Southern War

The 1776 Battle of Fort Sullivan with Walt Young

Rangers William and Adrian are joined by Ranger Walt Young from Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park to discuss the 1776 Battle of Fort Sullivan, also known as the Defense of Sullivan's Island. This Patriot victory was the first time the British navy had been defeated by the Americans and would give birth not only to some South Carolina iconography, but a special holiday known as "Carolina Day." --- TRANSCRIPT: --- [Violin Music] William: Hey everyone and welcome to Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian, from Ninety Six National Historic Site. William: Together we will explore some of the well-known, and not so well-known, stories from the American Revolution here in the American South. Time to dive in! [Musket shot] William: So today we're joined by Walt Young from Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. Thanks so much for joining us, Walt. Walter: Absolutely and I'm very happy to be here to talk about the Battle of Sullivan's Island. William: This is exciting. For those who are unfamiliar, this is one of those first big patriot victories in the American Revolution in the South, where you see the British Navy involved; really excited to dive into this. But before we get into our story about the Battle of Sullivans Island and Fort Sullivan, let's talk about you, Walt. So, tell us a little bit more about yourself and your experience there at Fort Sumter in Fort Moultrie. Walter: Yes indeed. So, I have been a Park Ranger for parts of seven years in total with the National Park Service and I'm on year two with Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie. So in addition to talking about the beginning of the Civil War, we have a lot of Revolutionary War history here in Charleston, particularly on Sullivan's Island. And I'm excited to talk about that. And I've learned more about it over the last two years and have been happy to learn about the kind of kind of the challenges facing ordinary Charlestonians, as well as what this famous battle would have would have entailed. William: And that's something I was kind of curious about because when most people hear about places like Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park, they're going to kind of be more familiar maybe with the Fort Sumter aspect with the American Civil War of the 1860s. Do you find it challenging to kind of make visitors realize and understand the layers of history that you have there at the forts? Walter: To some extent, yes. Uh, definitely people know what they're coming for more with Fort Sumter, as you, as you guess. But when I, when people walk into Fort Moultrie every day, I have like kind of three or four big points that I try and run through with them, including the Revolutionary War battle and in addition to the Civil War history. But it's definitely, it's definitely a challenge to kind of narrow down how much you're talking about as opposed to wanting to get everything at the same time, which is tempting for me as a Ranger, but is maybe learning about stuff in bite size pieces is how most of the public learns. Willaim: Giving drinks from a straw instead of a fire hose, right? Walter: Yes. And yes, the fire hose can be tempting, and I think my park does a good job at making me slow down and make, and having people understand it in a more understandable way. William: Very cool. So to kind of start us off, we've been mentioning Charleston a little bit. So that is the location of this fort, of this action, but specifically looking at Fort Sullivan, can you tell us a little bit more about where is that located? Not only now, but how would this area this location have been known in 1776? Walter: All right, so Fort Moultrie is near the western end of Sullivans Island, so if you're visualizing Charleston, even in an audio format without a map in front of you, picture the peninsula of Charleston and then picture an island southeast of that at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. This is Sullivans island. It had been named after a local basically gadfly named Florence O'Sullivan many years before the revolution. Fort Moultrie is going to be at a point near the western end of this island where it can control the entrance into Charleston Harbor, and that's very important for today's story that it is not in the city, but it's at the entrance point to protect the city. Today you can come to this site as well. You just won't be seeing the original Fort Sullivan. You'll be seeing a Fort basically on an overlapping footprint that was built in 1809. So, it's the same about place 3 miles plus away from Charleston on Sullivans Island. William: So we talked a little bit about how this can control the entrance to the harbor. Is that the only reason that this is being built here? Kind of what is the event, what is the reason leading up to the construction and then defense of the Fort in the summer of 1776? Walter: Well, in the year and a half before this, uh Charleston has begun to be a center of revolutionary activity. So, at the time it is the capital of South Carolina, which so it's a governmental seat of power that both the colonists and the British are going to want to hold. And in the years before the Revolution, like many other places, it had protests over the Stamp Act and Tea act. It had a little Charleston tea party. Seriously, although, I think they took their tea home instead of throwing it in the harbor. Um, but instead of uh, after Lexington and conquered, and what we consider the start of the American Revolution, there are gonna be kind of mini revolutions happening all up and down the American coastline in different areas. And South Carolina is gonna be one of those areas. I mean, you have a one of your parks up near Ninety Six National Historic Site. You've got you've got a battle there in late ‘75 and there's a real question over whether South Carolina could become a potentially independent state. Here in Charleston we have a Provincial Congress that is the governing body of the colony, and it will adopt its own constitution in March of 1776. So that is before the nationwide Declaration of Independence, South Carolina has made a move that would indicate that it could be an independent, maybe a country, maybe a new state, we don't really know yet. But that is going to be vital to whether or not there's going to be a revolution here or not. And the British are trying to make sure that there's not. So, their goal in sending a large fleet down this way in early 1776 is to establish bases in Charleston and elsewhere and recruit some Southern Loyalists to fight alongside them. So, they think we can take back Charleston, we can hit the heart of the revolutionary fervor here in South Carolina, and then we can take advantage of the of the Loyalist population elsewhere in order to have a successful campaign here down South. One of the people along with them on this voyage is gonna be the former royal governor of the state, uh William Campbell, who is going to say uh, be quoted in a letter that “Every rebellious measure which has been adopted in this part of the continent originated in Charlestown… it is the Fountainhead from whence all the violence flows.” So, if we can take Charleston, say the British, then we can lock down the most rebellious area in the South and then we can start taking places where people agree with us from there. William: That's a great quote from the governor. I love that. Walter: Mm-hmm William: So the fleet is sailing South. What do we know about the history of the Fort? Like had there previously been any fortifications attempted out there on Sullivans Island to control the harbor or is this the first time that there's being something built? Walter: There had not really been fortifications before there on Sullivan's Island, and one thing I neglected to mention in the section about what Sullivan's Island is, is that the main governmental function it had been used for before this is unfortunately quarantine houses for largely victims of the transatlantic slave trade. Umm, so up until late 1775, you've got people in huge numbers being brought into South Carolina on against their will on the transatlantic slave trade and think of Ellis Island in New York as a kind of quarantine site for immigrants who want to come here. This is an importation site for immigrants who might not want to come through here and might be carrying a lot of nasty diseases. So, there was nothing, there was only those buildings here uh, until late 1775. And they actually get destroyed in late 1775. So, they're, uh, the first kind of colonial activity here is going to be the like, a group of enslaved workers trying to basically get to that island and seems weird that they would be running toward a quarantine site. But they're hoping that the British the British ships can pick them up in late ‘75, and the colonists will want to one prevent the British from making a landing here in late ‘75 and two for any of them get those enslaved workers back. So, they are going to do prevent that from happening and then establish a foothold on that island. After that has happened, the colonists will now have Sullivan's Island rather than the British, and they