In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  And then, ten hours later, at two p.m. on February 14, Greene finally had some good news to report. After a desperate push for the river, he was at the ferry landing. Most of the army’s wagons were already across and the troops were just now piling into the boats.

  Three and a half hours later, at 5:30 p.m., Greene wrote that all the troops had crossed, and “the stage is clear.” When Williams received Greene’s letter at noon the following day, he quickly shared the news with his officers. Henry Lee remembered how the “whole corps became renovated in strength and agility.” They immediately set out at a much faster pace, only to realize that the British vanguard was staying right with them. By three that afternoon they were within fourteen miles of the river. In an attempt to stall the British, Williams ordered Lee and his legion “to wait on the enemy,” while he and the rest of the cavalry galloped for Boyd’s Ferry.

  Just before sunset, Williams arrived at the banks of the Dan, where he found Greene waiting for him. By the time Lee’s cavalry reached the river, it was almost eight p.m., and the boats were just returning from the northern shore. Once their horses had been “turned into the stream,” Lee’s dragoons threw their equipment into the boats and followed their horses across the river.

  Not until the next morning at daybreak, after driving his army more than forty miles in thirty-one hours, did Lord Cornwallis arrive at the riverbank. Yet again, he had been outgeneraled by Nathanael Greene, whose army had managed to stay ahead of him even though burdened with the supply wagons Cornwallis had opted to burn. Had the deprivations he had inflicted on his men been for naught? In a letter to Germain, he blamed the failure to catch the Americans on faulty intelligence from the loyalists, who had assured him there were not enough boats for an army of Greene’s size to cross the lower fords of the Dan.

  As he looked across the river at the little fleet pulled up onto the opposite shore, Cornwallis must have realized that it had all come down to boats. Fixated on bringing the Americans to battle, he had failed to take into account the advantage Greene’s army enjoyed by being the first to reach each river. By repeatedly securing the inland equivalent of naval superiority, Greene had found a way to lure the British army ever farther toward what Charles O’Hara had called “the end of the world.”

  Cornwallis was now almost 250 miles from the nearest British base. Greene, on the other hand, had crossed into the safe haven of southern Virginia, where throngs of militiamen were making their way in his direction. But Cornwallis was not about to give up just yet. He hadn’t destroyed Greene’s army, but he had forced it out of North Carolina. While the Americans attempted to recruit and rebuild in Virginia, he would rally the Carolina loyalists, who could not help but be encouraged by the Continental army’s dramatic exit from their state. If all went according to plan, Lord Cornwallis would more than match Greene’s recruitment efforts and be in an even better position to crush the Americans when (and if) they ventured back into North Carolina.

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  GREENE MADE SURE CORNWALLIS’S recruitment efforts did not go as the British general had hoped. To “repress the meditated rising of the loyalists,” Greene sent Lee’s regiment of cavalry and the mounted militia under a South Carolinian commander named Andrew Pickens back into North Carolina. Cornwallis had retired fifty miles to the south, to the town of Hillsborough, where he “erected the King’s standard and invited by proclamation all loyal subjects to repair to it.” Learning that “a considerable body of friends” lived between the Haw and Deep rivers, about twenty miles to the west, he sent Tarleton and his cavalry into the area “to prevent their being interrupted in assembling.”

  Soon Lee and Pickens were on their way toward Tarleton. The American dragoons under Lee wore green jackets that were almost identical to the ones worn by Tarleton’s regiment, and as they rode through the largely loyalist countryside they were hailed by the inhabitants as British saviors, a deception Lee was happy to encourage if it allowed him to approach Tarleton’s camp unmolested. They were closing in on their prey when they came upon a group of about four hundred mounted loyalists, under the command of Dr. John Pyle, who were on their way to join Tarleton and who assumed they were being passed by none other than the British cavalry commander himself.

