THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION IN THE SOUTH
THE DISASTROUS CAROLINAS CAMPAIGN

To bring an end to the American Revolution the British sought consolidation of territory and support in the southern states. Charles Cornwallis returned to America in July, 1779, where he was to play a central role as British commander in the Southern Campaign. He had envisioned a three-pronged drive northward to overpower what he considered would be feeble resistance in North Carolina. He had ordered the capture of Wilmington, to be held as a port city through which he could receive supplies and also as a right wing protection of his own forces in their drive toward Charlotte and on to Hillsboro. And to the west he had dispatched Ferguson from Ninety-Six to move northwestward to enlist Tory supporters and subdue rebels. Cleared of resistance on the wings and in the rear, his Lordship planned to sweep through North Carolina and roll on into Virginia to end all American resistance to His Majesty's government.

That had been Cornwallis' plan. But now, hardly more than five weeks after he had left Camden, his grand strategy was a shambles. The capture of Wilmington would come too late to help Cornwallis. To the west Patrick Ferguson was dead and buried at Kings Mountain and his forces, regulars and Tories, were dead, wounded or captured.

The British left Charlotte in virtual panic; in their rush to leave the camp at Barnett's Mill they had abandoned some twenty wagons, a large quantity of clothing, many tents and other equipment, and a number of guns. They had heard that General William Lee Davidson had some 5,000 soldiers and was pursuing them; actually the brigadier general had hardly more than 300 men, but Davie with a part of Davidson's cavalry was harassing the fleeing Redcoats and the number of their pursuers must have seemed frightfully large. Cornwallis outdistanced his pursuers and withdrew to Winnsboro, where seventy miles south of Mecklenburg's pestiferous hornets he established headquarters.

On December 2 General Nathaniel Greene took command of the southern army. This force, numbered more than 1,100 militiamen and upward of a thousand Continentals, with some 400 under command of General Morgan. But with supplies running low in the vicinity of Charlotte, Greene decided to divide his forces and went with one group to the Cheraw region on the Pee Dee in South Carolina, where he made camp the day after Christmas. The other group, about 700, was sent toward Ninety-Six under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan.

Cornwallis, too, was on the move and he ordered “The Bloody Butcher of the Waxhaws”, Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, to engage Morgan. Morgan had been ordered forage and harass the British but avoid a fight. But Morgan listened to the men in the militia who had fought Tarleton before, and decided to disobey his orders by setting up a direct confrontation. On January 17th, at Cowpens, they made their stand. Morgan had complete confidence in the long range and accuracy of his Virginia riflemen. He knew of Tarleton's tendency for quick action and his disdain for the militia. He positioned his marksmen in the front, followed by the militia, with the regulars at the hilltop. After inflicting their damage, the first two units were to withdraw as soon as they were seriously threatened. This would invite a premature charge.

"Give me two shots," he asked the militia. As the British forces approached, with their backs turned to the British, the militia reloaded their muskets. When the British got close the militia unexpectedly turned and fired a second shot at point-blank range in their faces. Morgan gave the British cavalry a resounding defeat. In less than an hour, Tarleton's 1,076 men suffered 110 killed, and 830 captured. The captives included 200 wounded. Although Tarleton escaped, the Americans captured all his supplies and equipment, including the officers' slaves. Cornwallis had lost not only Tarleton's legion, but also his light infantry, which limited his speed of reaction for the rest of the campaign. Morgan's plan at Cowpens is widely considered to be one of the most successfully executed double envelopments in modern military history.

Lord Cornwallis’ carefully thought out southern campaign upon which he had embarked so hopefully was shattered never to be reshaped. The backbone of the British offensive against the South was broken.

The BATTLE OF COWAN’S FORD
Huntersville, North Carolina
February 1, 1781

AMERICAN GENERAL DANIEL MORGAN ARRIVES ON THE CATAWBA RIVER

Patriot General Daniel Morgan had little time to celebrate his spectacular victory over British Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781. Morgan quickly withdrew his men from the battlefield knowing that Lord Cornwallis, enraged at Tarleton’s humiliating defeat, would come after him with a vengeance; after all, Morgan held 600-800 of his soldiers prisoner. Morgan moved swiftly toward the northwest with Cornwallis in hot pursuit.

