Light-Horse Harry: A Biography of Washington’s Great Cavalryman, General Henry Lee (Heroes and Villains from American History)

by Noel B. Gerson

  The situation was a delicate one, and required great tact. A lieutenant colonel of the Regular Army who was also Chief of Cavalry in the South had more authority than a brigadier general of state militia, and the Continentals had learned to regard all militia with contempt. But a young man in his mid-twenties had to be careful in his handling a middle-aged eccentric who happened to be performing a vitally needed service for his country. General Greene authorized Harry to take precedence over Marion, in case of need, but urged him not to exercise his prerogative of command.

  The Legion set out at dawn the following morning, after a night’s rest as short as any spent on the march south. All baggage wagons and other encumbrances were left behind at Greene’s headquarters. “In accordance with Colonel Lee’s orders,” Harry much later wrote in his Memoirs, “each man carried his fair share of ball and powder, emergency supplies of hardtack and jerked beef, and provisions for the horses. Colonel Lee found it repugnant to common sense and common militarism for a light corps to expect to operate advantageously with even a single wagon.”

  The Legion moved cautiously but swiftly into the territory between the Pee Dee and Santee rivers, and Harry sent an officer ahead with a letter to Marion suggesting modes of conducting joint operations. The courier found Marion without too much difficulty, but the dour South Carolinian who daily drank several drams of vinegar and led a Spartan life was astonished by the appearance of a lieutenant who looked like a toy soldier on parade — or worse, like a British officer.

  Marion’s reply to the suggestion of conducting joint operations was vague. Although he didn’t decline the invitation in so many words, he didn’t accept, either, and after sending the Legion courier off with a hazy verbal message rather than a written communication, he vanished deeper into his swamp country.

  Harry’s first report to General Greene was guarded, but he made no attempt to hide his discouragement. He would approach Marion again at the first opportune moment, he said. Meanwhile he would continue to survey the area, and he urged Greene to march farther south. “Here,” he said, “are plenty of provisions and a direct centre to the crossroads. It is country well suited to the type of operations you contemplate.”

  His route “happened” to take him farther into the swamp country, and again he sent out couriers, requesting the privilege of a meeting with General Marion. The need for a show of courtesy to a fellow American prompted the unenthusiastic Marion to agree. The Legion and irregulars met in a valley at sundown one cold evening in mid-January, and each immediately bristled. The Continentals were disgusted by the shabby creatures with long, unkempt hair, ragged clothes and beards, and the guerrillas in linsey-woolsey looked coolly down their thin noses at the “toy soldiers.”

  Harry Lee and the brigadier general who was twice his age found an immediate rapport, however, to their mutual surprise. Harry’s son, Henry, Jr., writing years later in his definitive book, The Campaign of 1781 in the Carolinas, repeatedly stressed that his father and General Marion were always in accord and became fast friends. There is no positive evidence to the contrary and much to substantiate this view, in spite of rumors subsequently spread by men who had not served with either commander.

  The record of their joint achievements indicates that Harry Lee and Francis Marion understood each other and worked well together. There was much, to be sure, that drew them together. The first consideration was the desperate state of affairs that American men at arms faced in the Carolinas. Cornwallis, commanding a corps of ten thousand to fifteen thousand men — no one could be sure of the exact strength of his army — faced a force that at best could muster five thousand men, including irregulars. The British were supported by artillery and buoyed by cavalry; their quartermaster and ordnance officers supplied all their wants, both personal and military.

  It was essential that Americans work together. Francis Marion was a shrewd judge of men, and so was Harry Lee, who, in spite of his youth, had spent almost five years in command of troops. The Continental lieutenant colonel and the militia brigadier recognized kindred spirits in each other. Each was cautious, yet daring. Each held sound military views. Each was firmly in command of his own men, and each was blunt and honest.

  The longer Harry and Marion talked, the more they warmed to each other. They shared a beefsteak, eaten on a trencher of bread, and soon found themselves planning a joint operation. Marion even offered the Virginian a nip of his vinegar, and Harry manfully drank it without shuddering, which won him a high place in Marion’s esteem.