  It was almost surreal as the loyalists moved to the side of the path and paused while Lee, at the head of the American cavalry, “passed along the line . . . with a smiling countenance, dropping occasionally expressions complimentary to the good looks and commendable conduct of his loyal friends.” It was the same ruse Arbuthnot had played when his fleet arrived at the Chesapeake under the French colors, and Lee remembered how the loyalists “rejoiced in meeting us.”

  Lee later claimed he had intended to offer the loyalists “exemption from injury” if they agreed to either return home or join his own force. Before he could make the offer, his second in command, Joseph Eggleston, who seems to have been as bewildered as the loyalists as to what was actually going on, asked one of Pyle’s men, “To whom do you belong?” (Since the only way to distinguish a loyalist from a patriot was the strip of red he wore in his hat, Eggleston’s confusion was understandable.) When the loyalist responded a “friend of his Majesty,” Eggleston immediately whacked him over the head with his saber. According to Joseph Graham, who was there that day with Pickens’s militia, “That prompted the militia to rush the loyalists and begin slashing.”

  By the time they were finished, close to a hundred loyalists, whose weapons had been slung over their shoulders when Lee’s soldiers began the attack, had been hacked to death, many of them crying out to the end “To the king!” under the mistaken impression they were being attacked by Tarleton’s cavalry. The encounter spoke to the terrible savagery of partisan warfare in the south; it also put an end to Cornwallis’s recruitment efforts. Militia leader Andrew Pickens was not known for his volubility. (“He would first take the words out of his mouth with his fingers,” a friend remembered, “and examine them before he uttered them.”) But even Pickens was ebullient in describing what came to be known as Pyle’s Massacre. “This affair . . . has been of infinite service,” he wrote to Nathanael Greene. “It has knocked up Toryism altogether in this part.”

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  GREENE’S ORIGINAL PLAN had been to remain on the other side of the Dan until the arrival of his expected reinforcements. Certainly his men could use the rest. But the longer he lingered in Virginia, the more he began to worry about Cornwallis’s recruitment efforts in North Carolina, Pyle’s Massacre notwithstanding. Eventually, he decided that even though he did not yet have enough men to bring the British to battle, his army’s presence in the state would be a continued damper on British recruitment. He must follow Lee and Pickens into North Carolina.

  Over the course of the next three weeks, Greene and Cornwallis engaged in an exhausting game of hide-and-seek among the winding creeks and rivers of central North Carolina, with the Americans, in the words of Charles O’Hara, “constantly avoiding a general action” and the British “as industriously seeking it.” To make sure Cornwallis had no way of knowing where his army was headed next, Greene kept his plans “a profound secret with himself,” before moving the army at night. By the middle of March, his men had covered more than 230 miles, marching in two instances an incredible 60 miles a day. Perpetually baffled by Greene’s maneuvers, with his own army growing increasingly tired and hungry, Cornwallis cut off the chase and moved his men to the Quaker community of New Garden, where he hoped the many abundant farms would provide his army with much needed sustenance.

  From Greene’s perspective, the timing could not have been better. By March 11, the last of his reinforcements had arrived from Virginia, swelling his army to 4242 soldiers, more than twice the size of Cornwallis’s. The time for the long awaited battle had arrived. Back in February, during the brief pause that preceded the Race to the Dan, he had noticed a promising pat
ch of ground to the west of the village of Guilford Courthouse. There, on a heavily wooded hill through which ran the road from New Garden (just eight miles away), he would await the approach of Lord Cornwallis.

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  THE BRITISH MARCHED out of New Garden on the morning of March 15. Cornwallis’s men had not been able to find the expected provisions and had received no breakfast. Greene’s men, on the other hand, had eaten well that morning, and even enjoyed the unexpected gift of a gill (a quarter of a pint) of rum.

