Washington's Immortals

by Patrick K. O'Donnell

  Lee ambushed leading elements of Banastre Tarleton’s force and described charging into them. “The enemy was crushed on the first charge: most of them were killed or prostrated; and the residue, with their captain attempted to escape.” For Lee the ambush was personal; earlier they had killed Lee’s unarmed teenage bugler in cold blood.

  With orders to administer “Tarleton’s quarter” Lee’s men tracked down the British captain and several of his dragoons. After cutting him on the face, neck, and shoulders with their sabers, the Americans took the British cavalry officer captive. Raging because his men had not killed the captives on the spot, Lee then prepared to hang the officer for slaying the American bugler. The Brit pleaded for his life, insisting that his men were intoxicated and disobeyed his orders when they killed the boy.

  Angrily, Lee threw a pencil and piece of paper into the British officer’s hand and ordered him to “note on paper whatever he might wish to make known to his friends,” before his execution.

  The lynching never took place. More of Tarleton’s men arrived on the scene, forcing Lee and his men to flee.

  Tarleton and Cornwallis trailed hot on their heels. It was an exhausting and grueling march, and Greene admitted that in the past four days, he “had not slept four hours.” But Williams’s decoy was working.

  The crossing of the Haw was bittersweet, though. Greene reported, “North Carolina militia have all deserted us, except about 80 men. Majors and captains are among the deserters.” He cautioned Williams, “You have the flower of the army. Don’t expose the men too much, lest our situation should grow more critical.”

  As Greene neared the ford on the Dan with the bulk of his army, Williams direly noted that the British were close on his tail, but he was willing to sacrifice himself to enable the army to cross. “My [Dear] General, At Sun Down, the Enemy were only 22 miles from you and may be in motion or will most probably be by 3 o’ Clock in the morning,” wrote Williams. “Their intelligence is good. They maneuvered us from our Strong position . . . and then they moved, with great rapidity. . . . I’m confident we may remain in the State, but whither it will not be at the risk of our Light Corps whither we shall not be wasted by continual fatigue you have to determine. What do you make of that?”

  Washington and Lee continued their desperate rear guard. “More than once the legion of Tarleton and the van of O’Hara were within musket shot.” Never far behind, “[the British army] was in full view of the troops of Lee as the latter ascended the eminence, on whose summit they entered the great road to Irwin’s Ferry.”

  Racing down “deep and broken” roads encrusted with frost, “the light troops resumed their march with alacrity.” Relentlessly, Tarleton and the 33rd Regiment of Foot pushed to close the gap between them and Williams’s Marylanders. The two armies covered the final forty miles of road to Irwin’s Ferry with just minutes separating them. With victory in sight, the British closed in on Williams’s troops and hoped to pin their backs against the Dan and destroy them.

  On February 14, at 2:00 p.m., an express message from Greene to Williams arrived, relaying glorious news: “The greater part of our wagons are over and the troops are crossing. The stage is clear.” In a series of brilliant actions, Greene had moved his exhausted troops across the Dan. Williams relayed the dispatch to his men, who let out a cheer and “became renovated in strength and agility; so powerful is the influence of the mind over the body.” With a second wind, the exhausted men covered forty miles in twenty hours of straight forced marching.

  Williams’s light corps arrived at Irwin’s Ferry on February 14 and began crossing under torchlight. Boats carried the Marylanders and other men across while the horses swam alongside.

  Several hours later, the British army arrived. The race was over. Tarleton offered a rare compliment: “Every measure of the Americans, during their march from the Catawba to Virginia was judiciously designed and vigorously executed.” Having survived a race against time and death, Marylander William Beatty summed up the march: “Notwithstanding the Enemies Superior Strength & the Close pursuit they gave us Our Retreat Was So Well Conducted that We lost nothing in it but Some extent of [territory].”

  Behind the safety of the Dan, Greene went about rebuilding his army with new reinforcements largely made up of militiamen. He prepared to recross the Dan and do battle with Cornwallis in North Carolina at a small crossroads town that he had surveyed several weeks earlier.