Morgan’s intention was to pivot east of Lincolnton and march toward Salisbury crossing the Catawba River. No British Army had ever traveled through this wilderness region of the Carolina’s before. Morgan hoped that his efforts would be aided by the local populace. He was right.

By 1781, the citizenry of the Carolina Piedmont had largely sided with the Patriot’s cause. The British Troops were mercilessly harassed at every opportunity as they chased Morgan. One of Cornwallis’s officers noted that “the counties of Mecklenburg and Rowan were the most rebellious in all of the American Colonies.” Cornwallis’s ranks steadily thinned as his men were lost through attrition, capture and/or desertion (numerous Hessian soldiers deserted and settled in Mecklenburg County).

As Cornwallis chased Morgan through the Carolina backcountry, the new commander of the American Southern Army, General Nathanael Greene, was busy making plans to reunite all the Patriot forces under his command in Salisbury. There, Greene wrote, he intended to improve upon Morgan’s victory at Cowpens and deliver the coup de grace to the British Army in the South calling it his “Fields of Glory.”

On January 23, 1781, Morgan arrived on the banks of the Catawba River and crossed at Sherrill’s Ford. The Virginia Militia troops were dispatched back to Virginia with the British prisoners in tow. Morgan ordered his men to secure the Catawba River’s fords and the militiamen spiritedly set to work felling trees to block roads and dammed the crossings with rocks and timber.

Two major public fords, Sherrill’s Ford and Beattie’s Ford, as well as the privately owned Cowan’s Ford, proved too wide to dam. Morgan decided to defend them with his best marksmen, some of the most expert long-riflemen in the Colonies.

Meanwhile, Cornwallis sent scouting parties ahead to reconnoiter the Catawba’s major crossings. Cornwallis’s intelligence indicated that Morgan had heavily fortified both Sherrill’s and Beattie’s Fords, but left Cowan’s Ford lightly defended.

The fords were important to both armies because they provided access to roads which led directly toward Rowan County’s largest city of Salisbury. From Salisbury, via the Great Wagon Road, the route northward into Virginia lay virtually undefended.

GENERAL WILLIAM LEE DAVIDSON JOINS FORCES WITH GENERAL MORGAN

Morgan dispatched orders from the Catawba River to General William Lee Davidson in Charlotte, NC requesting him to proceed to Beattie’s Ford to assist in its defense. Davidson, with newly recruited militia, set out from Charlotte on Beattie’s Ford Road and camped at least one night at Rural Retreat (now known as Rural Hill), the home of his cousin, Major John Davidson. Before General Davidson left Rural Retreat, Major John Davidson loaned his cousin his best and most trusted horse.

A Davidson family story has it that General Davidson first mounted the horse under an elm tree. An African-American who witnessed the event commented that it was a “bad omen” for the General to mount the horse under the tree’s low hanging branches. General Davidson waited at Beattie’s Ford for the arrival of Generals, Greene and Morgan, from Sherrill’s Ford. Greene had just arrived on January 30th from Hicks Creek, his “winter encampment” at Cheraw, SC.

Before leaving his encampment, Greene ordered his troops to break camp and rejoin him in Salisbury. General William Lee Davidson had ordered up the next detachment scheduled for active duty, but all of the men coming in were infantry. He needed horsemen in order to be kept informed of the now fast-moving British.

General Davidson offered to pay the normal three month stipend for six weeks service if militia would agree to furnish their firearms. Davidson reported to Morgan with 800 Militia that he had recruited. The cavalry began patrolling the territory west of the Catawba River looking for signs of the British advance.

