In the Hurricane's Eye

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Greene’s monthlong study of North Carolina’s geography was already proving to be of immense value. If he had his way, there would not be another dramatic battle at the edge of a flooded river. This was to be a war fought in bits and pieces.

  * * *

  • • •

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, events unfolded almost exactly as Greene had anticipated. While a small portion of the British army unleashed an artillery barrage at the militiamen on the east side of Beatty’s Ford—a cannonade that soon had every inhabitant within a twenty-five-mile radius on the run—Cornwallis led the rest of his force down the right bank of the river to Cowan’s Ford. It was a windless, foggy morning, and as the sound of the cannons rolled down “the river like repeated peals of thunder,” the British troops assembled on the edge of the mist-shrouded shore. Ahead of them, the river was a seething torrent of brown, debris-filled water. To prevent being swept off their feet in the current, the soldiers held eight-foot poles in their right hands. In addition to the knapsacks on their backs and the leather cartridge boxes tied around their necks (to keep the gunpowder from getting wet), they carried their bayonet-equipped muskets over their left shoulders. They could see the campfires of the American militiamen on the opposite shore about four hundred yards away. They had to march through the rushing, breast-high water knowing that a steep, overhanging bank was between them and the enemy.

  Sergeant Roger Lamb remembered how “Lord Cornwallis, according to his usual manner, dashed first into the river, mounted on a very fine spirited horse.” As wave after wave of troops followed in his wake, Cornwallis led them into the deepest part of the river. About halfway across, the enemy began to fire. “Amidst these dreadful oppositions,” Lamb remembered, “we still urged through this rapid stream, striving with every effort to gain the opposite shore.” At one point the horse of General Charles O’Hara, commander of the elite Brigade of Guards, lost its footing on the rocky bottom. For forty yards, “O’Hara’s horse rolled with him down the current.” According to Rebel militiaman Joseph Graham, the bodies of several British soldiers were later “found down the river some distance, lodged in fish traps and in the brush about the banks on rocks.”

  For the most part, however, “our divisions waded on,” Lamb remembered, “in a cool intrepid manner.” Although Cornwallis’s horse was shot at least once during the crossing, the animal managed to stay alive until it reached the water’s edge, where it collapsed in a quivering heap. By then the British regulars had reached the shallows and were firing at the militiamen. As more and more regulars climbed the bank, resorting in some instances to pulling themselves up by bushes and the roots of trees, the militiamen’s confidence quickly began to erode—especially when their leader, General Davidson, was felled by a musket ball to the heart. Soon the militiamen were running for their lives.

  Years later, Nicholas Gosnell, a loyalist serving in the British army, recalled Cornwallis’s dramatic arrival on the east bank of the Catawba. The British soldiers were, in Gosnell’s colorful words, “a snortin’, an hollerin’ and a drownin’ until his Lordship reached the . . . bank; the Rebels made straight shirt tails and all was silent—then I tell you his Lordship . . . when he rose the bank he was the best dog in the hunt, and not a Rebel to be seen.”

  * * *

  • • •

  BY THE TIME CORNWALLIS’S ARMY assembled on shore, the surrounding roads were crowded with militiamen and families on the run. “Hitching up their teams in great haste,” Graham wrote, “and packing up their most valuable goods and some means of subsistence, the men who were not in service and women and children abandoned their homes and drove off in different directions.” By the middle of the day, hundreds of refugees, along with dozens of militiamen who’d been posted at the two fords, had gathered at Torrence’s Tavern, about ten miles to the east. Torrence’s was dangerously close to the British army, but this mixture of citizens and soldiers were so cold and tired that they judged the stop worth the risk. Wagons piled high with mattresses and other household goods jammed the road as pails of whiskey were passed around in the rain.

