The major general leaves his main army to join Morgan's troops, putting them all in a race with forces under British Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis.

10:35 AM EDT on Friday, July 7, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

On the 28th of January 1781, a curious contingent of six horsemen splashed through swampland in central South Carolina. Among them, in a blue coat with buff facing and gold epaulets, rode the "slightly corpulent" figure of Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene.

In a strange, some have said reckless, maneuver, Greene left the protection of his main army; he wanted to confer in person with Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan and some of his other generals about what they should do next.

Around this time Greene wrote to his wife, Caty: The birds are singing and the frogs are peeping in the same manner they are in April to the Northward; and vegirtation is as in great forwardness as in the beginning of May.

The country he rode through was as dangerous as it was lush; at least half of the people in it opposed the Revolution, and a cruel civil war ravaged the backcountry with neighbor murdering neighbor. Greene rode protected only by three dragoons, an aide and a guide.

They covered more than 100 miles in two nights, riding into Morgan's camp on the Catawba River on the third day, doubtlessly tired and splattered with mud. Morgan, the Old Wagoner, was in bad shape, suffering from rheumatism and hemorrhoids that forced him to leave the Army.

Greene's main army of about 800 regulars he'd left under the command of Brig. Gen. Isaac Huger, to whom Greene wrote:

I have just arrivd at this place where General Morgan is posted with his light troops. The Enemy lay on the other side of the Catawba about 18 miles below this. . . . I beg you to hasten your march [with the main Army] towards Salisbury as fast as possible.

While encamped on the Pee Dee River, Greene had ordered boats built that could be mounted on wheels and moved with little more difficulty than a loaded waggon. He told Huger to haul those boats with him.

The more Greene thought about Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis' decision to lighten his load by burning his baggage, the more he liked it, for he sensed that the grandmaster had committed a blunder.

It is necessary we should take every possible precaution to guard against a misfortune, Greene wrote to Huger on the 30th. But I am not without hopes of ruining Lord Cornwallis if he persists in his mad scheme of pushing through the Country. . . Here is a fine field and great glory ahead.

Tired, hungry and alone

Ban Tarleton dismounted at a town called Torrence's Tavern and began rifling through the blood-blotched clothes of one of the dozen or so American militiamen his legion had just killed. In a jacket pocket he found a circular that had been written by Nathanael Greene:

"Let me conjure you, my countrymen, to fly to arms and repair to Head Quarters without loss of time and bring with you ten days provision. You have every thing that is dear and valuable at stake; if you will not face the approaching danger your Country is inevitably lost. On the contrary if you repair to arms and confine yourselves to the duties of the field Lord Cornwallis must certainly be ruined. The Continental Army is marching with all possible dispatch from Peedee to this place. But without your aid their arrival will be of no consequence."

The militiaman who had responded to Greene's flier by mustering at Torrence's Tavern was dead, as were many of his friends; with Cornwallis' troops rolling steadily through the countryside, few more would turn out to help Greene's little army.

On Feb. 1, the same day that Tarleton's dragoons cut up the militia assembled at Torrence's Tavern, Greene sent orders for all militiamen to meet him at David Carr's house, 16 miles east of the Catawba River on the road to Salisbury. He rode alone to that house, having ordered Morgan's troops to march for Salisbury and a planned rendezvous with the main army; he waited there until after midnight and not one man came to our assistance, Greene plaintively wrote to Baron von Steuben.

According to his grandson, George Washington Greene, Nathanael Greene rode through the night toward Salisbury, where he stopped for breakfast at a place called Steele's Tavern. An army surgeon, Dr. William Reed, saw him there, cold and wet from his nighttime ride.

"What, alone, general?" Read said.

"Yes," said Greene, "tired, hungry, alone, and penniless."

The tavern owner, Mrs. Steele, stole away then crept back into the room, quietly closing the door behind her; she extended her hands to Greene, each holding a little bag of hard coin.

"Take these," she said, "for you need them, and I can do without them."

A portrait of King George III still hung over her fireplace from the pre-war years; Greene turned the portrait toward the wall and scrawled on the back: "Hide thy face, George, and blush."

When Nathanael Greene first took over the Southern Command he had boasted to Alexander Hamilton: I call no councils of war; and I communicate my intentions to very few. Now after two months at the helm, Greene was calling for a war council to sound out his two brigadier generals and a colonel on the imminent threat they faced.

The four men met at Guilford Courthouse, a town in northern North Carolina, where Morgan's light troops had finally hooked up with the main army. All of the soldiers were worn out from marching, marching, marching through muddy roads in steady retreat from Cornwallis' army. The main troops had worn through their shoes tromping more than 100 miles from their camp on the Pee Dee River:

"From Peedee to Gilford the Army might have been tracked by the Blood from the feet of the men who were all barefooted," wrote a colonel, Benjamin Ford.

Morgan's troops, now under the command of Col. Otho Williams, had come farther than that: 130 miles across three winter-cold rivers since their battle at Cowpens.

Greene laid it out for his Council of War: at Guilford Courthouse he had 1,426 Infantry regulars many of whom are badly armed and distressed for the Want of Clothing plus 600 militiamen badly armed.

Cornwallis, now less than 20 miles away, had 2,500 to 3,000 men, mostly regulars, all of them clothed, shod and armed with the best musketry.

"The Question being put," read the minutes of the meeting, "whether we ought to risque an Action with the enemy or not; it was determined unanimously that we ought to avoid a general Action at all Events, and the Army ought to retreat immediately over the Roanoke River."

The decision to retreat was nearly as risky as deciding to fight. Greene's goal, the wide Roanoke or Dan River, flowed through Virginia some 70 miles to the north; that was a long march for beaten, barefoot men slowed, Greene wrote, by Heavy rains, deep creeks, bad roads, poor horses and broken harnesses.

In deciding to race for the Dan, Greene deliberately put his troops in a vise with a wide river in their front and a determined, superior enemy pushing them from behind.

If they got caught before crossing the river, we stand ten chances to one of getting defeated, Greene wrote, & if defeated all the Southern states must fail. . . . Our force is so small & in such distress that I have little to hope & everything to fear.

Cornwallis, a good strategist in his own right, knew where Greene was headed. With no luck in recruiting militia, Greene "would do everything in his power to avoid an action on the South side of the Dan," Cornwallis surmised. "It being my business to force him to fight," he vowed to make "great expedition to get between Greene and the fords of the Dan."

The Race to the Dan was on.

Cornwallis assumed that Greene would march for the shallow fords on the upper part of the Dan River, where his troops could march across without boats, a logical assumption.

Cornwallis marched his troops at a punishing pace to beat Greene to Dix's Ford on the upper Dan.

But Greene had a scheme: his quartermaster, Edward Carrington, had collected all the boats between Dix's Ford and the deep water ford at Boyd's Ferry, six boats in all. Greene and Cornwallis were equidistant to Dix's, but Greene was closer to the deep water crossing at Boyd's Ferry; he planned to buy time by heading there and employing the boats to ferry his troops, he hoped before Cornwallis caught on.

From Guilford Courthouse, Greene did not have much of a head start on Cornwallis and his baggage-free troops.

Greene wrote on Feb. 9, 1781:

I expect [Cornwallis] will be at this place by to morrow noon at the farthest. . . . nor do I know whether it will be in our power to avoid an action, the enemy moves with such rapidity."

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources consulted for today's installment:

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

Greene, George Washington. The Life of Nathanael Greene, Vol. 3. New York: Hurd and Houghton. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1871.

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

A continuing series.