• Lawrence E. Babits and Joshua B. Howard, Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009, 300 pages, $30.00.
Victories in the South concluded the American Revolution, but they are rarely acknowledged by historians. Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard do not follow that narrative, and their accurate and readable history of this seminal battle offers a significant service to readers.
In a typical American history, British Gen. Charles Cornwallis skirmishes through the South and then goes to Yorktown, where George Washington takes his surrender. Actually, he had already been defeated in three of the bloodiest battles of the Revolution.
The real history is that, stalemated at New York, in 1780 British commander Sir Henry Clinton sent a strong force by sea under Cornwallis to land at Charleston and drive northward through the Carolinas and Virginia to link with his army at New York for final victory. Cornwallis sent a fourth of his army along the foothills of the Blue Ridge under the command of Maj. Patrick Ferguson, who issued an ultimatum to the mountain people to surrender or he would burn their farms and hang their leaders. These patriots, “Whigs,” from western North Carolina and western Virginia militias, were experienced Indian fighters, crack shots with their long rifles. They pursued him for 200 miles, caught up with him at Kings Mountain, killed him and killed or captured his Tory troops in an hour-long battle on Oct. 7, 1780. This was the Revolution’s turning point, because it showed that the British could be beaten, drying up British recruiting.
On Jan. 17, 1781, at Cowpens combination of continental line troops and militiamen under Gen. Daniel Morgan defeated a British force commanded by cavalry Col. Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton. Another quarter of Cornwallis’s army was killed or captured through brilliant tactics and bravery.
To seize the advantage, Washington sent Gen. Nathaniel Greene, hero of Saratoga, to command American troops in the South. The new commander’s strategy was to exhaust Cornwallis’ army by heading for the Dan River in Virginia, staying just out of reach. The British army had to forage for food in areas already picked clean by the Americans. Greene then zigzagged through piedmont North Carolina.
The American general met Cornwallis in battle at Guilford Courthouse (the site lies in modern Greensboro). Previous accounts of the battle were sketchy and inaccurate, so Babits and Howard did painstaking research from pension documents, personal accounts, and muster rolls. The authors give a thorough description of the battle. The positions of the units on the field as time progressed are noted and related to each other. There are statements by the officers and soldiers, informed speculation about what the soldiers could see and how they reacted.
Recent histories have claimed that Cornwallis was said to have had his artillery fire into a melee of Americans and British to break it up and save his army. The authors point out that the uncorroborated story came from an officer who was far from the location and conclude that it did not happen.
After two-and-a-half hours of bloody fighting, the Americans withdrew from the field in good order. The British technically were victorious, but British Gen. William Phillips later said it was “that sort of victory which ruins an army.” Cornwallis departed for Wilmington and finally Yorktown to reprovision and wait for relief. Instead, Washington came south and finished off his army, a fraction of the one that had sailed from New York.
Babits and Howard also describe the subsequent lives and careers of the principal officers on both sides. For example, Cornwallis became governor-general of India; Tarleton was the only British officer not invited to dine with the Americans after the surrender at Yorktown; Greene had heavy debts from his guarantee for a military contractor so that the contractor could supply his army, but South Carolina and Georgia awarded him large tracts of land, some of which he sold to repay them; Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee fathered Civil War General Robert E. Lee. These are fragments of four of the life stories rounding out this excellent history.