  Into this chaotic scene charged Banastre Tarleton and the British cavalry, crying out “Remember Cowpens!” “The militia fled in every direction,” Graham remembered. “Those who were on horseback and kept the roads were pursued about half a mile. Ten were killed, of whom several were old men, unarmed, who had come there in the general alarm, and a few were wounded, all with sabers. . . . On the return of the dragoons from the pursuit, they made great destruction of the property in the wagons . . . ; ripped up beds and strewed the feathers, until the lane was covered with them. Everything else they could destroy was used in the same manner.” Soon Torrence’s Tavern and all the nearby buildings were in flames.

  Through this panicked, shattered land, over roads the color of rain-washed blood, Lord Cornwallis marched in pursuit of Nathanael Greene.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, February 2, Morgan’s men arrived at Salisbury, which served as the state’s supply depot for the Continental army. With Cornwallis hot on their heels and unsure of what progress Huger and the main part of the army had made, Greene now realized he must come up with an alternative place to rendezvous. Between the two American armies was the Yadkin River. At Trading Ford, a day’s march to the north, an advance party from the quartermaster’s department was already assembling a small fleet of boats to transport the Americans across the river, which was, like the Catawba before it, on the rise. If they could get Morgan’s army across the Yadkin by the next night, the swollen river would once again serve as a barrier against the British, especially since Quartermaster Edward Carrington would make certain there was not a boat to be found on the west side of the river. That would give the two American armies the opportunity to meet at a small hamlet to the north called Guilford Courthouse, on the outskirts of modern-day Greensboro.

  That night, Greene sent off letters not only to Huger but to political and military leaders throughout the region in an effort to rally the militia at Guilford Courthouse. After Davidson’s death at Cowan’s Ford and the rout of the militia at Torrence’s Tavern, local opposition to the British army had virtually disappeared. If Greene had any hope of defeating Lord Cornwallis, he needed to more than double the size of his army with an infusion of at least two thousand militiamen. Until then, he must get Morgan and his army across the Yadkin.

  The following day proved to be yet another brutal slog through the mud, made all the more harrowing by the torrential rain and the knowledge that the British, led by the Guards under General O’Hara, were gaining on them. Late that night, they arrived at Trading Ford. The deluge had raised the water level to a dangerous height and the raging current made it extremely dangerous to navigate a boat across the river. But Greene knew they had no choice but to proceed with the crossing.

  By the time O’Hara and his Guards arrived at the banks of the Yadkin at midnight, after a march of twenty miles in knee-deep mud, almost all of Morgan’s army had crossed. In fact, O’Hara could see the boats secured on the opposite shore. His frustrations only increased when his men were fired upon by a small group of North Carolina militia that included Captain Graham. After two or three volleys, the militiamen scampered off to the south, eventually crossing the river in canoes they’d concealed in the haw and persimmon bushes at the water’s edge. When Cornwallis arrived at Trading Ford several hours later, he ordered the artillery to fire a few ineffectual blasts at the American army on the eastern shore, but the truth was all too apparent. Even though he had burned his army’s baggage in a desperate bid to catch Morgan’s army before it crossed the Yadkin, the Americans had eluded the British general’s grasp.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON HIS ARRIVAL AT Guilford Courthouse on February 7, Greene realized that even after the union with Huger’s portion of the army (which staggered into camp the following da
y), he did not have enough men to face Cornwallis. Making matters worse, Daniel Morgan could no longer go on. For weeks he had been tormented by sciatica. But now he had a new complaint—hemorrhoids. “To add to my misfortunes,” he wrote to Greene, “I am violently attacked with the piles, so that I can scarcely sit upon my horse. This is the first time that I ever experienced this disorder, and from the idea I had of it, sincerely prayed that I might never know what it was.” He must leave the army and find “some safe retreat, and try to recover.”

