Dan and then returned to North Carolina. He knew that he and Cornwallis were destined to meet again, and very soon.
The southern campaign was fought not only in the backcountry forests and the lowland swamps but also in the minds of the region’s civilians. Both Greene and Cornwallis understood the importance of public opinion and public perception. They both depended on the citizen soldiers of the militia, and the fervor with which men joined these bands often depended upon the tide of the war. Cornwallis explained to London just how fickle his support was, telling Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the American colonies, that the militia were reluctant to turn out “whilst a doubt remained on their minds of the superiority of our Arms.” To illustrate the point, the British commander found hundreds willing to join the loyalist militia corps when he triumphantly marched into Hillsborough to commemorate Greene’s departure from the state. Greene, on the other hand, wished–needed–to give hope and heart to North Carolina’s patriots while serving notice to its Tories that the Continental army in the South still was in the field, beaten but unvanquished. In late February, he told Washington that “most of the prisoners we take are inhabitants of America,” a situation he found mortifying.
Greene’s force remained pathetically small, about sixteen hundred, when he returned to North Carolina. But he put out a call for state militia, and the men were responding. Meanwhile, Washington sent him the good news that regular Continentals from Pennsylvania would soon be marching to his assistance. (They never made it, for they were delayed in the North and then were needed in Virginia.)
Through late February and early March, the two armies shadowed each other. Cornwallis was fully aware that Greene had returned to the state, although he was never sure precisely where he might be. Greene was based between Troublesome Creek and Reedy Fork Creek to the north of Guilford Court House and the British. But, Henry Lee later recalled, he changed “his position every day” and so “held Cornwallis in perfect ignorance of his position.” They were about twenty miles apart, and there was frequent skirmishing, particularly between Lee’s and Tar-leton’s mobile cavalry forces. At times in early March, the main camps were three miles from each other, though separated by rivers. The constant movement and incessant maneuvering wore down the ill-supplied British and tested Cornwallis’s patience.
Still, the British force was strong and formidable, and Greene was not yet prepared to fight. But his very presence in North Carolina rallied the patriot cause and disheartened the loyalists who were so vital to the British southern strategy. “I have been obliged to practice ... by finesse which I dare not attempt by force,” he told Jefferson. He kept Washington informed of the life-or-death maneuvering under way in North Carolina, telling him that he was “within ten or twelve miles of the Enemy for several days,” but was unwilling to risk a battle just yet. Instead, he sent detachments under Lee, Williams, and Pickens to harass and annoy Cornwallis, assignments they carried out so well that the British withdrew several miles south to Bell’s Mill on the Deep River for a respite.
Greene confided in nobody. As a member of Washington’s many councils of war in the northern campaigns, he had seen plans argued to death and bad advice offered as wisdom. As he prepared for Cornwallis, Greene called no council of war. He kept to himself, rising early, moving among the troops, and attending not only to strategy but to logistics.
One morning he passed by the tent of a colonel from Virginia who was sound asleep. Greene woke him up, exclaiming, “Good heavens, Colonel, how can you sleep with the enemy so near?” The sleepy but shrewd soldier replied, “Why, General, I knew that you were awake.” Greene would later say that he never received so high a compliment as the colonel’s.
The tension took a toll on his health. On March 5, from his camp in Boyd’s Mill on Reedy Fork Creek, he told Lee that he was suffering from a “violent inflamation” in his eyes. To relieve his distress, he submitted to the usual medical practice of the day: he was bled. Not surprisingly, he told Lee, “The inflamation is still troublesome and my eyes weak and painful.” Those sore eyes, however, soon beheld a wondrous sight: reinforcements of more than two thousand militia and Continental regulars. With these new troops from Virginia and North Carolina, Greene had more than four thousand men, enough, he determined, to offer Cornwallis the battle he so eagerly sought. For once, Greene’s forces were numerically stronger than Cornwallis’s army of about two thousand. But how long would he hold that advantage? As Greene told Jefferson, “[Militiamen] soon get tired out with difficulties, and go and come in such irregular Bodies that I can make no calculations on the strength of my Army.” Apparently, Cornwallis had the same trouble keeping track of Greene’s army. His spies had told him that the Americans now had up to ten thousand men.