can start using it as a site for uh, a site for building a fort. And like I mentioned earlier, it's a strategically important site on the way into the harbor. So, the colonists are gonna want to start building a fort there, and they're gonna do so beginning in January of 1776. They're authorized by the local legislature. They're under the command of a man named William Moultrie. So, you'll hear this sometimes referred to as Fort Moultrie. He didn't name it after himself at that time, but he is the first commander of the Fort and they will start working in 177-, January 1776, with work from both colonists, militia men and enslaved workers. Willaim: Thank you for sharing all that, the role that this island had and the layers of history there. So super glad you included that. Walter: Yeah, the, I mean, it's a very sad story, but it's, I mean, for millions of people, we estimate that hundreds of thousands came in on the slave trade to Charleston specifically. So yeah, if we don't talk about that we're leaving out a huge portion of what makes this island important. William: So you've introduced already are one of the big players here with Colonel William Moultrie and the location and the reason of building the fortification. Can you tell us some other kind of key players who are gonna be involved in this story and what is going to be built? What are they going to construct with Fort Sullivan? Walter: Yep. So, a couple, couple of the other key players on the Patriots side besides William Moultrie are gonna include a man named William Thomson, but he's also known for his nickname of Danger Thomson. So, he want that guy on your side in the battle. He's gonna be largely commanding Patriot forces on the opposite end of Sullivan's Island, and we'll get to that, why that's important in a few minutes. Another Patriot who's going to be interesting, interesting part of the story is a man named Charles Lee, who is from, uh, coming down from the Continental Army. And he's basically gonna be the advisor from the Continental Army to the defense of the city. We're gonna talk about he's a controversial character, so we'll talk about his opinions on the fort in a few minutes. On the British side, we've got Henry Clinton, who as many listeners will know as one of the foremost British generals of the revolution and commanding the naval forces is going to be a man named Admiral Peter Parker, not Spiderman. And I can prove it because he has one of those aristocratic British wigs. He does not look like Spiderman. Umm, but he is going to be commanding the British fleet to try and get into this harbor. So colonists and enslaved workers will begin building in January, and they're gonna have a couple of building materials that are going to be crucial to the success of this fort. The main structure is going to be Palmetto logs. So the Palmetto trees that are commonly found on coastal islands here in South Carolina are gonna be the wood for this fort. You've also got a natural adhesive in vast quantities on the beach in sand. Umm, so it's Palmetto log and sand fort to hold it together and it'll be under construction, it's partially finished five months in by the time the British are about to show up and attack. It's not worth noting that Charles Lee, the Continental advisor to the to the Patriots here, is gonna think that this fort is horrible. He's gonna look around, and he's gonna say that this is a slaughter pen in the making, and he's gonna recommend that the Patriots abandon this strategic location and just move back to downtown Charleston and focus on defending the bottom of the city. Whether his, whether or not his plan would have been the more successful uh, I think will be evidenced as we move on through the program. But there are some people in very high places with serious doubts about whether this fort is gonna be able to successfully defend. William: And that brings us right up to the moment of action here. What is going to happen? When will this unfinished slaughter pen be tested? Why was the fort’s defense so successful? Walter: So a couple reasons. The British are gonna show up at the beginning of the month of June 1776, and they are going to end up putting their plans into action in the later part of the month, primarily on the day June 28th, 1776. So I always ask my visitors and I can ask you, since we're here, um, who has home field advantage in this conflict? Is it gonna be the British or the colonists? William: The British! It is going to be a coastal naval action and Britannia rules the waves. Walter: That is an interesting perspective, but I would go for the colonists because they know the specific inlets around here, whereas the British have primarily good naval power just in general. So, the British are gonna have to plan for knowing the specific terrain entering this harbor, and they're gonna make a couple of plans for attacking this fort. Plan #1A is to get ships in through the main part of the harbor to go from the main shipping channel of Charleston Harbor, which is just south of Sullivans Island, past the unfinished fort, take it out, and then get into the city of Charleston and conquer that. So that's plan 1A. I would say Plan 1B is gonna be actually a land attack, so they are gonna land forces over on what we call Long Island. Nowadays we call it Isle of Palms for tourists and Airbnb purposes. But Long Island is gonna be an island up from Sullivans. And if we if the Brits can hit the Fort with artillery from the sea and then make a land attack and land on the northern end of the island and get, hit the unfinished fort from the back, then they can squeeze it and they can win the battle that way they think. Out of those two ideas, many of them do you think work? William: Well, I mean when you're looking at our history and we kind of know that we win the battle trying to trying to forget about that, I think both of these have a lot of merits. Like you said, with your home court advantage, of course, the British maybe don't know all the inlets, so maybe that's gonna throw a problem into the naval assault. But you know you have the British Navy landing troops elsewhere during the war, successfully landing troops. So I'm trying to forget that I know the history of it. Walter: Oh-huh. William: Let's go with the the land assault is going to be successful. Walter: Yeah, there's a, and there's a decent case to be made that they had, they had reason to believe that it could be successful going in, but the answer ultimately is surprisingly gonna be zero. So, the British are gonna make some strategic error and intelligence errors. One of them is that they think that Breach Inlet, which connects these two islands or separates them rather, is shallow and easier to cross, and that does not end up being the case. They are going to run into a 7-foot deep inlet, even at low tide, which is gonna be very difficult to cross and they're gonna have to try a boat landing. They are gonna be turned back by that colonial force under William Danger Thomson at that end of the island. So that plan is not going to play a major part in the fighting at Fort, Fort Sullivan itself. And there, that force has basically taken out of the battle. Problem #2 they're gonna come across is that they think that this channel is going to be fairly deep and wide, about 20 feet deep at is deepest, which is correct, but they run into the problem that is not nearly as wide as they think, and so not of their nine warships they're trying to sail in the harbor, three of them will run aground on the future site of Fort Sumter, which has not been built yet but is then just a sandbar. So they are going to run aground and be basically taken out of the battle. The remaining six will not make a move to move toward Charleston very quickly. Instead, they are focusing all their fire basically sitting in front of Fort Sullivan and firing on it for the better part of the day of June 28th. They have, the British have, about 262 cannons on their ships and the colonists inside the Fort have 31, which is more than a 9 to 1 ratio. Umm. And yet, by the end of the battle, another another thing that will prove pretty important is the building materials of these vessels versus the building materials of the Fort. The spongy Palmetto logs will manage to withstand a lot of that British attack, whereas even facing far fewer numbers of bullets, the British, with their more brittle wooden ships, better for seafaring, will take a lot more damage and their ships are gonna be pretty cut up by the end of the battle. Uh, ultimately, I'd say that it's a combination of British, maybe strategic mistakes and the colonists better structural materials that help the colonists win a very unexpected victory. William: Now when I was looking into a little bit about this, this story, isn't it some kind of crazy ratio, not just you mentioned the, the dichotomy in the number of guns, but the number of shots fired. I came across somewhere that it was like for every one shot fired by the forts defenders, the British fired 50 at the fortification? Walter: I, I I have seen the 50 to one number as well and I I think it is pretty remarkable that because the colonists are basically holding back fire. It's mentioned throughout the battle and they are trying