  They decided their first joint venture should be an attack on the British garrison at Georgetown, South Carolina, a fort located in the delta below the mouth of the Pee Dee River. The seeming impregnability of the post attracted both men. The fort was protected on the east by boulders and the tides of the Atlantic, and on the west by patrols sent out in strength by the garrison commander, a Redcoat colonel named Campbell.

  Marion knew of several chinks in the fort’s armor. On the northeast, where the post faced a bay, the terrain on the opposite shore was too swampy to permit patrols to operate too near the shore. Even more important, there were several small, heavily wooded islands that studded the bay and provided natural steppingstones to the Georgetown garrison. With a lack of foresight typical of British operations in the still-primitive New World, the Redcoats had neither established small sentry detachments on these islands nor erected defense works of any kind there.

  Harry and Marion were in complete agreement: Georgetown was ripe for a surprise attack. A simple plan was worked out. The Legion’s infantry would travel down the Pee Dee by boat, at night, and conceal themselves on the island nearest to the fort. The following night they would cross the water to the post in two separate units, and would launch a frontal attack on the “open” side of Georgetown, where the wharves were located. Meanwhile Harry’s cavalry and Marion’s irregulars, also mounted, would be waiting just past the line of sentry patrols at the rear of the fort, and would charge the instant they heard the Legion infantry open fire.

  The plan was submitted to General Greene, who approved it — with misgivings. The hardest task was that of obtaining boats for the enterprise, but Marion’s guerrillas were able to get their hands on virtually anything they wanted, and they borrowed a fleet of small craft, taking some without the owners’ knowledge or permission.

  The Legion infantry was placed under the command of Captain Pat Carnes, a cool-headed, dependable officer, and Captain Rudolph, who had served with such distinction at Paulus Hook, was made his deputy. The infantry sailed down the Pee Dee on schedule, and the horsemen followed at a slower pace, guided by volunteer civilians who lived in the area and were familiar with every tree, every patch of marsh in the deep woods.

  The attack was scheduled for midnight on the second night, but not until an hour later did the waiting cavalry hear the crack of musket fire. They charged, Marion’s men and Harry’s riding shoulder to shoulder, but the sound of fire died away before they reached Georgetown. When they raced through the streets to the log fort, they found Captain Carnes at the parade ground, with Captain Rudolph’s men stationed at the approaches to the fort. One prisoner had been taken — Colonel Campbell himself.

  The Redcoats had retired in haste to the fort at the first sounds of fire, and had barricaded themselves there. Now Harry and Marion were faced with the problem of what to do next. It hadn’t occurred to either to bring battering rams or other equipment to smash the walls of the fort, and they had no supplies for a protracted siege.

  What had begun as a glorious bid for victory ended on a sheepish note. The Americans withdrew up the Pee Dee, taking their one prisoner with them. The “Battle of Georgetown” had been a mockery, but in their embarrassment Harry and Marion tightened the bonds of their friendship. Both remembered the lessons they learned that chilly January night, and thereafter their joint enterprises were far better planned. The failure at Georgetown was the prelude to later successes.

  General Greene had far
more than Georgetown on his mind. Cornwallis was intending to invade North Carolina in force, and was using Tarleton to goad the Americans into making a stand. Greene, who was being reinforced slowly by Washington, wasn’t yet ready for a major battle, and was playing for time. He decided to retire slowly into Virginia behind a vanguard made up of Morgan’s riflemen, light infantry from Maryland and Delaware under the command of Colonel John E. Howard, a battalion of cavalry led by the able Lieutenant Colonel William Washington, and Harry’s Legion.

  Dan Morgan was given overall command of the screening force, but the American cause suffered a severe blow when he came down with an attack of arthritis that forced him to leave the field. The “light corps” was placed under the officer next in rank, Colonel Otho H. Williams of Maryland, who had been on active service since 1775, and was a dependable but uninspired leader.

