01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 9, 2006

BY GERALD M. CARBONE
Journal Staff Writer

At Halifax Courthouse, Va., Nathanael Greene and his troops were living relatively well. Virginia was a powerful state with a stable, if poorly managed, government and a strong economy. Here, after a punishing race to beat pursuing British troops across the Dan River, they bathed their bloody feet and slept warmly next to blazing fires. Henry Lee recalled in his memoirs that the army finally enjoyed "wholesome and abundant supplies of food in the rich and friendly county of Halifax."

The respite did not last; now that he'd lured Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis into the wilds of North Carolina -- 300 miles from his main base in Charleston -- Major General Greene was determined to raise enough troops in Virginia to press an attack.

On Feb. 18, 1781, after just two days of rest, Greene sent Henry Lee's horsemen back into North Carolina to harass the British troops as they retreated toward Hillsborough, N.C.; two nights after that Greene himself, protected only by a small corps of William Washington's horsemen, joined Lee's legion in their secret camp. This was the equivalent of a modern-day general joining his special forces in the field.

"He communicated his intention of recrossing the Dan in a few days," Lee recalled.

On Feb. 21, just a week after beating Cornwallis across the Dan, Greene wrote:

The Army will cross the river in the Morning, with a considerable reinforcement of Militia. If we can get up with the Enemy, I have no doubt of giving a good account of them.

But the militia drifted in and out of camp on their terms, driving Greene crazy: Our Militia had been upon such a loose and uncertain footing ever since we crossed the Dan [River], that I could attempt nothing within confidence tho' we kept within ten or twelve miles of the Enemy for several Days, he complained to Washington.

Greene and Cornwallis played a nerve-wracking game in the wilds of northern North Carolina. Like boxers circling in search of an opening, they continuously camped near each other looking for the right conditions to press an attack. Through the entire month of February 1781, and well into March, Nathanael Greene never took off his clothes, not to sleep, or bathe or even to change his shirt. He was too busy, too aware that Cornwallis' troops might surprise him at any moment. He got very little sleep during this period, a time in which he received, he liked to say, "the greatest compliment" ever paid him.

The praise came from a Col. John Green of Virginia, no relation. One night Nathanael Greene heard the colonel snoring in his tent. Greene poked him, and said, "Good heavens, colonel, how can you sleep with the enemy so near, and this the very hour for a surprise?"

Colonel Green drowsily puzzled a response for a moment, then said: "Why, general, I knew you were awake."

Fatigue poleaxed Greene in early March; a chronic ache in his eyes that first flared up at Valley Forge nearly blinded him for a few days.

I am rendered incapable of business . . . by a violent inflammation in my eyes," Greene wrote on March 5. I have been bleeding and physicking for several days to correct it, and in part have succeeded; but the inflammation is still troublesome and my eyes weak and painful.

Despite his pain Greene stayed on the move, pushing his army into a different camp almost nightly to keep Cornwallis guessing; on March 9 at a camp on the Haw River, Greene overhauled his army, transforming it from a force designed to defend against attack to an army ready to strike.

Greene wrote to Lee: The light infantry is dissolvd, and the Army will take upon itself an entire new formation.

I propose in lieu of the light infantry two parties of observation.

By moving from light troops -- designed to skirmish with the enemy -- to heavier equipped infantry, Greene was signaling an intention to tackle Cornwallis head-on. The reason for this re-footing was reinforcements -- he'd finally received two battalions of North Carolina militia, about 1,000 men, plus a few hundred militiamen from Virginia and 400 Continentals from Maryland.

Greene wrote to Lee: I am vexed to my soul with the Militia, they desert us by hundreds, nay thousands. He figured that while he had the militia in camp he'd press an attack before they could leave him. This represented a sea change in Greene's thinking; barely a week before he'd written Baron von Steuben:

To risque a general action may perhaps be impolitic as one half of the Army are too unexperienced & too uninformed to withstand the storm of a bloody Battle.

Now such a storm was in the wind.

At Guilford Courthouse

After breaking camp at High Rock Ford, N.C., Nathanael Greene marched his troops up the aptly named Troublesome Creek on the road to Guilford Courthouse, a hamlet of 100 people in northern North Carolina. Greene knew this land well. This was the place where he'd joined his army after severing it to begin the famous Race to the Dan. Then he'd been trying to avoid an attack; now he was trying to precipitate one. Cornwallis camped but 12 miles away, also looking for a fight.

As Greene later wrote to Washington: When both parties are agreed in a matter, all obstacles are soon removed.

And both generals were resolved to fight.

A half-hour before sunset on March 14, 1781, Greene wrote a note to Col. Henry Lee, who wanted Greene to shift the army's camp from the village.