to not take shots until they know that they're gonna hit something. It does help that the British get their ships very close to the shoreline and are within pretty easy cannon range of the colonists, and so that the those colonial bullets do pack a punch as opposed to fairly ineffective British cannon fire. So yeah, so it's a truly remarkable victory in several ways. William: Now in another place I was reading that the that Commodore Parker was wanting to bring his fleet closer so that they would have more destructive energy, more momentum behind the shot to try and break through the palmettos. Walter: Mm-hmm. William: But it was actually his local pilot who was afraid of the shots coming from the Fort, both the cannon fire as well as the musket and rifle shot, and refused to direct or kind of guide the vessels closer and kept them farther away. Have you seen or come across this anywhere? Walter: I think well, I don't know about the later part of that story in that I haven't seen that specific note, but I would mention that the local pilot might have been onto something in that the harbor is not as wide as Parker believes. Like as you get closer to Sullivan's Island, it is not still 20 feet deep directly next to that island, it's basically it's a relatively narrow channel that sneaks through the harbor. The pilots, who largely would have been either enslaved African Americans, or now Freedman, are going to give Parker a few pieces of intelligence that it at some point it's kind of what you do with them, what you do with the piece of intelligence that matters. And I get the sense that he did not make full use of what intelligence resources he had. So I would say that he didn't come right, he came fairly close, but not right next to the fort, and if he had done that, he might have hit some sand on the opposite side as the place that he did. William: Now, do we have any idea about how close the vessels were when they were engaging with Fort Moultrie? Walter: We've seen the the channel is about from Moultrie to the place where the where the British ships would have run aground, that's only about a mile and the main channel is within about the quarter mile to three quarter mile range. So I'm gonna say that on average, they were about half a mile away from the colonists position, and that would have even then been well within cannon range to get a shot across. William: Interesting. Adrian: Alright, so what are some of the common questions or misconceptions that visitors might have when they hear the story of Fort Moultrie or when they visit you? Walter: So a couple of things that I would mention, one is some people will come and ask, well, where's the Palmetto log fort? Adrian: [laugh] Walter: And the answer is that it is no longer here. So some people come expecting it if they've heard a little bit about the battle and what they generally find is that the fort withstood those British cannonballs but didn't, did not survive a couple large hurricanes, which are a fact of life over here in the low country. Adrian: Yeah. Walter: So that the current fort that we've got today is an 1809 fort, that is the third version of Fort Moultrie and it is made out, it is largely a brick Fort. It would have been used starting in the pre-War of 1812 era and it's what fought in the Civil War and fought even in even in a bit in World War Two. So we have a little confusion about what our site is currently today preserving. I think there's also a like because of, for example the Palmetto flag, the Palmetto tree and Crescent Moon ending up on the South Carolina state flag, that has ended up being almost a misconception in itself, the Palmetto logs are the only reason that the Patriots won the battle. And I would say that the British conflicts in planning and consistent delays and ultimately their failed plans of attack are gonna make a significant difference in the colonists winning the battle. I think the colonists ended up having better planning than the British did and I think we can't put it all down to the structure, we have to give a little credit to to the people involved as well. Adrian: The British beat themselves in a way. Walter: Yes, I oh, I definitely think the British beat themselves. There's also occasional confusion between Sumter and Moultrie. Particular, most people going to Moultrie don't have this mistake, but, when some people come to Fort Sumter and ask about the first shots of the Civil War, I've, I've heard questions of ohh like ohh, so what role did the Palmetto logs play in the battel? And the answer that is that they didn't in that battle they played a role in the 1776 battle. So yeah, I I would say little things, but I I would say those are a few of the misconceptions. The, there is a cool kind of controversy over the South Carolina state flag that I could mention. I'm guessing you and your listeners are probably familiar with the flag with the dark blue background, the Palmetto tree in the middle and the Crescent in the corner. The Palmetto, the symbols are in fact because of the 1776 battle. The Palmetto Tree got added to many South Carolina related flags in the years after the Revolutionary War and was added to the state flag in 1861 by the Confederacy. But it's intended to be a symbol of resilience that the colonists had managed to turn back the British Royal Navy, using these Palmetto logs. The Crescent people argue about it all the time. Some people will say that it is a gorget like the neck brace that many medieval soldiers would have worn against potential attacks to their throat area. One of, one author, local author with a good book about William Moultrie has argued, and I tend to take this position as well, that it comes from Moultrie’s crest. That many, many second sons of families like himself would have had a crescent like symbol on their crest. And so the he argues that that's the main reason he did as well, and they would have flown that crescent during the battle here at Fort Sullivan. Adrian: Cool. Alright, so after the battle what happens, what's what does it affect, the American Revolution, especially in the South? Walter: So I would say a couple things. One in terms of how it impacts the South, it really damages the, it is a complete failure for the first major British attempt to take the southern colonies of the future U.S. And so it basically, like the war moves away from the South for the next couple of years really, you have a lot of, you still have Patriots versus Loyalist fighting in places like North Carolina and elsewhere, but much of the, the regular British Army is gonna have a limited presence in the South until, let's say late 1778 before they start to move towards Savannah and Charleston again. So, this really does buy Charleston a lease on life for being independent from the British for what’ll end up being another four years. Umm, a symbolic impact that it's gonna have, it does not cause this, but it lines up pretty well symbolically with our Declaration of Independence. So this is, this battle happens June 28th at 1776. That's just about a week before the final I’s are dotted and T's are crossed on the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Of course, William Moultrie couldn't have gotten on his mobile phone to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to say “we won the battle, you can finish writing now,” but they were able to get word up there by the time you get to early August, which is when everyone's finished signing the document. So it could have been a limited, it could have been a kind of morale defeat right around the time of the signing of the Declaration that, oh man, the British are able to start cutting into our territory and we haven't even begun being a country yet. But it ends up being a morale victory that the most powerful navy in the world has now been, at least today vanquished by some ragtag militias and their Palmetto logs. So I would say in addition to the strategic impact, it also does have a kind of morale impact on the rest of the country and the war effort. Adrian: Yeah, that's that's true. I haven't even thought about that. William: Now when it comes to kind of the complexity of the stories and some of the layers of the stories that you've been sharing with us, do you have one that is kind of your favorite topic or an untold or lesser-known story related to the fort’s defense? William: Alright, so my favorite, so my favorite story about 1776 in itself is a pretty well-known one around here, but it's about a man named Sergeant William Jasper who during the battle the, while the British don't do that much damage to the Palmetto logs, they do manage to hit with a cannonball the flagpole. Umm, the for the Patriot flag, which would have been that dark blue field and just the crescent. No tree on it. So as it topples to the ground, that is one kind of again, with morale, potential, morale boost for the British and potential morale downer for the Americans that their flag has been cut down. Sergeant William Jasper is going to save the flag. He is going to manage to get it back up and the way he does it is he ties the remnants of the flagpole to what we would call a sponge rammer or a sponge staff, which is what they usually would have been using to clean their