THE FIRST SIGHTING OF THE BRITISH ARMY AS GENERAL GREENE ARRIVES FOR COUNCIL OF WAR

General Cornwallis was frustrated that General Morgan had escaped. Cornwallis gave orders while at Ramseur’s Mill (i.e. Lincolnton) to burn the supply wagons and the baggage.

By incredible coincidence, the initial sighting of the approaching British Army coincided with the American Military Officers Council of War meeting at Beattie’s Ford.

General Greene arrived shortly after 2 P.M. to confer with Generals Morgan and Davidson, Lt. Col. Washington, Maj. Graham as well as other officers and militiamen. While the officers met, Redcoats were spotted assembling on the opposite bank of the river, and Cornwallis was seen observing the officer’s meeting with his spyglass.

Then Cornwallis withdrew into the cover of the woods. However, the Patriot forces at Beattie’s Ford still saw half of Cornwallis’s force of 3,000 men and a number of field artillery cannon across the river. Soon thereafter, Patriot cavalry arrived in camp with captured British soldiers. Several confessed of Cornwallis plan to divide his troops and attempt two crossings of the Catawba. One prisoner told them that Cornwallis would attempt to cross at Cowan’s Ford.

General Greene was suspicious and gave orders to divide the 1,000 militiamen under Morgan and Davidson’s command at Beattie’s Ford into three units comprised of approximately three hundred men each. Greene used the remaining 100 men to patrol the Catawba during the night to detect possible British movement to cross the river under the cover of darkness.

As the short January day turned to dusk, the Patriot militiamen were on the move.

THE MILITIA GUARD THE CATAWBA

The first unit of 300 militiamen and cavalry left with General Davidson and headed for Cowan’s Ford to stand ready to contest a crossing there (Captain Joseph Graham commanded the cavalry at Cowan’s Ford). The second unit of 300 militiamen received orders to remain at Beattie’s Ford, and General Morgan remained with them either until the next morning or until sometime in the night. The third unit of 300 militiamen and cavalry headed for Sherrill’s Ford where they were to be under the command of General Greene (Lt. Colonel William Washington commanded the cavalry).

Greene, now overall commander of the Southern American forces, decided to place himself at Sherrill’s Ford. Cornwallis gambled that he could catch Morgan, in an effort to move more quickly, had chosen to burn their personal baggage and some of their wagons at Ramseur’s Mill. Their most direct route from Lincolnton toward Salisbury was across Sherrill’s Ford and, therefore, the most likely point of attack. But by feinting crossings at several fords, Cornwallis hoped to divide and weaken Greene’s forces, and thus overwhelm them. Greene, however, had no intention of allowing the militia forces to be caught in such a trap.

Greene’s desire was for the militia to provide a delaying action only. Once Cornwallis’s men overcame the fords’ defenses and crossed the river, Greene had issued standing orders for the militia to beat a hasty retreat and join him at David Carr’s house on the road to Salisbury. In the meantime, the main American army was en route from Cheraw, S.C. to Salisbury. Once amassed with his entire force, Greene hoped to pounce on the overzealous Cornwallis, and defeat the fatigued and battered British army. According to Greene, Cornwallis would soon taste defeat on the “Fields of Glory”.

BOTH ARMIES MOVE TOWARD COWAN’S FORD UNDER COVER OF NIGHT

General Davidson

Early in the evening of January 31, 1781, General Davidson’s troops arrived on the eastern bank of Cowan’s Ford and prepared for an assault from Cornwallis’s cavalry.

Davidson and Greene both assumed that Cornwallis’s local Tory guides were certain to advise Cornwallis that the ford’s wagon crossing, though it was an easy, straight shot across the river, was simply too deep for mounted troopers to cross effectively. Therefore, the British cavalry would be directed to the island crossing, or the shallow-water horse ford which ran diagonally at about a 25 degree angle across the river to an island. Once the island was reached, it was a short passage to the landing on the eastern shore. More than likely, Green and Davidson thought the horse ford crossing would be the route by which the British would come.