  It was a terrible loss. “Great generals are scarce,” Greene lamented. “There are few Morgans to be found.” No one was better at motivating the undisciplined ranks of the militia than Daniel Morgan, whose back was still crisscrossed by the hundreds of lashes he’d suffered at the hands of a British officer while serving as a wagoner during the Seven Years’ War. The night before the Battle of Cowpens, he had walked among his troops and assured them that he “would crack his whip over Ben [Tarleton] in the morning.” To his men he was “the Old Wagoner”—a battle-scarred veteran who looked and talked a lot like them. Greene, on the other hand, was more comfortable studying military treatises and maps than swapping tales around the campfire. He possessed an almost godlike ability to sort through the myriad details of feeding, equipping, and moving an army, but he lacked the common touch. He also shared with Washington an oft-repeated distrust of the militia. Both had watched in helpless anger as time and time again during battles in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, these “irregular troops” had bolted in fear just when they were needed most. But now, in North Carolina, Greene knew he needed the militia if he had any hope of facing Cornwallis in battle. And yet, without Morgan to inspire them, how would he get these farmers and frontiersmen to fight? The Old Wagoner would be dearly missed.

  On February 9, Greene held his second council of war. In attendance were Morgan (who would soon be headed home to Virginia), Huger, and Greene’s adjutant general, Otho Holland Williams, a thirty-one-year-old from Maryland. So far, the hoped-for influx of militiamen had not yet occurred. It was only a matter of time before Cornwallis, who had crossed the Yadkin to the north and was now securing food for his men among the Moravian communities clustered around Salem, resumed the chase.

  Greene hated to do it, but they must continue their retreat—all the way to the Dan River on the Virginia border. Once in that state, he could rebuild the army with reinforcements and equipment provided by General von Steuben and Governor Jefferson in Richmond. Then he would recross the river and go after Cornwallis.

  The easiest and closest place to cross the Dan was at Dix’s Ferry near modern Danville, Virginia, about seventy miles northeast of the Rebels’ current position. That, of course, was where Cornwallis assumed they’d cross. But Greene had found an alternative. About twenty miles downriver of Dix’s Ferry, near modern South Boston, Virginia, Quartermaster Carrington and his staff had located six boats. There, at two nearby ferry landings named Boyd’s and Irwin’s, they would attempt to cross the Dan.

  In an effort to conceal his intentions from Cornwallis, Greene created a separate seven-hundred-man flying army, under the command of Otho Williams, which included William Washington’s cavalry as well as the newly arrived legion under Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee. As Greene and the main army of over a thousand soldiers marched toward the downriver fords, Williams and his cavalry would stay to their left in hopes of convincing Cornwallis that Greene was headed upriver. At some point, of course, the British would realize their mistake and set out after the American army. That was when the decoy would become a shield, as Williams and his cavalry placed themselves between Greene and the ever advancing British. The tensest and most critical time would come at the end, after Greene’s army had forded the Dan, when the cavalry would have to find a way to cross the river without being overtaken by the hard-charging British vanguard under Banastre Tarleton.

  Morgan, Huger, and Williams agreed with Greene’s plan, and the next day the American army (minus Morgan) set out on what came to be known as the Race to the Dan.

  * * *

  • • •

  EVEN BEFORE THE RACE HAD BEGUN, Cornwallis wasted a day, if not more, on what proved to be a wild goose chase. Hoping to intercept Huger and the main portion of the army before they reached Guilford Courthouse, he pushed his army south, only to learn that Huger had already reunited with Greene and the entire force had left the rendezvous point. Once again, Cornwallis had underestimated the Americans, and he resumed the chase with a furious will.

  Over the course of the next four days, as Greene and his army marched toward Irwin’s and Boyd’s ferries, Otho Williams and his cavalry attempted to draw the attention of the British vanguard without becoming ensnared by it. The biggest threat to the American army existed at night, when it was feared Cornwallis might attempt a forced march that would place him between Williams and Greene, which would enable the British to attack the main portion of the American army without interference from Williams’s cavalry. To guard against the maneuver, half of Williams’s troops remained on duty each night, requiring that each man averaged only three hours of sleep a day. Finding the time and opportunity to feed themselves was also difficult. Every morning at three o’clock Williams roused his troopers, and after a brief ride to put some extra distance between themselves and the enemy, they stopped for their only meal of the day—a breakfast of cornmeal and bacon.

