The colonies that became the United States of America declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776, but they had to fight for years after that declaration to secure their independence. A North Carolina battle played a critical role in paving the way toward victory in the Revolutionary War. Joshua Howard, research historian in the N.C. Office of Archives and History, co-wrote a book about that battle, Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, March 15th, 1781. Howard discussed this important piece of North Carolina history with Mitch Kokai for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Kokai: That’s quite a title: Long, Obstinate, and Bloody. It sounds like this was a pretty significant battle.
Howard: It was. Guilford is one of the bloodiest battles of the war, but the most important part of it is that it’s the integral chain — a link in a chain of events that leads to Yorktown and eventually to British surrender and Americans winning their independence. It’s the battle that sent Cornwallis back to Wilmington and then eventually up to Yorktown, Virginia.
Kokai: For those who know even a little bit about the American Revolution, they probably remember Yorktown. Guilford Courthouse, you’re saying, is something that helped sort of pave the way for Yorktown.
Howard: Right — the casualties that Cornwallis took … Guilford took place in March, and that October was Yorktown. Cornwallis took so many casualties that he had to refit his army. And then because he had lost so many men in North Carolina, he made the decision that the Carolinas couldn’t be captured. So he took his army into Virginia, hoping to knock Virginia out of the war. And as a result, he ends up in Yorktown, a small riverine town, surrounded by Washington’s main army and also a French fleet and force led by Rochambeau. That’s not the last battle of the Revolution, but it’s the nail in the coffin of what was Britain’s American empire — British-American empire.
Kokai: A lot of folks might think that, with a battle that took place in 1781, that within the span of 200-plus years since then, people would have learned everything there is to know about the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. But your new book titled, once again, Long, Obstinate, and Bloody, reveals some new information. What did you find out that people didn’t know about this battle?
Howard: A lot of the interpretation of Guilford Courthouse today, in the 20th 21st century, is built off of 19th-century Whig mythology, nationalistic writings by individuals who weren’t actually present, and they were writing pro-America material. What we have done is used a lot of contemporary accounts of the battle itself. Pension records, for example. American veterans received pensions in the early 1800s, for their service, and had to tell what they had done. Those are great resources that have never really been used extensively. Also, [there is] a lot of research in British as well as German archives that has never really seen the light of day in the study of the Battle of Guilford that we’ve now brought forward to help tell what actually took place. Let’s get away from the mythology and tell what actually happened at the battle, in the words of those who fought the battle.
Kokai: What are some of the things that you’ve learned that are different from what we thought we knew about Guilford Courthouse?
Howard: The traditional story of Guilford Courthouse would be that, at the end of the engagement, Cornwallis, a British general, actually fired his artillery into his own men, who were involved in hand-to-hand combat with Americans, to save his army. And we have taken that to task. There is a certain conversation that two officers supposedly had that’s become a myth. … That conversation never took place, and we’ve proven that. And there is a little bit more to the story than meets the eye. And then, a few other accounts, namely of a gentleman by the name of Peter Francisco, who, by reading various accounts about him, you would see him as the Hercules, fighting across the battlefield, slaying British soldier after British soldier. And what’s striking is that his own account doesn’t say that. But people have taken a good story and turned it into a better myth.
Kokai: So your research has basically lifted the veil off of some of these myths. Why is it important, do you think, to go back, take what we thought we knew about Guilford Courthouse and the other battles in North Carolina, and actually expose them to light and see what stands up and what doesn’t?
Howard: I think in America today, most people don’t — the Revolution is something far off in their memory. If they think about it, they only think about it on July 4, maybe with fireworks, the Washington Monument. And people seem to forget that there was a war — and it was the longest war we had fought up until Vietnam and then the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts — and that a lot of Americans died to build this country. Without their sacrifice at places such as Guilford, we wouldn’t have the country we live in today. And I think it’s best that we go back and we honor them and just try to remember them. But that we do it right, that we do away with the mythology and we remember the true story, because 99 percent of the time, the true story is better than any myth.
Kokai: Do you have a sense that people here in North Carolina, where this battle was fought, know much about this battle?
Howard: Unfortunately, no. I think that it’s a heavily traveled battlefield. A lot of people use it for recreational use, and that’s wonderful. And I think that some of the guys who fought there would be happy with that, that people got something good out of it. Having said that, most people don’t know what actually took place there. They might if they go to the visitor’s center and watch the film. But I think it’s important that we educate the people in North Carolina continually, to teach them more about their heritage and their past and how amazing it actually was.
Kokai: Outside the context of Guilford Courthouse itself, what are some things that people should know about the Revolution in North Carolina that they don’t know?
Howard: That it covered all parts of the state. Cherokee Expedition went as far as Cherokee County and Macon County. There was fighting up there, fighting in the northeastern part of the state. Wilmington was taken by the British and held. The governor of North Carolina was captured during the war. There was privateering, which would be private men-of-war — basically licensed piracy off of our coast. We were the leading privateer base in the entire 13 colonies and, by 1781, the South. So these are things that — it would be nice if people knew more about the war.
Kokai: People may know about Bunker Hill up in Massachusetts. They know about Yorktown in Virginia. How important was North Carolina?
Howard: I think it’s central. Because, although we weren’t necessarily a major colony for economics, the fighting that takes place in North Carolina is what drives the British to Yorktown. It confirmed for the British that the Carolinas could not be held, despite the fact that at one point during the war, the British had held every single port city in the entire 13 colonies. They still couldn’t control the interior, and North Carolina is a prime example of that. They had Wilmington but they could not take the interior. And it’s very important to the war effort. Unfortunately, 19th-century histories of the Revolution were mostly written in New England, and so the stories of the fighting in New England … really take the most of what was written. The problem with that is that, after 1778, the majority of the fighting was done in the South.
Kokai: It sounds like you have a lot of ground still to cover. Are there other projects in the works that we should be looking forward to?
Howard: [I am] currently working on another monograph with my co-author, Dr. Lawrence Babits, that follows [Nathanael] Greene’s army back into South Carolina in the later half of 1781, and also a tour guide of Revolutionary War North Carolina sites that we’re putting together right now.