Remembering the Battle of Cowpens

JANUARY 17th 1781

Major General, Sir Charles 1st Marquesses Cornwallis, relentlessly pursued A rag-tag American army of only about 2,000 men across South Carolina.

Brigadier General Daniel Morgan commanded the Americans and spent months maneuvering while raising, motivating, and training, our army.

 

If Lord Cornwallis was the quintessential titled Englishman, Morgan in contrast was a rough and tumble American, much like the men he commanded. Morgan lacked the high birth, or fine Education of his English adversary.

Morgan had built a good business before the war driving wagons. Think of him as an 18 wheel trucking company of the 1700’s. He was old by the standards of the day and in very poor health. None of which prevented him from being a brilliant military commander of the first order.

Morgan knew he had to quit retreating, turn at some point, and stand up to the redcoats of the British Regular army. Actually some of Cornwallis’ troops under Lt. Colonel Bannister Tarleton wore green uniform coats. Adding to the confusion, so did some of Morgan’s American militia.

Morgan had to do two things. He did both brilliantly.

First, Morgan picked the time and place he would fight allowing his enemy to come to him. He picked a place not far from where I live – Cowpens, South Carolina.

Morgan knew American militia troops had broken and ran when we were defeated at Camden. Every regular officer before Daniel Morgan had tried to command and use militia as if they were regulars, usually with bad results.

Regular soldiers were drilled for years. They practiced standing in close formation and firing volleys on command. They were also equipped with muskets fitted with bayonets almost two feet long and razor sharp.

Our militia had little or no training, no uniforms, and carried their own rifles they had used to hunt. Not a bayonet among them. It was not hard to understand why they were considered unreliable and often broke and ran.

The night before the battle of Cowpens, Daniel Morgan did something so brilliant every officer commanding militia afterwards would marvel nobody thought of it before.

Morgan went through the militia camps and spoke to each man in small groups. Morgan explained he would put his militia in front of his regular units. He asked them to fire just two rounds before they retreated. Morgan did not expect them to stand in front of British bayonets and die.

Then they were to retreat in an orderly manner – not retreat in a route – and fall in behind his regular troops. That plan worked beautifully and on the morning of January 17th 1781 the ragged American volunteer militia gave a solid military defeat to the British regular army.

Lord Cornwallis left South Carolina never to return. A few months later his army took another drubbing at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, technically a British victory but both armies were bloodied.

Cornwallis would go on a few more months later to another Defeat—at Yorktown, Virginia. Effectively ending the war.

Pause today and reflect that 239 years ago on this date, our ancestors defeated the British regular army at Cowpens, a major turning point in the long bloody war that earned us our independence as a nation.

 

Dean Allen is a decorated Vietnam veteran and book author.