It is now too late to shift our ground, especially as it has not been reconnoitered; and besides the troops are now busily employed in cooking their provision. . . .

I am perswaded the enemy will not move in the Morning. If they should it will be to attack us. I only dread two things, a heavy rain [which would wet gun powder, and few of his men had bayonets] and a Night attack. Don't get surprised, nor let us be so, if it can possibly be avoided.

Later on that cold, clear night Greene received a message in his headquarters at Guilford Courthouse: a large body of horsemen was approaching his camp. Now, a little after 2 a.m., the horsemen were about 6 miles away.

A messenger brought updates every half-hour: the enemy continued, though slowly, to approach. An intelligence officer sent to spy on the British column moving toward Greene heard the rumbling of wheels, a sure sign that Cornwallis was advancing with his artillery.

At 4 a.m. on March 15, 1781, Greene ordered Henry Lee's legion to mount up and meet the enemy.

In Lee's memoirs he recalled:

"The sun had just risen above the trees, and shining bright, the refulgence from the British muskets, as the soldiers presented, frightened [my] horse" which tossed him. Lee remounted another horse and ordered a retreat to camp. A sharp exchange of musket fire between Lee's infantry and the British announced the Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

The British came on slowly, marching along the Great Salisbury Road toward Guilford. The dirt road passed through dense woods till it hit a rivulet called Little Horsepen Creek; across the creek were some plowed, muddy fields, about 400 yards square, and beyond them more woods with dense underbrush. The road rose across the fields, through the woods, up to Guilford Courthouse in a series of undulating hills.

Greene took time to methodically deploy his troops on each side of the Salisbury Road. On this day Greene commanded more men than Cornwallis: about 4,400 to 1,900, which is why he decided to fight. In deploying his men, Greene took some of the advice offered by the Old Wagoner Daniel Morgan, who had written:

"You'l have from what I see, a great number of militia -- if they fight you'l beat Cornwallis[,] if not, he will beat you and perhaps cut your regulars to pieces, which will be losing all our hopes."

As Morgan suggested, Greene hid sharpshooting riflemen in the woods on both sides of the road. And as Morgan had done at Cowpens, Greene formed his troops in three lines: at the bottom of the hill stood the first line, comprising 1,000 North Carolina militia; they stood behind a split rail fence.

A few hundred yards behind them was another line of battle-tested militia from Virginia. Brig. Gen. Edward Stevens put 40 riflemen behind his regiment of Virginians to shoot down any of his own men who tried to flee the fight.

Near the top of the hill at Guilford Courthouse stood a line of more than 1,400 Continentals, the best of Greene's troops.

Around noon, Greene rode down to give a pep talk to the North Carolina militia behind the split rail fence. As a strategist Greene demonstrated true genius; as a motivator of men, he was no Morgan.

Greene removed his hat and mopped his brow in the noonday sun. He spoke of liberty and honor, then he rode through the woods to the top of the hill. The militia were left alone to stare across the plowed fields in anticipation of seeing crack British and Hessian troops emerge from the woods.

Around 1 p.m., Major Richard Harrison wrote to his pregnant wife on her predicted delivery day:

"It is scarcely possible to paint the agitations of my mind struggling with two of the greatest events that are in nature at the same time: the fate of my Nancy and my country. Oh, my God, I trust them with thee; do with them for the best!

". . . This is the very day that I hope will be given me a creature capable of enjoying what its father hopes to deserve and earn -- the sweets of Liberty and Grace."

Soon the sound of marching music filtered through the woods, squealing fifes, wailing pipes of the Scottish Highlanders, the snappy beat of snare drums. The sound grew louder, then the first British and Hessian troops stepped from the woods into the field, wet and muddy from recent rains, and filed off left and right forming a wide line. A British Sgt., Robert Lamb, recalled:

"Colonel [James Webster] rode on to the front and gave the word, 'Charge!' Instantly, the movement was made in excellent order, in a smart run, with arms charged. When arrived within forty yards of the enemy's lines, it was perceived that their whole force had their arms presented and resting on a rail fence. . . . They were taking aim with the nicest precision.

"At this awful period, a general pause took place. Both parties surveyed each other for the moment with the most anxious suspense."

Colonel Webster rode forward; he called, "Come on my brave fusiliers."

"They rushed forward amidst the enemy's fire," Lamb wrote of the charge; American muskets thundered, firing flame and lead; acrid gun smoke hovered. "Dreadful was the havoc on both sides," Lamb recalled. ". . . At last the Americans gave way and the brigade advanced to the attack of their second line."