cannons. So I think it's a moment of both creativity and bravery, getting up on ramparts with cannonballs potentially flying at you to manage, manage to get the flag back up and restore a moments victory to your own side and this to this battle. So I think that's my favorite inside that I also do want to touch on a little bit of Charleston during the war, the rest of the war. Because beyond this one day it's a very interesting place to live and I encourage people to learn more about it. I'll I'll mention a couple of books in a few minutes on what's life like in Charleston as the Revolution goes on. Early in the war, we already mentioned the late 1775 attempt to escape for many, many enslaved workers around the area and the uncomfortable truth kind of for us with our glad “we're a country today” with the uncomfortable truth for many of us is that for some people, the British might have been seen as a better option. That if you were enslaved in the area and your owner was a Patriot, then you might want to escape the British lines and potentially become free. And for some people, the British aren't gonna be all consistent on that regard. But they are going to honor that freedom for some people. So it's something we need to acknowledge. Later in the war, the British do, and here's the terrible secret after we've talked about this amazing victory for an hour, the British captured Charleston in 1780. Don't don't tell your listeners. Uh, because they managed to this time, get past the Fort and also have a land invasion from the north. So they learned their lesson from the first time, they focused on invading from the north of Charleston, up from Savannah, and they they managed to basically just send their fleet right by the Fort and not engage in battle. Once that happens, and once the British takeover Charleston for about their last two and a half, three years of the Revolution you've got, you've got a real devil's choice if you're an ordinary citizen of this city on who you think is gonna win the Revolution and who you're gonna tie your horse to, you've got the the maybe the worry of getting your land taken away if you pick the wrong side. So under British occupation, the patriots are gonna get their land taken away sometimes and under renewed patriot occupation the Loyalists are gonna get their land taken away. So you've really got a difficult choice in terms of what you need to do is stay on the right side of whoever's in charge now in Revolutionary War Charleston. Even get dueling loyalty oaths. The British by the end of the war, have a tension between recruiting some of these black soldiers and protecting the property of slave-owning Loyalists as well. So it really is a tangled web and an interesting topic for listeners to learn more about is what life would have been like in an occupied city here during the American Revolution. Adrian: Maybe we could do an episode on that sometime later, Will. William: Oh, no, we're definitely gonna circle back around for the uh, the 1780 siege story, the ‘82 siege. Walter: For sure, yeah. Adrian: Yeah. William: Uh. definitely. Walter: Mm-hum. William: So don't worry, Walt, we got you. Walter: We would love to be back on. Willam: We got you. We're coming back around. Adrian: Can you give us some sources that people can find in their libraries, find in the bookstores, somewhere to learn more? Walter: Sure. My personal favorite book about the this battle, and it's kind of a biography of a man who led it for the Americans, is called Crescent Moon Over Carolina by CL Bragg. So it it it's a it it's a good biography of William Moultrie himself and it goes into pretty good detail about this Battle of Sullivans Island. Definitely encourage people to read that. I've also been, there's a regarding the later war stuff, there's been a a report by a woman named Christina Butler, who, along with some others, wrote a book report on British-occupied Charleston from 1780 to 1782. Her husband, Nick Butler, is a historian at the Charleston County Public Library and runs an excellent podcast and blog called the Charleston Time Machine, which can give you some really good, like really boiled down summaries of some of these important Revolutionary War events and other stuff that was happening on Sullivans Island and beyond. You can also come to our programs at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. I don't know what time of year this will come out yet, but we hold an annual commemoration for Carolina Day, which is a weekend surrounding June 28th each year, Carolina Day is what people in South Carolina now call the date of the Battle of Sullivans Island and we are happy to talk about that. We have artillery and musket firing demonstrations and living historians and to let people understand what goes on here at this, what goes on here at this place in 1776. Adrian: Awesome [Outro Violin Music] Adrian: Alright, well, that's going to conclude another episode of a Southern War. A podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. To learn more about the American Revolution and our home National Park sites, check out www.nps.gov/NISI for me, Ranger Adrian at Ninety Six National Historic Site and www.nps.gov/OVVI for Ranger Will with the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, and you can check out www.nps.gov/FOSU for Fort Moultrie and Fort Sumter. Thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and we'll see you next time when we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. Alright, bye. William: Bye.

The 1781 Battle of Cowpens with Paul Cothren

Rangers William and Adrian are joined by Ranger Paul Cothren from Cowpens National Battlefield to discuss the 1781 Battle of Cowpens, a brilliant tactical Patriot victory that made a cow pasture famous. --- TRANSCRIPT: --- [Violin music] William: Hey everyone and welcome to Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian from Ninety Six National Historic Site. William: Together we will explore some of the well-known and not so known stories from the American Revolution here in the American South. Time to dive in. (Musket shot) William: So today our guest is Ranger Paul Cothren from Cowpens National Battlefield. Thanks for joining us, Paul. Paul: Uh, thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to it. William: Umm, so can you tell us a little bit about your background. Kind of how long have you been there at Cowpens? What brought you there and what do you enjoy about it? Paul: I came to Cowpens as a seasonal Park Ranger in the summer of 2019. I really enjoyed my time here and realized that I didn't know anything about the American Revolution like I thought I did. So the story of the Southern Campaign and the Revolution of the South really hooked me, and I've returned. I am currently a GS-6 Park Guide permanent now at Cowpens. I have lived and worked most exclusively in National Parks since 2002. Yellowstone National Park, had toured in the Grand Tetons with the Park Service, I worked in Yellowstone, Cowpens, Vicksburg National Military Park as a volunteer and Buffalo National River in Arkansas as well. And that's both in the private and the public sector, with NPS and other organizations as an interpretive guide. William: Wow, that's quite a diversified background. It seems like you have a lot of uh, a lot of travels under your belt before you're able to come here to the Revolutionary War. Paul: I did. I I traveled a lot. Even did some time in Death Valley, uh, I've worked in the Florida Keys as well. I've been around a little bit, lived in every time zone as a matter of fact. Adrian: What's your favorite area of the country that you've lived? Paul: I am addicted to the northern Rocky Mountains. And that is my favorite part of the world that I have been able to get to so far. Adrian: Awesome. I have not been there yet. Paul: Uh, you should go today. You should back up and go on vacation. I encourage everyone to get to the northern Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, Glacier, the Grand Tetons. It is the backbone of the world. Almost. Adrian: Alright, so I guess back to our focus. What area or region are we focusing on with the Cowpens story? And where is that then and now? Paul: The area of Cowpens in the American Revolution time frame is what's commonly referred to as the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution. So umm, think Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and up into Virginia. Cowpens today is a handful of miles away from the southern border of North Carolina. In 1781, Cowpens is what honestly in the wilderness there is not much around here in 1781, it's on the ragged edge of the frontier, butts up against Native American lands and Cowpens is a local landmark for folks. In this part of the world, the Green River Road, the historic Green River Road, cuts through an open area in the middle of the forest in the middle of the wilderness and road may be a generous term to give to the Green River Road, it's a muddy wagon track through the middle of the wilderness. And this open area at Cowpens is, for lack of a better word, it's used as a cow pasture for folks driving their cattle to and from market towns back in 1781, and even before that. There are creeks on each side of the