General Davidson chose a hilltop close to the river to make his stand. The position afforded a broad view of the shallow-water horse ford. Should the British cross there, Davidson’s expert long riflemen would be at a great advantage; their long rifles’ were deadly accurate up to 300 yards. Also, the British Cavalry would be totally exposed while crossing the 400 to 500 yards of river and would not be in a united battle formation to return any musket fire, nor could they quickly get their horses out of the water for a saber charge. As a precautionary measure, Lieutenant Thomas Davidson and 25 militiamen were placed as lookouts at the deep-water wagon crossing.

Lord Cornwallis

At 1 A.M. on February 1, 1781, Cornwallis ordered the other half of his army to begin marching through the wilderness toward Cowan’s Ford. The night march, however, proved difficult, and a cannon became mired in the soft mud of a swamp. The ensuing rear guard of the column, which included Tarleton’s cavalry, was delayed trying to free it. They quickly became separated from the column’s forward half.

Not to have his plans undone, Cornwallis ordered Brigadier-General Charles O’Hara to push on with the forward half of the column which consisted of the Foot Guards and the von Bose Regiments. Come hell or high water, Cornwallis intended to strike at Cowan’s Ford at sunrise.

In the pre-dawn hours February 1, the forward half of the column came in sight of the camp fires of Davidson’s militia camped on the bank across the river at the horse ford.

Brigadier –General Charles O’Hara:    
the Commander of the British Troops at the Battle of Cowan’s Ford

Cornwallis’s battle plan included a diversionary action. Precisely at dawn, Lieutenant Colonel James Webster would initiate a vigorous cannonade of the American camp at Beattie’s Ford. Meanwhile, the second half of the British army under the command of Brigadier-General O’Hara would attack Cowan’s Ford.

When Cornwallis and O’Hara reached the lonely wagon crossing, it stood in stark contrast to the visible camp fires of Davidson’s militia encamped above the horse ford.

With their cavalry delayed, Cornwallis and O’Hara quickly decided that they did not need to continue on to the horse crossing. Lt. Col. Tarleton later wrote of the incident that O’Hara hastily ordered the 1,200 troops of the Foot Guards and the von Bose regiments into a column, and directed them to move straight across the river at the wagon ford as soon as Webster’s cannonade began. Greene and Davidson had not counted on an infantry attack.

Lieutenant-Colonel Webster’s cannon opened up on Beattie’s Ford in the early morning. The firing became so intense that it was stated that it could be heard nearly twenty-five miles away.           

General O’Hara ordered his infantry to fire their muskets, then fix bayonets, and hoist their muskets and cartridge-boxes on their shoulders to keep them from getting wet. Each soldier carried a long stick in his right hand which he set on the river bottom out in front of him to lend support against the pressing flow of the rapid river current.

British troops began their advance across the river.

THE BATTLE OF COWAN’S FORD BEGINS

General Joseph Graham, in his North Carolina Revolutionary History, explains the British crossing of the Catawba: “The command of the front was committed to Colonel Hall, of the Guards, who had for a guide Frederick Hager, who lived within two miles of [Cowan’s Ford].” The soldiers “entered the river by section of four (grouped together to support one another), and took the wagon ford.”

“The morning was cloudy, and a fog hung over the water, so that Lieutenant Thomas Davidson’s sentinel could not see them until they were one hundred yards in the river. He instantly fired on them, which roused the guard, who kept up the fire, but the enemy continued to advance.

At the first alarm, those under General Davidson paraded at the horse ford, and (Captain Joseph) Graham’s cavalry was ordered to move up briskly, to assist the picket, but by the time they got there, and tied their horses and came up in line to the high bank above the ford, in front of the column, it was within fifty yards of the eastern shore”.

The dismounted American cavalry troops “took steady and deliberate aim and fired. The effect was visible. The first three ranks looked thinned, and they halted. Colonel Hall was the first man who appeared on horseback, behind (the advanced guard of soldiers) about one hundred yards. Colonel Hall “came pressing up their right flank on the lower side, and was distinctly heard giving orders, but we could not hear what they were.