  Following Morgan’s example at Cowpens, Greene had posted his army in three defensive lines. In the very front, where the road from New Garden ran through a recently plowed field before entering the trees at the bottom of the hill, he placed the North Carolina militia behind a rail fence. Since they were the most likely to run in the face of a bayonet charge, the militiamen had been assured they need only fire two volleys at the approaching British before they retreated into the dense woods behind them—the same directive Morgan had given his front line at Cowpens. Four hundred yards up the hill were the Virginia militia. There amid the tall trees and dense undergrowth the British would have a difficult time retaining any semblance of a formation. Assuming the Virginia militia put up a fight, Cornwallis’s soldiers would emerge from the woods badly mauled and disoriented, with the American army’s most experienced soldiers waiting for them on the other side of an irregularly shaped clearing. At the far edge of this bowl of grass, partially hidden in the trees, would be the Continentals from Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, who should have the discipline and resolve to put a stop to whatever was left of Cornwallis’s army. On either side of the battlefield Greene placed the cavalry, with William Washington to the right and Henry Lee to the left. They were to support the soldiers in between them as the British fought their way, line by line, to the hollow of grass at the top of the hill.

  Greene had based the disposition of his army on the template Morgan had created at Cowpens, but there were inevitably some differences. This was a much larger and much more heavily wooded battlefield, which made it impossible for Greene, or anyone else, to see what was actually going on throughout the course of the fighting. At Cowpens, Morgan had ranged about the field and personally intervened as the battle progressed; Greene, astride a horse at the rear of the battlefield, would be unable to adjust the components of his force until the very end, when the British emerged from the trees and faced the Continentals. Greene had created a three-step gauntlet under the assumption that Cornwallis would do exactly what Tarleton had done at Cowpens and follow the collapsing first line of militia into the trees. Greene’s biggest fear was that instead of attacking their front, Cornwallis would “change his position and fall upon their flanks.”

  He needn’t have worried. By the time the battle began with a twenty-minute cannonade as Cornwallis struggled to assemble a line long enough to span the entire width of the American front, the British general wanted nothing less than to hurl his beloved army into the cataclysmic fight of their lives. He later admitted that as he stared into the margin of the wooded hill, he had no idea of what lay ahead. From the rumors he’d heard there might be as many as 10,000 American soldiers waiting for his army of just 2000 men. But no matter, his loyal and well-disciplined men would do whatever was asked of them, even if it resulted in their complete and utter destruction.

  Despite the example of William Howe at Bunker Hill and John Burgoyne at Saratoga, Cornwallis was fully prepared to offer his army as a sacrifice to the ministry’s continued belief that the rebellion could be ended with one decisive blow. History has made him synonymous with the defeat at Yorktown seven months later, but Cornwallis’s ultimate undoing was set into motion at 1:30 p.m. on March 15, 1781, when after chasing the American army across the interior of North Carolina, he ordered his men to charge into Nathanael Greene’s trap.

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  AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, many of the North Carolina militiamen fled without a fight, but a significant portion of the Virginia militia held their ground as the woods around Guilford Courthouse became a smoke-filled glade of deafening sound. “The roar of musketry and cracking of the rifles were almost perpetual,” Otho Williams remembered, “and as heavy as any I ever heard.” On the British side, Cornwallis wrote, “The excessive thickness of the woods rendered our bayonets of little use, and enabled the broken enemy to make frequent stands with an irregular fire.”

  Sergeant Roger Lamb, like many of the British soldiers, became separated from his regiment in the dense underbrush and smoke. Militiamen were all around him as he bent down to replenish his supply of cartridges from the box of a dead comrade. “I saw Lord Cornwallis riding across clear ground,” he remembered, “mounted on a dragoon’s horse (his own having been shot); the saddle-bags were under the creature’s belly, which much retarded his progress . . . his lordship was evidently unconscious of the danger.” Lamb could see Cornwallis was headed directly for the enemy, who were concealed from his view by the trees, and was on the verge of being “surrounded . . . and perhaps cut to pieces or captured.” Lamb leapt to his feet, ran to grab the horse’s bridle, and led the animal and his disoriented rider away from the militiamen. Cornwallis and Lamb soon came upon Lamb’s regiment, the Twenty-third, “drawn up in the skirt of the woods” after an unsuccessful attempt to break the Continental line on the far side of the grassy hollow.