battlefield, along with a natural rivercane thicket that forms a natural fence where folks could stop, let their cattle graze, that become became known locally as the Cowpens. It's not the only cowpens on the frontier or in South Carolina, but for this area of the world at that time, it's a, it's a really well known landmark where Daniel Morgan leads his army in and on January of 1781 and makes a stand against Banastre Tarleton and his British Army. Just a well-known place where everybody can gather up. Today, Cowpens is about 845 acres of the Cowpens National Battlefield, and it's historical resources, it's cultural resources and it's the natural resource park as well. It is a very, very popular destination for folks looking to get outside, get a little exercise on our walking paths, and it's a very popular part with the local folks to come out and do some walking or some biking. Adrian: So what towns is it nearby? Paul: Umm, we are near Spartanburg, South Carolina that's gonna be the the largest metropolitan big city. Uh, we're close to Chesnee SC, as well a small little hamlet couple miles away from that, and not far from Interstate 85 near Gaffney, SC. Charlotte, NC, is an hour and a half or so drive from the Cowpens National Battlefield. Adrian: So if you see the giant Peachoid on the interstate, you're nearby. Paul: Yeah. Nearby, you're about 10 or 11 miles away. Yeah, the giant peach. William: So you mentioned a little bit about January and 1781, but can you talk a little bit more about kind of when in the revolution is this event taking place? What are kind of some key moments that have preceded and led up to this moment that we're here at this cattle pasture near a giant peach? Paul: Uh, James and the giant Peach was not here in 1781. Uh, so in the timeline of the American Revolution, this is the height of the Southern Campaign of the Revolution. The Southern Campaign is the new British strategy to subdue the colonies and try to bring the revolution back in control and bring at least the southern colonies back under control of the crown. By 1780, 1779-1780, it's kind of a stalemate between the British Army and the Continental Army in the northern colonies up around New York and the British are looking to open up a new front. And that front is going to be Georgia beginning in seven, late 1778 and into 1779 they are going to revert to this Southern strategy and bring an Army south. The British are embroiled in what is now a world war. The French have declared war on the British and come in on the side of the Americans along with other nations and the world war is really sapping their, their money for lack of a better word. Uh, they're looking to bring in get the South, particularly Georgia and South Carolina, back under the crown so they can start using the export crops: the rice, the indigo, the tobacco. So to pick that back up, the British have come into Georgia in late 1778 and into 1779, and Georgia has come under almost complete control of the crown. And then the British are pushing into South Carolina after their conquest of Georgia, and Cowpens is taking place at the height of this Southern Campaign. Charleston falls to the British in May of 1780, and then there's a string of victories by the British Army, mostly under Cornwallis, General Cornwallis. Banastre Tarleton is gonna win the Battle of the Waxhaws, then you got the major defeat by the American Army under Horatio Gates in August of 1780. Cornwallis defeats him handily at the Battle of Camden. And really, the next major battle, the height of the Southern Campaign in South Carolina is the Cowpens. Now there's a lot of battles going on, particularly among the populace here, the militias, Musgrove Mill, particularly King's Mountain in October of 1780 as well, and the Cowpens is kind of the culmination of Cornwallis's endeavor to subdue South Carolina for the crown. Adrian: So sounds like we've got the British and the Continental Army, is that right? Who are some of the key players and you know, main leaders on both sides for the Cowpens battle. Paul: Alright, we'll start with the home team first. So we'll talk about the Continental Army about this time in South Carolina, around the Battle of Cowpens. You've got Major General Nathanael Greene, who is the overall southern commander of the Southern Army. And Nathanael Greene has the man that I think that every commander in the Continental Army would like to have had in his army leading men, and that's the newly appointed Brigadier General Daniel Morgan. Daniel Morgan has got two superlative commanders under him, he's got uh Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard from Maryland, who is gonna be leading the Continentals from Maryland and Delaware here on the battlefield, about 300 strong. And he's also got Lieutenant Colonel William Washington, distant cousin of George, with the Third Continental Light Dragoons. The Battle of Cowpens is gonna be heavily engaged with the militia here as well. So in overall command of all of the militia forces and those are gonna be boys from South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and some Virginia militia as well, the overall commander for all of those is Colonel Andrew Pickens, who might have the slowest heartbeat on the battlefield at Cowpens on January 17, 1781. A really, really good solid militia commander. So you got guys from North Carolina here. These guys, these militia guys, Joseph McDowell is leading the North Carolinians. And then you have South Carolinians under Benjamin Roebuck and all these names will be familiar to the South Carolinians, for sure. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Roebuck, with part of the Spartan Regiment. You've got Colonel John Thomas with part of the Spartan Regiment, Thomas Brandon is going to be here with part of the Fair Forest Regiment, Joseph Hayes, here with the Little River Regiment. The Georgia militia are under commanders Cunningham and Hammond, and the Virginians are here under Wallace and Tate and Triplett, just to give a couple of names for those folks, not from South Carolina. Now the British Army in South Carolina by this time is under command overall command of Lieutenant General Cornwallis and Cornwallis has dispatched his best, most reliable, most aggressive commander to deal with Daniel Morgan's piece of the Southern Army, and that man is Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Tarleton has got a really, really crack unit of about 1,100 here at the Battle of Cowpens. And it's gonna be his commanders under him or Major Arthur MacArthur with the 71st Scottish Highlanders. And Lieutenant Roderick McKenzie in there as well. Major Timothy Newmarsh is here with the 7th Fusiliers, the 7th Regiment of Foot. Lieutenant Henry Nettles is here with the 17th Light Dragoons of the British Army, redcoats. And then you have David Ogilvey and John Rousselette are leading both the calvary and the infantry section of the dreaded British Legion. Adrian: Now Paul, you said a word a couple of times that maybe some of our listeners may not know. What is a dragoon? Paul: What is a dragoon? Dragoons are mounted infantry, cavalry for lack of a or put it in a better term for folks to understand. Mounted on horseback, going to have a carbine that's a cut down version of a shorter version of black powder musket. Course gonna have sabers and probably pistols as well. The British have at the beginning of the war, at least they have the 16th and the 17th Dragoons from the British Army are the only ones deployed to the colonies, and at the beginning of the war, the Continental Congress has not authorized any American Continental cavalry. That quickly changes when the war really gets heated up and you got the first, second, third and fourth light dragoons raised in the colonies. Now, both sides are going to augment those cavalry forces with either patriots or loyalists from either side and form them into legions, form them into cavalry troops. There are South Carolina mounted dragoons, state troops, on the battlefield at Cowpens under McCall and Jolly. William: Okay Paul, so we've got a great rundown about we're looking at a cow pasture with a wagon road passing through kind of the northwestern part of South Carolina. We are looking at in the height of the Southern Campaign as you pointed out, we've got some big names involved here, both regular army as well as local leaders. What's actually gonna happen here? What brings these forces to meet at this cattle pasture of the Cowpens? And what's gonna be the result? Paul: Nathanael Greene, in order to cover a little bit more ground in South Carolina, gives his some of his best troops to Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, sends him into this backcountry part of South Carolina for a couple of reasons. He's going to send him here number one to spirit up, the people, help the people realize that they're still Continentals in South Carolina, after the defeat at Camden in August of 1780, and he's looking for Daniel Morgan to gather some supplies. And to counter the splitting of Greene’s Army, Cornwallis has to split his own army as well. Cornwallis is gonna shadow Greene’s army over near the Cheraw district, and he's going to give 1,100 of his best, as we mentioned, to