Even though the second line expected the militia to retreat, the sight of 1,000 panicked men "throwing away arms, knapsacks, even canteens" as they dashed past must have been frightening.

The second wave of fighting happened in the woods; trees broke the British line so the redcoats fought in groups. These were good soldiers, outnumbered by two-to-one but still carrying the day. They pushed the Virginians back, unevenly; a large body of redcoats on the British left -- the elite 2nd Guards -- emerged from the woods into a bowl-shaped clearing smack in front of Greene's 1st Maryland Continentals, some of America's best men. The Maryland leader, Col. John Eager Howard, led a fierce and effective attack by bayonet.

"Incredibly, the flower of Cornwallis' army was in grave danger of being driven from the field, perhaps destroyed," John Buchanan wrote in his book The Road to Guilford Courthouse, published in 1997. "John Eager Howard recalled 'the whole were in our power.' Was Guilford Courthouse another Cowpens in the making? It might have been had another general commanded the British that day. Cornwallis emerged from the woods and surveyed what was happening before him. Then he did what he had to do."

Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire grapeshot -- dense, golf ball-sized spheres of lead -- into the mass of men fighting; the shot would kill as many British as Americans. A wounded general lying near the cannon begged Cornwallis not to do it; his artillery commander hesitated.

And Cornwallis repeated the order.

Cannon thundered, blowing bloody holes through men on both sides. For Cornwallis, the grapeshot had the desired effect -- everyone scattered, saving the 2nd Guard from complete destruction.

As British troops emerged unevenly from the woods, pushing toward Guilford Courthouse, Greene withdrew his troops; he left his four artillery pieces because all the horses used to draw them were dead on the field.

We retreated in good order to the Reedy Fork River, and crossed at the ford about 3 Miles from the field of Action, and there halted and drew up the Troops until we collected most of our Stragglers, Greene wrote.

From there, Greene put his men on a 10-mile, nighttime march to camp at Speedwell's Iron Works up on Troublesome Creek. Cornwallis was in no condition to pursue.

A Pyrrhic victory

By the rules of warfare, the British won the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, for at the end of the day they held the ground. But it was a Pyrrhic victory. Cornwallis began that day with 1,900 men; he ended it with fewer than 1,400. He had 93 killed and 50 wounded who died on the field that night; another 400 were wounded, including Bloody Ban Tarleton, who lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

Greene wrote to Baron von Steuben: The Enemy got the ground the other Day, but we the victory. They had the splendor, we the advantage. . . .

After his victory Cornwallis camped at Guilford Courthouse where his troops endured an ugly, hellish scene described by Light-Horse, who skulked about in the woods on reconnaisance:

"The night succeeding this day of blood was rainy, dark, and cold; the dead unburied, the wounded unsheltered, the groans of the dying and the shrieks of the living, cast a deeper shade over the gloom of nature."

The food wagons did not come up to Guilford Courthouse until the next morning. The British troops had not eaten in more than a day, and they camped that night hungry, in a hard rain, haunted by the dead and dying.

Gen. Charles O'Hara, the man who had begged Cornwallis not to fire grapeshot into his own men, wrote: "I never did, and hope I never shall, experience two such days and Nights as those immediately after the Battle. . . ."

While Cornwallis' troops camped famished and wet amidst the dying at Guilford Courthouse, Greene marched his men through the nighttime rain into camp along Troublesome Creek. They arrived at dawn of a gray day, fatigued, footsore -- and ready to fight again. In his orders that morning of March 16, 1781, Greene told his officers to secure their Arms & Ammunition & make every preparation for another field Day.

That night Greene was so worn down, he fainted.

In reporting the Battle of Guilford Courthouse to Congress, Greene wrote: They have met with a defeat in victory. Describing it to Joseph Reed, president of the Pennsylvania Council, Greene wrote on the 18th:

The battle was long, obstinate, and bloody. We were obligd to give up the ground, and lost our Artillery. But the enemy have been so soundly beatn, that they dare not move towards us since the action; notwithstanding we lay within ten Miles of them for two days. Except the ground and the Artillery they have gained not Advantage, on the contrary they are little short of being ruined.

Which was true. In the 10 weeks since Cornwallis had left Winnsboro, S.C., in his "mad scheme" to pursue Morgan and Greene, he had roughly half of his troops. He had begun with at least 2,500 men, probably more, and he now had fewer than 1,400 hungry, tattered troops trying to survive in the rain at Guilford Courthouse. Through battles and skirmishes, disease and desertion, Cornwallis had lost. The Lord Cornwallis, born to be a military man, had been beaten by Nathanael Greene, the bookish, gimpy, asthmatic son of a Quaker preacher.

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

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