  Chapter 37

  Guilford Courthouse—

  “A Complicated Scene

  of Horror and Distress”

  On March 15, 1781, Light Horse Harry Lee rode out to the front of the first line of Patriot soliders assembled near the courthouse in Guilford County, North Carolina, in present-day Greensboro. Lee appeared “in a great rage for battle,” as he brandished his sword, still bloodied from an earlier skirmish with Banastre Tarleton’s legion. The twenty-five-year-old cavalry leader’s rousing battle cry reverberated throughout the American ranks: “My brave boys, your lands, your lives and your country depend on your conduct this day—I have given Tarleton hell this morning, and I will give him more of it before night.”

  Soon the sound of fifes and Highlander pipes carried across the light breeze that accompanied Lee’s words. Forming the front line, Robert Kirkwood’s Delaware Blues, militia, and cavalry—all together nearly a thousand strong—stared across the rain-soaked, recently plowed cornfield at the “scarlet uniforms, burnished armor, and gay banners floating in the breeze” as Cornwallis’s army assembled in formation over four hundred yards in front of them. On the Ides of March, March 15, 1781, in the damp, cold morning air, the Americans took their carefully plotted positions in the defense and prepared for what proved to be one of the most decisive battles of the war.

  Continental artillery began the battle by firing into the British ranks. The Redcoats answered: they quickly unlimbered several six-pounders and thrust them to the front of the British line. The men felt and heard the ominous thunder of cannon. Lee shouted, “You hear damnation roaring over all these woods, and after all they are no more than we.” He implored his men, noting that “it would be sufficient if they would stand to make two fires.”

  As Lee spoke these words, he rode into position on the southern flank. Behind him lay two additional lines of defense backstopped by the elite 1st Maryland, modeled after Morgan’s ingenious Cowpens defense in depth, or “collapsing box” defense, designed to bleed the advancing army as it approached each line.

  Nathanael Greene had spent only about a week on the north side of the Dan River. After gaining additional troops, he recrossed with about 4,440 men—including the army’s backbone, the elite Maryland and Delaware Continentals. He intended to pick a fight with Cornwallis. “We marched yesterday to look for Cornwallis. . . . We are now strong enough.”

  The Rhode Islander faced challenges of his own, similar to those faced by Gates eight months before. Unreliable militia made up nearly half his troops. In a blunt letter, Daniel Morgan had summed up Greene’s chances: “If [the militia] fight, you will beat Cornwallis; if not, he will beat you, and perhaps cut your regulars to pieces, which will be losing all our hopes.” He further advised, “Put the rifleman on the flanks, under enterprising officers who are acquainted with that kind of fighting and put the militia in the center with some picked troops in the rear, with orders to shoot down the first man who runs.”

  Greene knew the field of battle. Weeks earlier, he had walked the grounds of Guilford Courthouse for hours; the topography made it an ideal killing ground. Cornwallis would have to approach from the west by moving across an open field. With flanking difficult, the British would largely have to push down the main road that ran through the mile-long battlefield. A ditch and densely wooded ground covered with oak and conifer trees shouldered the main thoroughfare on both sides. Moving northeast, the British would have to fight across an open vale. The courthouse sat in cleared groun
d on top of a precipitous slope—an ideal defensive position.

  Greene devised a defense in depth based on Morgan’s advice and the terrain. He placed his least experienced troops, the North Carolina militia, front and center on his first line in front of the open field behind a fence. Positioned on its right flank were 110 of Robert Kirkwood’s seasoned Delaware Continentals, as well as eighty-six of William Washington’s dragoons. On the opposite flank stood Light Horse Harry Lee, his cavalry, and two hundred Virginia riflemen, who were veterans of Kings Mountain. The men had orders to fire two shots and withdraw past the second line of defense, the Virginia militia. After piercing the first line, the British would need to fight through three hundred yards of dense brush and gullies to the second line. More than five hundred yards behind the second line on the eastern edge of a vale lay the Marylanders and the rest of the attached Delaware Regiment. Virginia Continentals further bolstered this third line. After the Redcoats cleared the woods, they would have to cross the vale and charge the Continentals, who were in position on a slight rise near the courthouse.