  Just minutes before, Lieutenant Colonel James Webster had led the regiment in a mad dash across the open ground, only to discover that a line of American Continentals was waiting for them in the trees on the other side. Sent reeling by the enemy fire, Webster (who sustained what proved to be a mortal injury to his leg) and his men had been forced to retreat back to where Cornwallis and Lamb had found them. Soon they were joined by O’Hara’s Guards, who emerged from the trees to their right. O’Hara had also been wounded, so it was left to Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Stuart to lead them on a second attempt to break the Continental line.

  Just as had occurred to Webster and the Twenty-third, the Guards, after seizing two of the Rebels’ cannons, found themselves just yards from an American regiment, the First Maryland led by Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard. “This conflict . . . was most terrific,” an American soldier named Nathaniel Slade remembered, “for [the Guards and the First Maryland] fired at the same instant, and they appeared so near that the blazes from the muzzles of their guns seemed to meet.” Before the Guards could reload, William Washington and his cavalry burst out of the trees and, “leaping a ravine,” plowed into the British. This, Cornwallis realized, was the pivotal moment. If the Guards should be forced to retreat, all would be lost. The British artillery, directed by Lieutenant John McLeod, had just arrived via the road from New Garden. Even though McLeod didn’t have a clear shot, Cornwallis ordered him to fire. When Guard commander Charles O’Hara objected, claiming the artillery was likely to kill as many British as American soldiers, Cornwallis insisted they had no other choice if they were to avoid “impending destruction.” The cannons fired, soldiers fell on both sides, but disaster was averted when Washington and his cavalry gave up their pursuit.

  As it turned out, Greene had already ordered a retreat. Unaware of how close Cornwallis’s Guards had come to annihilation and fearful that his own Continentals were about to become surrounded, he made the difficult decision to err on the side of caution rather than risk losing what he had earlier called “the flower” of his army. The British retained the field and could therefore claim victory, but at a terrible cost. “Nearly one half of our best officers and soldiers were either killed or wounded,” O’Hara lamented, “and what remains are so completely worn out by the excessive fatigues of the campaign. . . . No zeal or courage is equal to the constant exertions we are making.” It didn’t actually matter who “won” since Greene had effectively eviscerated Cornwallis’s army. In addition, Cornwallis’s technical victory helped convince the min
istry in England that progress was being made when exactly the opposite was the case, a misapprehension that would lead to the concentration of British troops in Virginia in the months ahead.

  That night it began to rain. “I never did and hope I never shall experience such two days and nights as these immediately after the battle,” O’Hara wrote. “We remained on the very ground on which it had been fought covered with dead and with dying and with hundreds of wounded, rebels as well as our own.” Without tents or food or any way to succor the wounded, an estimated fifty men died before morning. “The cries of the wounded and dying who remained on the field of action during the night exceeded all description,” Sergeant Lamb remembered. “Such a complicated scene of horror and distress, it is hoped for the sake of humanity, rarely occurs even in a military life.”

  Over the course of the days to come, Greene gradually came to realize what he had accomplished. “The action has been long, obstinate, and bloody,” he wrote to Joseph Reed in Philadelphia. “The enemy has been so soundly beaten that they dare not move toward us since the action. They have gained no advantage, on the contrary they are little short of being ruined.” It had been more than a month of unremitting tension. “I have never felt an easy moment since the enemy crossed the Catawba,” Greene admitted. Just a few days before, he’d fainted from exhaustion. Having spent his nights beside a succession of smoky campfires, his eyes had become badly infected. But finally, now that Cornwallis’s seemingly invincible army had been all but destroyed, he had found some peace. “Now I am perfectly easy,” he wrote, “being persuaded it is out of the enemy’s power to do us any great injury.”