Banastre Tarleton and Tarleton is gonna have one of two objectives. He is either going to bring Daniel Morgan to battle and destroy Daniel Morgan's army, or he's going to push and funnel Daniel Morgan's army back over closer to Cornwallis who’s going to be moving up, and they're supposed to jointly, possibly corner Daniel Morgan's army and wipe it out. When Cornwallis and Tarleton realized where Daniel Morgan's army is, and it's not down near Ninety Six, it's more up here in this upper back country, Tarleton does what he does best. He is going to get on the hunt and he is going to relentlessly pursue Daniel Morgan to up here in this Broad River, Pacolet River basin area. It's about a six- or seven-day hunt for Tarleton and he is at his best again at this is what he does. The problem that Tarleton really has is that Daniel Morgan's got a pretty good head start on him. And he is going to push his British Army past its breaking point just to catch up with Morgan's army up here near the Cowpens. And Daniel Morgan is gonna move the Continental Army in here on the afternoon of January the 16th, guided here by his local South Carolinians, the men that we mentioned earlier, Roebuck, Pickens, those kinds of men. And the whole idea is that Morgan cannot maneuver anymore. He's going to have to make a stand because Tarleton is closed so quickly on him and he is at least come to the Cowpens, gather up your guys, think about what you want to do next, and when Morgan sees the ground at the Cowpens with the flanks protected by the creeks and the ravines and the rivercane, the gently rolling, undulating plane here in this open area, he decides to make his stand. And Tarleton is still on the still on the march, still on the hunt at this point on the 16th, his troopers, his own army actually doesn't go into camp until about 10 o'clock on the night of the 16th after almost two days of forced marches without any rest. Tarleton's army is outstripped, its out-marched it's rations and they are exhausted already before they even get to the Battle of Cowpens on the morning of the 17th of January. The cold morning. Um, they're tired, they're hungry, they march in here to the field at Cowpens and arrive at about dawn after getting up at 2:00 AM and just getting to the Cowpens. Banastre Tarleton brings his army onto the battlefield at Cowpens at about daybreak, and Daniel Morgan has already got his army on the battlefield, well rested, well fed and well aware of what Daniel Morgan wants to battle to play out. Morgan is going to, quite honestly, it's an ingenious plan, uh, of using 3 successive lines of defense. A line of sharp shooters out front to really slow the British Army down as they started advancing and then Andrew Pickens’s approximately 1,000 militia lined up in a second line to again whittle down the British as they advance up the battlefield, and then a third line of the professional Continentals on the back of the battlefield. Three successive lines of more difficult fighting to get to, and it's ingenious, it truly is. And Daniel Morgan has been able to do something in a really short amount of time that I'm not sure that we give him credit for enough and that is taking a professional army of Continentals, meaning the Maryland and Delaware Continental Infantry and the American Cavalry, and then citizen soldiers and quickly melding them into what turns out to be a very powerful army. And he does it really quickly. Mostly based off of his reputation and just the his cult of personality, Morgan has these men believing in him and believing that they can beat Banastre Tarleton’s army before the battle ever starts. And I don't think he gets enough credit for that part of it. Not so sure anybody else could have done that so quickly in such a short amount of time. When the battle commences. Banastre Tarleton is in a rush to begin with. He quickly tries to deploy out the British Army astride the Green River Road. Particularly on the British left, if we're moving from South to North-ish the great rivercane thicket is really gonna slow down the troops on the left trying to get in position. And Tarleton, I think he actually knows that his army is worn out and then he's going to have to close on Morgan quickly. So he deploys them out quickly and the battle lines are not completely formed for him when he starts the British infantry up the battlefield. The sharpshooters from Morgan’s line do their work. They are just supposed to aim for the epaulette men take out as many officers as they can, as the British Army starts up the battlefield, they meld, they fall back in with the main militia line under overall command of Andrew Pickens. Andrew Pickens and all of the men on the American side here have a, know what the battle plan is. Morgan is going to, for lack of a better word, he's gonna use the militia as bait to draw Banastre Tarleton into the battlefield. He wants those militias boys to fire two or three shots at the advancing British infantry line, those militia boys, and have them redeploy to the back of the battlefield, form back up and then get back into the fight. Umm, as it turns out, the British Army, being the professionals they are, the good soldiers that they are closed so quickly on Pickens’s militia that most of them only get off 1 volley. Now Benjamin Roebucks guys are able to get off a second volley and there's a random second volley, but not one full volley of 1000 muskets going off inside of 50 yards at the British infantry line. When that one fire happens, the militia do what they're supposed to do, what the battle plan is, and that is redeploy to the back of the battlefield. Reform up and then get back into the fight. The main reason that there's not a sustained second or third volley is because the British infantry line absorbs that first volley from Pickens’s militia, and then they do what they're supposed to do against militia, and that is charge with the bayonet, and it just doesn't give the the militia time to get off of a second or third volley. When the militia falls back, the British infantry line pushes up and runs smack into the Continentals, who have been waiting on the battlefield. And there's about a 10-minuteish firefight between the main British infantry line and the Continental infantry line. It's quick, hot, deadly work that these boys are doing to each other on the battlefield. On the far right of the Continental line is gonna be one of the major players and that's the Virginia State troops under Wallace and Tate. At some point Tarleton even wrote this in his history of the Southern Campaign that he quickly realized that the main infantry line fight between the two armies was not going to decide the battle. So he's gonna bring in his reserves and that is the elite 71st Scottish Fraser Highlanders. And he's going to bring them around on the American right to outflank the American line. When that happens, Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard of the Continental line recognizes this and what he's asking to happen is a wheel right and refuse the right flank order to the Virginians on the far right of the American line. In the heat of battle they misunderstand that order and instead of refusing the right flank and that just means almost closing the door to the right and forming an angle to the right, they follow directly back. That opens up the remainder of the rest of the Continental line to the flanking maneuver by the 71st Highlanders, and at that point the entire American Continental line, umm, redeploys off to the back of the battlefield. Literally about faces and marches backwards. Daniel Morgan sees this retrograde movement, this unplanned redeployment, and he rides over quickly to John Eager Howard and says something along the lines of, "you’re beat and you're retreating" and Howard responds "no, I'm not retreating, I'm just redeploying." Morgan rides to the top of what we now refer to as Morgan Hill. He orders a halt and then there is a quick about face and the British have not stood idle during this they have spontaneously begun charging the Continental line. And why wouldn't you right if you're a British soldier? You've already driven these sharpshooter skirmishers from the battlefield, you've seen the militia run from the battlefield, and now you're seeing what you would think is the Continentals running from the battlefield? I would think that most British soldiers think that this is working out just about right and I'm tired, I'm cold, I'm hungry, if we charge them, we can drive them off the battlefield and I can rest and get a hot meal. So they're spontaneously charged when the Continental line redeploys, only to quickly be surprised when John Eager Howard, the American commander, stops that line. The Americans about-face some reports have it firing within 10 or 15 yards. The British are right on top of them. Let's not forget the militia in all of this, too. Daniel Morgan and Andrew Pickens have rallied the militia. The militia are beginning to sweep around on both flanks. William Washington is also involved in this. He's getting around on the left flank, most of Andrew Pickens’s militia swinging around on the American right flank, the British left flank, and the Continentals execute a bayonet charge right up the