  After all the hardship and fruitless weeks of chasing Greene to the Dan, Cornwallis’s army was ragged, hungry, and nearly out of supply. When Cornwallis shed most of his supplies and equipment to make his entire army a light corps, he relied on foraging in the Carolina countryside. But North Carolina had been picked clean by the two armies. His troops ran low on provisions, forage for the horses (the equivalent of gasoline for modern armies), and powder. Only a decisive victory would make the unbelievable shared sacrifice worth the cost. At Guilford, Greene had thrown down the gauntlet. Twelve miles separated the two armies. If Cornwallis didn’t take up the challenge, he would have to fall back to Wilmington for resupply.

  On March 15 around noon, the artillery from both sides began their duel. Casualties were light in the twenty-minute bombardment, yet the solid cannon shot could be devastating. One North Carolina militiaman wrote that one of his unit’s men was “killed by the last cannonball, supposed to be from a six-pounder thrown from the British artillery. . . . [The] ball struck him in the head, as he was resting on one knee to keep himself steady, which made his posture coincide with the parabolic curve of the descending ball, it tore out the spine the whole length of the body.”

  As soon as the guns went silent, Cornwallis ordered his army forward. In a red line that stretched nearly a mile, the British advanced. After pushing through some underbrush and woods, the Redcoats entered the muddy field and headed toward the North Carolina militiamen behind the rail fence. Moving at a fast trot, the British charged toward the Americans with fixed bayonets. Sergeant Roger Lamb, a British soldier with the 23rd Regiment of Foot, recalled, “[We were] in excellent order in a smart run. . . . When [we] arrived within 40 yards of the enemy’s line it was perceived that their whole line had their arms presented, and resting on a rail fence. . . . They were taking aim with the nicest precision.”

  Elements of the British horse headed forward at full gallop. Their “armor which was burnished very bright [caused such] a flash of light to be thrown back on the American horses, as they approached, that it frightened them and caused a momentary disorder.” When the British drew near, the Americans opened up. The volley was “most galling and destructive, causing one half of the Highlanders dropt on the spot.”

  One North Carolina militiaman described the carnage: “After they delivered their fire, which was a deliberate one, with their rifles, the part of the British line at which they were aimed look like the scattering stalks of a wheat field, when the harvest man has passed over it with his cradle.”

  The fire stunned the disciplined British regulars. “At this awful moment . . . a general pause took place; both parties surveyed each other with a most anxious suspense.”

  In a display of intrepid leadership, British Lieutenant Colonel James Webster ended the hesitation, shouting, “Come on, my brave Fuzileers[!]”

  Inspired by Webster’s words, the Royal Welsch Fusiliers surged forward. As they closed to within yards of the rail fence, it was now bayonet time, and the American militia didn’t want any part of it. Before being overrun, some of the citizen-soldiers fired their two shots. Others fired one—or not any at all—and then broke into a run toward the Virginians behind them, dropping weapons and canteens. The stampede toward the second line, as at Cowpens, opened up a hole, allowing the panic-stricken militiamen to retreat to the rear of the battlefield. One officer described the rout: “[The men] broke off without firing a single gun and dispersed like a flock of sheep frightened by dogs.”

  Conversely, another participant noted the valor of some of the men: “Some made such haste in retreat as to bring reproach upon themselves as deficient in bravery, while their neighbors behaved like heroes.”

  As the British broke through the first line, the American flanks stubbornly held. The riflemen hit the British with enfilading fire, slowing their advance. Holding out as long as possible, Kirkwood and the others fired multiple deadly volleys before retreating in good order. Fighting tree to tree, Kirkwood’s men and the others on the flanks, including Washington’s and Lee’s troops, fell back toward the third line, where the Marylanders were waiting. The protracted fighting withdrawal took the lives of many British and Hessians. Delaware Continental William Seymour recalled, “Riflemen and musketry behaved with great bravery, killing and wounding great numbers of the enemy.”