The British “column again got in motion, and kept on” coming directly toward the American militiamen. Thomas Barnett, a dismounted cavalry rifleman “reloaded, aimed at Colonel Hall; at the flash of the gun both rider and horse went under the water, and rose down the stream. It appeared that the horse had gone over the man. Two or three soldiers caught him and raised him on the upper side. The enemy kept steadily on, not withstanding our fire was well maintained.”

As each group of four British soldiers “reached the shore, they dropped their poles and brought their muskets and cartridge boxes to their proper places, faced to the left, and moved up the narrow strip of ground to make room for the succeeding section, which moved on in the same manner. By the time the front rank got twenty or thirty steps up the river, they had loaded their pieces and began to fire up the bank.

The Americans fell a few steps back, and when ready to fire would advance to the summit of the hill, twenty-five or thirty steps from the enemy, and they devolved up the river bank.

The British “gained the ford and just commenced firing when General Davidson arrived from the horse ford with the infantry, and finding his cavalry on the ground he chose to occupy, and afraid that Tarleton’s British Legion would attack them in the rear, he ordered Graham’s men to mount and go up the ridge and form two hundred yards behind. As they moved off, the infantry took their places, and the firing was brisk on both sides.”

The British “moved steadily forward, their fire increasing, until their left reached the mouth of the branch, upwards of 30 poles (approximately 500 feet) from the ford. The ravine was too steep to pass. The rear of their infantry and front of their cavalry was about the middle of the river when the bugle sounded on their left, on which their fire slackened and nearly ceased” while they were loading their pieces. “In about a minute it sounded again, when their whole line from the ford branch advanced up the bank, with their arms at a trail. The hill was in many places so steep that they had to pull up by the bushes. General Davidson, finding them advancing with loaded arms, ordered a fighting retreat for one hundred yards.

As the British gained the point of the ridge, “their fire was so heavy that he had to fall back about fifty steps beyond the ground assigned for formation; he then ordered his men to take to the trees and had them arranged to renew the battle. The enemy was advancing slowly in line, and firing was scattered, when General Davidson was pierced by a ball and fell dead from his horse.”

His infantry retreated in disorder from the contest. They dispersed in small squads, and took through the thickets in order to evade the enemy’s cavalry. Captain Joseph Graham’s cavalry, which was formed about one hundred yards in the rear of where Davidson fell, moved off in order.

Major David Wilson and two others found the General’s body in the evening, carried him off in the night, and buried him at Hopewell Church.

Casualties

Reports of the number of Americans and British casualties vary. In A History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781, Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton wrote that roughly 40 militiamen and officers, including General W.L. Davidson, were killed and wounded while the British suffered a small number of killed, including Lieutenant-Colonel Hall, and thirty-six wounded. Cornwallis’s estimation of casualties agreed with that of Tarleton.

According to American accounts there were over 100 British casualties but an unknown number of American casualties.

Who Killed General Davidson?

General Davidson’s horse had been loaned to him by his cousin, Major John Davidson of Rural Retreat (present day Rural Hill).  When the horse returned rider less to Rural Retreat, people feared the worst. Richard Barry and Major David Wilson and three other men searched the battlefield for casualties and found the body of General Davidson. General Davidson’s body was secretly buried at Hopewell Presbyterian Church, located on Beatties Ford Road in Huntersville, N.C.           

The question remains to this day, who shot General Davidson?  The fatal musket ball found in the general’s body was not the type of ball used in a Brown Bess musket, typically used by British soldiers. Suspicion immediately fell upon Frederick Hager, a local Loyalist who had guided the British to Cowan’s Ford. It was known that he owned a rifle, which could have fired such a musket ball. Hager later fled to Tennessee and then moved on to the Arkansas River country with eight or ten others, all said to have been “fugitives from justice” when members of the Davidson family moved into Tennessee some years later. Davidson’s death was a tragic blow to the American Patriots.

Patriot musket fire greeted the British as they crossed the river, slowing down