middle of the battlefield. You've got American dragoons and a little bit of militia coming around on the American left, the British right, you've got more militia and mounted cavalry swinging around on the American right, the British left and that is this classic that you read about double envelopment move that, Morgan, I honestly don't think you could have planned it if you had to. I think it kind of just spontaneously happens organically happens on the battlefield, but you've got commanders on the field, on the American side who are veterans, they see the opportunity and they just take it when they can. And this is the classic envelopment of the 1,100 man British Army on the battlefield, up the middle with the Continentals, on the left on the right with the militia, and quickly the American lines were able to encircle Banastre Tarleton's army on the battlefield. It is a near annihilation because of this double envelopment. Out of the 1,100 Brits that are here only a couple hundred of them and it's the mounted British Legion that are mainly mostly able to get off the battlefield at Cowpens. William: Holy cow. You see, cow, Cowpens. That is a lot of fighting and I kind of wanna point out too, if my timing's not mistaken, the length of the battle is pretty close to how you just described it. Is that correct? Paul: So yes, the Battle of Cowpens is going to begin and end all within about 30 minutes of each other. Give or take, right? Nobody sitting there with a stopwatch on the battlefield, but it's about a 30-minute fight and there's a whole lot going on both sides in a really short amount of time. Almost, Ranger Will, it's almost everything is going on simultaneously, is one way that I like to put it. It's a small battlefield, only about 5 or 600 yards wide, only about 5 or 600 yards long, with creeks and ravines and boggy ground on each side. So everything right there is happening within sight and it's happening almost simultaneously. The British are pushing forward, the main line is pushing forward, the Americans are absorbing this, they're falling back, cavalry charges on the American left, the British right, all of this is kind of going on all at the same time. Just controlled madness, for lack of a better way to put it. It's a really, really short battle, a really, really important short battle. William: And I want to highlight that one more time before we do keep moving on. When you look at this like you said that this chaos, you look at this flurry of action and movement. I mean, these men have been working towards this moment, waiting for it, marching towards it for hours, days and in some cases, weeks. And here it is about 30 minutes of controlled chaos. I can't imagine having that that kind of experience. Paul: One way that I like to put it is these are just regular, ordinary, everyday guys, some of them citizen soldiers. It's their first battle. Some of these men are veterans of many battles in the Southern Campaign and the northern campaigns, and regardless of who, what color they're wearing, whether they're wearing red or whether they're wearing Continental blue, it's just normal people doing really scary things in a really short amount of time. William: I like that, normal people doing scary things. Adrian: Yeah, that's a good way to look at it. So you mentioned the British Legion, Paul. Who are they? Where are they from? And do they represent anything specific for the Southern Theater or about the Southern Theater? Paul: The British Legion is Banastre Tarleton's Legion. Now when they get formed into a legion, it is in the northern colonies, specifically New York, and this is gonna happen in 1778. I mentioned a little bit earlier that both the American and the British side are trying to bolster their forces by using men loyal to the king or Patriots loyal to the revolution cause, and that is what the British legion is. That's where these men are gonna come from. It's going to be men formed into this legion, then there's also a second legion as well, but this is the British Legion, and these are boys from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut. There's gonna be deserters eventually in here from the Continental Army, mostly from Maryland and Pennsylvania. Tarleton is eventually given command of this legion. It doesn't take long. He is rising quickly through the ranks of the British Army. With a very good reputation of being a a really hard fighter, a really good young commander. And their operating in the northern colonies to, in the beginning of the of their inception. It's interesting with the British Legion, they quickly gained a reputation, a dubious reputation even in the northern colonies, of being extraordinarily overzealous at times and undisciplined. So much so that, umm, 50 of the 17th Light Dragoons that we mentioned a little bit earlier are permanently assigned to the British Legion when they're stationed in Connecticut to try to instill more discipline in the ranks. They serve well in the northern colonies, and then when the British revert to the Southern Campaign strategy, they come down with the British Army for the second invasion of Charlestown, Charleston, SC in 1780 and quickly become a vital piece of Cornwallis's southern campaign. They are again, as we mentioned, mounted infantry. They move really quickly. Tarleton is like a hunting leopard as he's been described before, and they quickly gain and keep supporting this reputation that they have already gained in the northern colonies. Tarleton has molded them into a really formidable fighting force and being colonists loyal to King George the Third, they show a complete lack of patience and maybe even sympathy for the colonists that are fighting against the crown. And they gain a fearsome reputation, mostly, and mainly coming from Buford’s Defeat at the Waxhaws, and there's a lot of other fighting they're doing at Lenud’s Ferry, they're part of the expedition that burns Thomas Sumter's home not long after the surrender of Charleston that brings him back into the war. They are also going to be split up at times, the British Legion, not always under command of Banastre Tarleton. There's a punitive expedition up the Peedee River basin by Major Weymss and part of the British Legion is on this punitive expedition against the citizens of South Carolina up the uh, up the basin there in southern South Carolina. So even though they're not being led by Tarleton at times pieces of them, they're still the citizens of South Carolina are still seeing these mounted horse troopers in green, and they're gonna wear green to separate themselves from the regular British Army redcoats. So as these punitive expeditions and burning down people's plantations or homes like Sumter and the punitive expedition up the Peedee River, South Carolinians are seeing these green coated troopers throughout the state and their reputation just continues to grow. And Banastre Tarleton, who even to this day is a very, very controversial figure in the American Revolution, he's the main commander of this of this group of British Legion running roughshod at times over other militia forces in South Carolina, particularly at the Waxhaws. And there's a lot of questions about Banastre Tarleton and his legion in the 21st century, in the late 20th 21st century. Does Tarleton really and his legion really deserve the reputation that they have been given in the history of the American Revolution? Most of it is gonna come from the Battle of Waxhaws, Buford's massacre. And whether Banastre Tarleton is as brutal as the history books make him out to be can be debated. Maybe he is, and maybe he's not. But I think there may be two pieces to this. Number one is that the American propaganda machine really grabs a hold of this story of Tarleton at the Battle of Waxhaws, where undoubtedly American soldiers are killed while surrendering and after surrendering at the Battle of Waxhaws. I guess the question is always gonna be as whether Banastre Tarleton personally orders this or not. The evidence says that he probably didn't, but that does happen, and irregardless, the Americans grab onto this and use it as a really good piece of propaganda against the British. It's Bloody Banastre Tarleton and Tarleton's Quarter from the Waxhaws. And on the other side of that is that I think Banastre Tarleton plays into this role of being the bad guy as well. I think he plays into that. I think he grabs ahold of that. Whether he is actually as brutal as we make him out to be, but he plays that role really, really well at times, not exclusively, but at times and it helps his legion. It helps him accomplish his goal to win battles and instill fear in the American militia and the Continentals before he even gets to the battlefield, so I think he relishes that role a little bit. Adrian: Sounds like it might save him some fighting. Paul: And it does at times, right? When you hear that, particularly at the Battle of Kings Mountain, possibly right, the men at the Battle of Kings Mountain, the overmountain men literally do everything as quickly as they can to get off that mountain because they hear that Banastre Tarlenton’s legion’s coming and they vamanos off that mountain as quick as they can because they don't want to have to deal with