Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene awaits word on the fate of Gen. Daniel Morgan's detachment, camped somewhere in the South Carolina backcountry.

10:27 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 5, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

From his tent in the wilderness on a bend in the Pee Dee River, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene worried about Daniel Morgan's detachment, camped somewhere in the South Carolina backcountry. Morgan had with him nearly half of Greene's Southern Army, and all of its best men. Greene sounded like a fretting father as he wrote to Morgan in early January 1781:

I am not a little impatient to hear from you, not knowing where, or in what condition you are. It is of importance I should be informed as minutely as possible, of your strength, situation, state of provisions, and means of transportation, all which I beg you to give me an account of as early as you can.

Greene had good reason to worry: Gen. Alexander Leslie had just sailed up the Santee River with 1,530 reinforcements for Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis; the British now had 8,000 soldiers in outposts, garrisons and in the fields from North Carolina to Georgia; to face them, Greene had a paper army of 2,000.

Morgan's first letter was already en route to camp when Greene chastised him for not writing; it took several days for a colonel, the Marquis de Malmedy, to carry it through swamps and across the Catawba and Pee Dee rivers, swollen from days of rain. Greene ripped it open on Jan. 7, 1781; it was a good news/bad news-kind of letter.

The good: Morgan had sent a troop of light horse (lightly equipped cavalry) under Col. William Washington, a cousin of Gen. George Washington's, to chase a legion of 250 Loyalist militia. Washington caught up with them 40 miles from Morgan's camp in a town called Hammond's Store; there Washington's mounted men killed, captured or wounded all but 60 before pressing on to Fort Williams, a plantation behind a stockade fence. The Loyalist militia stationed there fled, and Washington captured the outpost.

The bad news: Morgan's men and their horses were famished. "This Contry has been so exhausted that the supplies for my Detachment have been precarious and scant ever since my Arival." He had to move, Morgan said, and "I should wish to move into Georgia. To me it appears an Adviseable Scheme."

True to his management style, Greene really thought over Morgan's "scheme" for one night, considering all the pros and cons. Henry Lee said of Greene: "He was patient in hearing every thing offered, never interrupting or slighting what was said; and having possessed himself of the subject fully, he would enter into a critical comparison of the opposite arguments, convincing his hearers, as he proceeded, of the propriety of the decision he was about to pronounce."

And after considering Morgan's argument, Greene said no. Morgan was 120 miles west of Greene as it was, and moving into Georgia would take Morgan's troops even farther away from the main Army at Hick's Creek, South Carolina. With British reinforcements mucking through the swamps toward a rendezvous with Cornwallis in Winnsboro, Greene didn't dare break up his army any more than he already had.

This turned out to be a smart decision: three days after he made it, Greene got word that a legion of British troops was marching westward from Winnsboro, making a beeline toward Morgan. The intelligence was good: Cornwallis, alarmed by William Washington's capture of Fort Williams, had ordered Banastre Tarleton's legion to rid the countryside of Morgan and his troops.

Col. Tarlton is said to be on his way to pay you a visit, Greene wrote to Morgan. I doubt not but he will have a decent reception and a proper dismission.

Breathtaking brutality

Ban Tarleton once bragged that he had "ravished" or raped, more women than any man in America. He'd made his reputation as a bold cavalry officer in 1776 when, at age 22, he'd captured Gen. Charles Lee in New Jersey.

Twentieth-century historian Christopher Ward wrote of Tarleton: "He wrote his name in letters of blood all across the history of the war in the South."

Nowhere were those letters writ more boldly than in a remote region of South Carolina called the Waxhaws. Here in May 1780, after the fall of Charleston, Tarleton pushed his troops of the British Legion 105 miles in 54 hours in order to catch 350 retreating Continentals from Virginia.

The Virginians were led by Col. Abraham Buford, who blundered: as Tarleton's horsemen charged his line, Buford told his men to hold their fire until they came close. That kind of coolness in the face of a charge works well with infantry, but with horses coming on fast his men fired just one volley before they were hacked to pieces.

Buford quickly raised the white flag, but the green-jacketed American Loyalists in the Legion refused his plea for quarters. Buford's battlefield surgeon Robert Brownfield observed years after the battle: "for fifteen minutes after every man was prostrate they went over the ground plunging their bayonets into every one that exhibited any signs of life, and in some instances, where several had fallen over the other, these monsters were seen to throw off on the point of the bayonet the uppermost, to come at those beneath."

All but 14 of Buford's 350 men were killed or wounded, and many who lived were maimed. From this day, Tarleton wore the sobriquet "Bloody" Ban Tarleton.