  Bloodied and hungry, the British and their Hessian allies tramped through dense woodland. Pushing through the thick and tangled vegetation between two farmers’ fields and fighting through the flankers, Cornwallis’s men covered three hundred more bloody yards. There they hit the second line, manned by the Virginians. Combat deteriorated to the squad and platoon level. Sharp skirmishes flared amid the trees, gullies, and rugged terrain of the battlefield. Many of the firefights became intense. One Virginian claimed his men “fired away fifteen or eighteen rounds, & some, twenty rounds per man.” Colonel Otho Holland Williams, now in overall command of both the Maryland regiments, recalled the Virginians’ stand: “[They] continued their opposition with such firmness . . . during which time the roar of musketry and the cracking of rifles were almost perpetual and as heavy as I have ever heard.”

  The British officer corps took a beating. A musket ball pierced Brigadier General Charles O’Hara through the thigh, yet he still led his men onward. Looking around at the thinned ranks, Tarleton claimed, “All [the] officers were wounded.”

  The Virginians put up such a stout defense that the British advance stalled. After having had two horses shot out from under him, Cornwallis personally interceded and valiantly moved to the front of the line. British Sergeant Roger Lamb remembered the scene:

  I saw Lord Cornwallis riding across clear ground. His Lordship was mounted on a dragoon’s horse (his own having been shot), the saddlebags were under the creature’s belly, which much retarded his progress, owing to the vast quantity of underwood that was spread over the ground; his Lordship was evidently unconscious of the danger. I immediately laid hold of the bridle of his horse and turned his head. I then mentioned to him, that if his Lordship pursued in the same direction, he would in a few moments have been surrounded by the enemy, and, perhaps cut to pieces or captured. I continued to run alongside the horse, keeping the bridle in my hand, until his Lordship, gained the 23rd Regiment, which was at that time drawn up in the skirt of the woods.

  It took nearly an hour and a half from the start of the battle for the British to reach the Marylanders in the third line. John Eager Howard, second in command of the 1st Maryland Regiment, saw the British emerge from the tree line and survey the position of the Continentals: “The first [Maryland] regiment under Gunby was formed in a hollow, in the wood, and to the right [west] of the cleared ground about the Courthouse the Virginia brigade under Genl. Huger were to our right. The second [Maryland] regiment was at some distance to the left of the first in the clear ground, with its left f
lank thrown back as to form a line almost at right angles [to the] 1st regt.”

  As the British emerged from the woods and entered the vale in front of third line, Greene was feeling optimistic about his prospects; his best troops, including the Marylanders, stood rested and waiting. He was “flattering himself with a happy conclusion, passing along the line exhorting his troops to give the finishing blow.”

  With bayonets gleaming in the sunlight that shone through the clouds on that blustery March day, about six hundred of Cornwallis’s bloodied men re-formed and looked upon the Marylanders. Spotting several American artillery pieces, the British charged across the open field toward the green men of the 2nd Maryland. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Ford, one of the original members of Smallwood’s Battalion, directly commanded the 2nd, which was composed largely of raw recruits with a sprinkling of veteran officers.

  Confusion immediately descended within the ranks of the inexperienced troops as Ford ordered them to maneuver and face the British advance, led by the wounded Brigadier General Charles O’Hara and Colonel James Stuart. One American officer described how the commander of the 2nd Maryland attempted to position his men: “Ford ordered a charge that proceeded some distance.”

  But not all the men moved when ordered. Otho Holland Williams, Ford’s immediate superior in charge of the Maryland Brigade, explained, “The Second has but 8 comm’d officer to 6 comp’ys and has a large portion of State troops [militia]. I can give no better reason why that regiment refused to charge when it was ordered.” The 2nd suffered from a deficiency of officers in the lower ranks. Drawn from levies all around the state of Maryland, the group didn’t share the strong bonds of community or the years of experience of the 1st Maryland. Williams countermanded Ford’s order to charge after he saw their confusion and reordered the line to face the British onslaught.