The stakes in the coming fight were outlined in a candid letter Morgan sent Greene from his retirement in Virginia: “I expect Lord Cornwallis will push you till you are obliged to fight him, on which much will depend. You’ll have from what I see, a great number of militia–if they fight, you’ll beat Cornwallis, if not, he will beat you and perhaps cut your regulars to pieces, which will be losing all our hopes.” Morgan offered some blunt advice: when the time came for Greene to stand and fight, he should position some of his veterans behind lines manned by the militia. The veterans, he wrote, should be given “orders to shoot down the first man that runs.”
Just after dawn and breakfast on March 14, Greene and his men moved out of camp at Speedwell Iron Works and marched a dozen miles south to the battlefield of Greene’s choosing: the tiny town of Guilford Court House, where he had gathered his men together in early Februrary for the last leg of the race to the Dan. Cornwallis and the British were a little more than ten miles to the southwest, encamped near a Quaker meetinghouse.
Greene had no doubt that Cornwallis would attack him the following day, probably early in the morning. He immediately put his order of battle into place. It was a replica of Daniel Morgan’s at Cowpens.
In the center of the battlefield was the New Garden Road, which Cornwallis’s men would follow from their camp to meet the Americans. The road was narrow, but it led to a wide clearing where Greene would position the first of three defensive lines. Manning the first line, behind a rail fence and on both sides of the New Garden Road, would be a thousand members of the North Carolina militia, among Greene’s least experienced troops. They would have a superb view as the British marched out of the woods, through a muddy, plowed field, and toward the rail fence. Greene, again following Morgan’s precedent, would ask his front line to deliver two or three well-executed volleys and then retire to the second line. William Washington’s cavalry protected the right flank, while Henry Lee was positioned on the left.
The Virginia militia were to be deployed in the second line, some three hundred to four hundred yards behind the North Carolina militia and protected by a screen of woods. Greene would form his third line about seven hundred yards behind the second and facing another wide, open field that bent to the left after the second line. On the third line would be his
fourteen hundred Continental regulars, two regiments from Virginia and two from Maryland–the heart of his army. They would be drawn up on the brow of a gently rising hill, a superb defensive position. The British not only would be exposed to American fire but would have to stumble across a small stream to reach the position, which was near the courthouse from which the village got its name. To the rear was the Ready Fork Road, which would serve as Greene’s line of retreat.
It was late winter in North Carolina, and nightfall brought a chill to camp. Both armies lit campfires and prepared themselves for the ordeal that would begin at daybreak, if not before. From his position on the courthouse hilltop, Greene no doubt reflected on what lay ahead. His fortune, he knew, rested with the performance of the North Carolina and Virginia militia. Would they run away at the first sight of the disciplined British? Would they drop their weapons at the approach of Tarleton’s fearsome cavalry? And, if they did, would Cornwallis finally crush this nettlesome, troublesome American army?
The coming of dawn would provide the answers.
Henry Lee’s cavalry and a unit of Virginia riflemen were Greene’s eyes and ears through the busy, tense night. At about four o’clock in the morning, Greene learned that the British indeed were on the march. Without the benefit of breakfast, the British had begun their twelve-mile trudge through the predawn chill toward Guilford Court House. Cornwallis was eager to strike, and his supplies were low, so his soldiers would march and fight on an empty stomach.
Greene moved his men into position, riding among them to offer small words of encouragement and mopping his brow at the sun burned away the morning chill. To his scared, inexperienced North Carolina militia, he gave no hint of his doubts. “Three rounds, my boys,” he reminded them, “and then you may fall back.”