Cornwallis sent Tarleton's troops after Morgan, writing on Jan. 2, 1781: "if Morgan is . . . anywhere within your reach, I should wish you to push him to the utmost."

About a week later Tarleton was ready to make his push; he'd gathered 1,200 men and four days' worth of food at Brooke's Bush River Plantation.

From his camp at Grindal Shoals on the wide Pacolet River, Morgan got word that Tarleton was moving rapidly north, toward him.

For Morgan, the stakes were high: if Tarleton wiped out his Flying Army, the war in the South was effectively over; Cornwallis would roll up Greene and his little band of misfits, and a third American army would be lost.

Morgan called Colonel Washington and his cavalry back into camp; then he began a retreat farther north, toward the Broad River, swollen now with days of rain. With Tarleton's Legion bearing down on him it would be a hard river to cross.

On Jan. 15, Morgan explained his retreat in a letter to Greene: "The enemy's great superiority of numbers and our distance from the main army, will enable Lord Cornwallis to detach so superior a force against me, as to render it essential to our safety to avoid coming to action; nor will this always be in my power."

When Morgan began his retreat, Tarleton was just 30 miles away and gaining.

At sunset on the 15th Tarleton pitched a camp, but it was just a ruse; his men marched through that night, moving within 6 miles of Morgan's camp on Thicketty Creek. When Morgan's scouts gave him that news he canceled breakfast, leaving food simmering over fires. British troops ate that breakfast while it was still hot.

About 5 miles from the flooded ford at Broad River, Morgan came to a place called the Cowpens, where a wealthy farmer penned up his cows. Here he had to make a choice: push on and try to cross the river, a good move if he got away with it but disastrous should Tarleton catch him in mid-river; or he could turn and fight. Fighting here was risky: he was outnumbered; the open ground favored the linear tactics at which the British excelled; and the river blocked any chance for retreat. If the American troops fought here, there would be no turning back. Morgan liked that. He later said he chose to fight at the Cowpens specifically because with the river at their backs, the militia could not run away: "When men are forced to fight," he wrote, "they will sell there lives dearly."

"We arrived at Cowpens about sun-down," recalled Thomas Young, a teenage militiaman from South Carolina, "and were then told that there we should meet the enemy."

A Captain Trammel recalled Morgan standing at the Cowpens telling him: "Captain, here is Morgan's grave or victory."

Morgan ordered the slaughter of some of the cattle at the Cowpens, and his men ate fresh beef that night. All night long militiamen rode into his camp, including some who had fought the Battle of King's Mountain.

Morgan hatched a creative battle plan: he'd form his men in three lines with the rawest militiamen standing at the bottom of the pasture as the front line. On their flanks they'd have sharpshooting riflemen concealed in the swamps. All he expected of the militia was to fire two or three volleys per man, then they could run uphill to the rear of the battlefield. The next line, comprised of battle-tested regulars, would part and let them through. A third line of Continentals would hold the high ground of the gently sloping field. When the Continentals saw the militiamen fleeing, they were not to panic; this was part of the plan.

That night before the battle, Morgan was cool and relaxed. "He went among the volunteers, helped them fix their swords, joked with them about their sweet-hearts, told them to keep in good spirits, and the day would be ours," Thomas Young recalled. "And long after I laid down, he was going about among the soldiers encouraging them, and telling them that the old wagoner would crack his whip over Ben in the morning, as sure as they lived."

"Just hold up your heads, boys, three fires and you are free," Morgan told his militia, "and then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls will kiss you, for your gallant conduct."

Wrote Young: "I don't believe he slept a wink that night!"

After midnight Morgan set that day's password as "Fire." The countersign: "Sword."

"So the word was fire and sword," recalled militia Maj. Samuel Hammond. "By this we were to know our friends from our foes."

gcarbone@projo.com / (401) 277-7434

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

Babits, Lawrence E. A Devil of a Whipping: The Battle of Cowpens. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1998.

Buchanan, John. The Road to Guilford Courthouse. Buchanan; John Wiley & Sons Inc.: New York, Chichester, Weinheim, Brisbane, Singapore, Toronto, 1997.

Conrad, Dennis M. and Showman, Richard K., eds. The Papers of Nathanael Greene, VII. The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1994.

Higginbotham, Don. Daniel Morgan, Revolutionary Rifleman. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1961.

Lee, Gen. Henry, Robert E. Lee ed. The Revolutionary War Memoirs of General Henry Lee. Da Capo Press: New York, 1998.

Scheer, George F., and Rankin, Hugh F. Rebels & Redcoats. Da Capo Press Inc.: United States of America, 1987. Copyright The World Publishing Company, 1957.

A continuing series.