  Lee’s Legion was given the difficult task of bringing up the rear of the light corps, which meant that he was expected to deflect or blunt every blow delivered by the enemy cavalry. On February 13, 1781, Lee’s Legion and Tarleton’s Legion had their first encounter near the town of Guilford Courthouse. The Americans, warned by a farmer that the enemy was making a wide sweep around a flank in an attempt to bring off a surprise, hid themselves in a patch of woods.

  An unarmed Yankee bugler boy, a lad of fourteen, had the misfortune to appear in the open and was instantly cut down by the Redcoats. Harry was so angered by the murder that he led his men in a ferocious charge, giving no quarter, and dispersed a force twice his strength, taking forty prisoners as well.

  A running engagement continued all day and far into the night. General Greene was taking the bulk of his army down a main road, hoping to pull back across the Dan River, and the light corps was under orders to slow the enemy advance at all costs. Lee’s Legion performed superbly. Harry’s infantry twice captured bridges over rain-swollen streams and, after the cavalry had crossed to the north, destroyed them. Harry and Tarleton constantly maneuvered for position, like two swordsmen feinting, and the two Legions were in plain sight of each other for hours at a time.

  Although within mutual musket range, neither wasted the ammunition. The stakes were too high, and both commanders were intent on their main tasks, Harry’s that of delaying the foe, Tarleton’s that of harassing his enemy.

  Late on the evening of February 13, Harry and Colonel Williams, who had dropped back and was riding with him, had a severe fright. Directly ahead they could see scores of campfires blazing. They had done everything in their power to delay the Redcoats, but if Greene had tarried too long, he would be compelled to fight a major engagement before the night ended.

  To their great relief, the two officers found the camp deserted. As they discovered soon afterward, Greene had abandoned it that morning. But Lord Cornwallis continued to advance, not knowing that Greene had now crossed the Dan to the relative safety of the far bank. The light corps moved to the rear more rapidly when Williams received word that the bulk of the army was safe, but Lee’s Legion remained behind to pick away at the British as long as possible.

  Not until dawn the following morning, after almost twenty-four consecutive hours in the saddle and on their feet, did the cavalry and infantrymen of Lee’s Legion finally cross the Dan and rejoin the rest of Greene’s army. During that long retreat they had eaten no food, drunk no water and had made no more than a handful of five-minute halts. Thanks to their protective cover, the Army of the South was safe, and Harry Lee had performed in a manner that would go down in military annals as a classic in the difficult maneuver of retreat. Every potential thrust had been parried, and hence prevented, and not one member of Greene’s main body had been injured or killed. Harry’s men had suffered two casualties, the bugler boy and a lieutenant who had been cut down in the day’s one hot action.

  Cornwallis now knew that the enemy screen was protected by a professional soldier of exceptional talents, and the self-confident Tarleton, who had heard rumors of Harry’s prowess but had refused to believe them, realized he had a foe worthy of his best efforts.

  For four days the Army of the South rested in Virginia, and Nathanael Greene pondered his future. He literally couldn’t afford to abandon North Carolina, and knew it. There were too many Loyalists in the state for comfort, and many would be certain to join Cornwallis or, at the very least, accept the new, liberal amnesty terms that the Crown was offering. There were fewer Loyalists in South Carolina and Georgia, but in those states, too, thousands of citizens would give up the fight and pledge their fealty to George III if the only American force in the entire region continued to huddle in Virginia.

  No matter how small his army, Greene concluded, he had to go back into North Carolina. But his dilemma was that with which so many American commanders before him had wrestled: How could he contain Cornwallis, yet refuse to fight in a decisive engagement until he obtained reinforcements?

  General Greene conceived a new plan, and dined at Harry’s Legion bivouac to discuss it with the lieutenant colonel on whom so much would depend. Greene had decided, he said, to recross the Dan into North Carolina, but would keep his army in the rugged western highlands, where the British would find marching too difficult and the settlers were fiercely partisan to the Patriot cause.

  But Cornwallis could not be allowed clear passage to the north across the eastern lowlands. His progress had to be slowed and, if possible, he had to be “teased” in a series of delaying actions that might even tempt him into marching to the hill country where the Army of the South could meet him on terms more favorable to the Americans.