  Despite these precautions, Tarleton’s cavalry was able to catch the Americans by surprise in at least one instance, and skirmishes between the two armies were frequent and often bloody. However, as the days clicked past and exhaustion began to set in, the dragoons in the British vanguard, who were often in sight of Lee’s rearguard, lost much of their aggressiveness. “The demeanor of the hostile troops became so pacific,” Lee wrote, “that a spectator would have been led to consider them members of the same army.” Contributing to the passivity of the British was the knowledge that the Americans’ horses were larger and healthier than their own. As with the copper-bottomed ships of the British navy, the American cavalry enjoyed a significant speed advantage that allowed them to hover in the face of the British column with impunity. “Only when a defile or a water course crossed our route,” Lee remembered, “did the enemy exhibit any indication to cut off our rear. . . . [Soon, however,] their useless efforts were gradually discontinued.”

  The speed advantage did not apply to Greene’s twelve hundred foot soldiers, many of whom had worn out their shoes after more than 250 miles of almost continuous marching. They were tired, but they were also hungry, and one of Greene’s greatest challenges was finding a way to provide his army with food. Every night between eleven and twelve, while just about everyone around them was lost to sleep, Greene and his commissary general, William Davie, a North Carolinian graduate of what is now Princeton University, spread out a map and analyzed “the expected movements of the enemy and the positions proposed to be taken by our own army.” With his finger on the map, Greene would “observe,” Davie remembered, “‘if the enemy move in this direction, I must take position there. Can subsidence be procured?’” More often than not, the answer was no. And yet, somehow, Greene, with Davie’s help, always seemed to find a way to solve the problem. “His mind naturally of the most firm texture,” Davie wrote, “and rich in its own resources never despaired for a moment under these appalling circumstances.”

  By this time, Cornwallis had begun to realize where Greene was headed. It was now an all-out sprint for the Dan, with fewer than thirty miles between the vanguard of Cornwallis’s army and the rear of Greene’s, with Williams’s cavalry in between. Greene depended on Williams for information about the enemy, and the two officers exchanged several letters a day. Early on February 13, Greene wrote to Williams from Moore’s Tavern, about twenty-five miles from the ferry crossings. It was evident that “the enemy intended to push us in crossing the river.” That said, Williams must not take any unnecessa
ry risks. “You have the flower of the army,” Greene reminded him. “[D]on’t expose the men too much, lest our situation should grow more critical.”

  Williams estimated that Cornwallis’s soldiers had advanced to within just twenty-two miles of Greene’s army. “Rely on it, my dear sir,” Williams wrote to Greene, “it is possible for you to be overtaken before you can cross the Dan even if you had 20 boats.” Since Greene had only six watercraft and had marched only eleven miles the previous day, Williams estimated it would take him at least another two days to reach and cross the river. “In less time than that,” he warned, “we will be driven into your camp or I must risk the troops I’ve the honor to command and in doing that I risk everything.”

  That night, Henry Lee became convinced their worst fears were about to be realized. Up ahead they saw the “numerous fires” of an encampment. “Not a doubt was entertained,” he wrote, “that the descried camp was Greene’s.” The time had come, he and his officers believed, that their “self-sacrifice could alone give a chance of escape to the main body.” As it so happened, Williams had just learned of Greene’s actual position, about eleven miles to the northeast. The fires must have been left by Greene’s army when they abandoned the campsite the previous morning. The time for the dreaded last stand had not yet arrived.

  There was no denying, however, that the British were now terrifyingly close to Greene’s army. At four the following morning Greene confessed in a letter to Otho Williams that he was preparing for “the worst.” He’d slept only four hours in the last four days and was convinced a British officer had been in his camp “the night before last.” Had they come all this way only to be overtaken almost within sight of the Dan?