  The delaying, or containing, action would be performed by a new corps, Greene had decided. Its head and striking arm would be Lee’s Legion, its body a tough brigade of South Carolina militia, a unit as well-disciplined as Continentals and commanded by an exceptionally able militia officer, Brigadier General Andrew Pickens.

  Harry unhesitatingly accepted the new assignment, even though the odds against him would be tremendous. He then accompanied Greene on a visit to the bivouac of General Pickens, who was frank to admit that the mission was a desperate one. But he, too, agreed; there was no real choice.

  While the two generals and Harry conferred over maps in Pickens’ tent, a Legion scout who had been a member of a small party that had remained in North Carolina to keep watch on the enemy, arrived with bad news. “Butcher” Tarleton was roaming through North Carolina enlisting Loyalist recruits to serve with Cornwallis, and his methods were effective, although sometimes crude. Farmers who refused to enlist were sometimes shot, and at the least their stores were looted and their homes, barns, and other outbuildings burned to the ground.

  Almost needless to say, Tarleton was enjoying great success, and the men he recruited were being subjected to British discipline, which meant that those who had enlisted to save their skins and property were executed if they tried to desert, and sent to hard-labor penal battalions in chains if they failed to respond to their new mode of living with enough enthusiasm.

  Obviously time had become a vital factor again, and the new corps recrossed the Dan at daybreak the next morning, in search of trouble and Tarleton.

  IX: DUEL OF THE LEGIONS

  Harry Lee and Andrew Pickens marched rapidly through the pine-covered hill country of North Carolina in search of Banastre Tarleton, and after several days learned from Patriot sympathizers that he was in the neighborhood. Scouts were sent ahead, and discovered that the Redcoat was leading a force of considerable size and strength. He had about two hundred cavalrymen, more than four hundred foot soldiers and an artillery battery of several brass cannon. As nearly as could be determined, he was operating alone, and was not merely leading a vanguard of Cornwallis’ main body.

  The Americans decided to attack, with Pickens on one flank, the Legion infantry under Harry in the center, and the cavalry on the other flank under the command of Rudolph, who was constantly rising higher in Harry’s esteem and had been given a brevet, or temporary, commission as
a major.

  To the intense disappointment of the Americans, Tarleton had just evacuated the farmhouse at which he had been making his headquarters. Two of his staff officers were still there, however, putting their papers in order, and were taken prisoner. These officers revealed, under questioning, that Tarleton intended to establish a new camp six miles to the east.

  The region was one in which Loyalist sentiments were strong, so Harry decided the corps should pose as part of Tarleton’s command, and Pickens agreed. In this remote backwoods area, many settlers literally were unable to distinguish the uniforms of one army from those of its foes. But, to be on the safe side and for the sake of window dressing, the two captured British officers were given conspicuous places in the line of march. Harry warned them that if they failed to play the roles assigned to them, they would be killed on the spot.

  After moving a mile or two toward Tarleton’s new bivouac, the vanguard, which Harry himself was leading, came across two young farmers who assumed they were Tarleton’s men and informed them they were leading four hundred recruits under a “Colonel” Pyle to join the British.

  Harry instantly declared that he was Tarleton, and asked that the Loyalists, who were about a mile away down a side road, present themselves for his congratulations and inspection. Then, hurriedly, he sent back word to General Pickens, requesting that the South Carolina militia conceal themselves in the woods to the left of the Loyalists. He proceeded to lead his Legion toward the spot, taking up a position on the right of the Loyalists.

  “Colonel” Pyle and his would-be British recruits were lined up at the side of the road, and Harry reviewed them, taking his time in order to enable Pickens to move into place. The deception was successful — until some of the Loyalists, themselves woodsmen, heard the South Carolinians in the brush behind them. They opened fire on a troop of the Legion commanded by one of Harry’s recently promoted officers, Captain Joseph Eggleston, whose grandson, Major General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, was to become one of General Robert E. Lee’s most valued and trusted subordinates.