Tarleton and the Legion. Now we're talking about this nearly 250 years after the events, right? And what we are doing is debating this topic of whether Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion are as brutal and as bloody. But maybe, quite honestly, it doesn't matter what we think 250 years later, in the 21st century. To the people of South Carolina in 1780, in 1781, he is Bloody Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion is a brutal loyalist provincial force that is coming down the road and they're coming to your plantation, and they're coming to your homestead. I think it's their opinion matters more than our debate at this point. Adrian: Perspective. It's all in how you see people, right? Paul: I think so. So it's ultimately those people that lived it. But my first summer in ’19, Adrian, I was at the front desk here and this ancient little old lady, great grandmother, she was 100 years old if she was a day, she brings her walker up to the counter near the register and she tells me this story and I wish I would have been a good enough park Ranger at the time to realize I needed to do an interview for this. But she said when and she grew up on a plantation down in rice king country, and she said that when she was a little girl, uh, her great grandmother used to come on the porch of the house where all the kids and the grandkids were playing and scream at them ‘You little Tarletons, get off of this porch and go play in the yard. Get out of here, you little Tarletons.’ Adrian: God! [Laugh] Paul: And I wish again that I would have been versed enough to do an interview with her as a brand new Park Ranger to get that on, get that recorded. So that is the legacy of Banastre Tarleton in South Carolina 250 years after the event, when her great grandmother, who's probably 100 years old as well right, is referring to kids as little Tarletons get off this porch. I thought it's one of the greatest stories that I've heard about Tarleton and the Legion and their legacy in South Carolina 250 years later. So at the height of the battle when Banastre Tarleton is realizing yelling militia charging Continentals coming directly up the battlefield encircling his army on the battlefield, we mentioned the 71st Scottish Highlanders being in a reserve position, kind of the shock troops, well, the British Legion at Cowpens is somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 and 550 strong. Some of them on foot as infantry the vast majority of them on horseback, as cavlary, as dragoons and Tarleton has held back two hundred 250 of those boys in green, the British Legion, and as the Americans begin sweeping up the battlefield and overrunning the British lines, Tarleton orders the two hundred 250 or so British Legion boys on horseback to salvage the battle, charge up the battlefield with sabers, and begin cutting the American lines to pieces to salvage the battle, get his guns back, and the British have two pieces of artillery at the Battle of Cowpens as well. The Americans have none. And those British boys, quite literally about face and they ride off the battlefield as quickly as they can. There may be 2 pieces to this, probably more than that, but a lot of these British Legion boys by the time of the Battle of Cowpens are recruits from South Carolina, some of them are even POWs from the American POW camps down around Camden, so they are not exactly the original makeup of New Yorkers, and New Jersians and Pennsylvanians. Tarleton has been fighting, and fighting hard in South Carolina in 1780 and ‘81. He's taking casualties and he's having to replace these Legion troops with again POW, deserters, whoever they might be, so they may not be as totally as enthusiastic as the the original makeup of the British Legion. And in addition to that, as I think that they have realized by this point that, uh, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton has bitten off more than he can chew at the Battle of Cowpens. And has been out-generaled, and unfortunately, the British boys on the battlefield paid for Tarleton’s impetuous nature so to speak, when he attacks, maybe prematurely on the battlefield at Cowpens. William: So, Paul, thanks for that that in-depth look at who these guys were, not just the British Legion, but kind of what they represented, what the myths that surrounded them at the Battle of Cowpens and the larger Southern campaign. So you see, we've seen how they flee the field. The British army’s defeated, I mean like you described Tarleton as this hunting leopard. He's been defeated. He's been in detail, chased off the battlefield. Surely this has some massive impacts? Some, some ripples throughout this Southern campaign. What is this going to do to the Southern Theater of the Revolution? Paul: It's a really good question, Ranger Will, and I think Morgan's complete victory here, reset the entire chess board for the Southern Campaign and maybe even arguably for the entire Revolution as a whole. Cornwallis, who is only 30 miles away from here on the morning of the Battle of Cowpens with about 1,300 Redcoats in camp, he's got another 13 to 1,500 within a day or two's march coming up from Charleston, but the troops that he loses here at the Cowpens are the best that he has. We mentioned the elite 71st Scottish Fraser Highlanders, he loses the two pieces of artillery, but more importantly, this army, that is all but annihilated here on the battlefield are his best Light Infantry, which are playing a pivotal role on battlefields by this time of the American Revolution. These are the hardiest they're the fastest moving troops in an army, and the British have quickly adopted this idea of having to fight irregular soldiers, meaning American militia on the battlefields and the Light Infantry plays a huge role. By the time Tarleton finds his way back to Cornwallis camp over near Turkey Creek on the day after the battle, Cornwallis is already trying to figure out a way to replace these troops because they are gone. Tarleton has lost 110 killed, 230 or so wounded that are left at the Cowpens and then Daniel Morgan and his army have rounded up over 600 POWs and they are marching them over the Broad River at Island Ford, trying to put more distance between his army and Cornwallis's army, and Cornwallis, it takes him a day or two to kind of recover from this shock. At one point, there is an American POW in Cornwallis's camp who related that it was such a shock to Cornwallis when he is listening to this story from Banastre, Tarleton, that he leans on his sword so hard, he snaps it in half, it's a huge blow. It takes Cornwallis a couple of days to try to wrap his mind around what has just happened, and then he begins the pursuit of Morgan's army out of South Carolina, into North Carolina. Having read some of Cornwallis's correspondence, I don't think that Cornwallis is sad to leave South Carolina. I think he's been trying to do it for a while. This ungentlemanly form of warfare amongst the militias in the population he doesn't like it. He's never liked it and he wants to get out of South Carolina. He's already tried once to get out of South Carolina, because of this defeat at Cowpens it gives him the final reason to pull his main redcoat army British Army out of South Carolina. He wants his prisoners back that Morgan is moving out of here. Morgan is going to link back up with the rest of the Southern Army under Nathanael Greene. I think Cornwallis is just really happy to get out of the South Carolina. And as I mentioned earlier, I think it resets the whole chess board. Nathanael Greene does a masterful job of leading Cornwallis's army through North Carolina on the the famous Race to the Dan River, up to the Dan River on in Virginia. It is a logistical and maneuverability campaign. It is brilliant. Cornwallis exhausts himself, he's exhausted his army. He's burning wagons. He's burning personal baggage just to try to catch up with Nathanael Greene’s Army and Greene does a masterful job of staying just out of reach of Cornwallis. Greene eventually turns around and comes back into North Carolina and makes a stand at Guilford Courthouse on March 15th of 1781. Cornwallis gives him battle at Guilford Courthouse, but he loses another third of his army in casualties. And here is where I think that the Cowpens in the Southern campaign really comes into focus. Cornwallis loses those best troops here at Cowpens. He loses another third of his army at Guilford Courthouse. He falls back to the coast of Wilmington, NC after the Battle of Guilford. He resupplies. He rests up a little bit and then he makes a conscious decision, probably without orders to and move into Virginia. I believe that he is more than half expecting Nathanael Greene’s Southern Army, to follow him to Virginia. But Nathanael Greene does not do that. He pulls back down, meaning Greene, pulls back down into South Carolina and begins a systematic dismantling of the British strongholds in South Carolina: Camden, uh Ninety Six, among others. Now, Greene doesn't win a whole lot of battles in South Carolina, but he is persistent and systematic in reducing these fire bases. He loses the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill. He loses the Battle of Eutaw Springs. And I don't know how Adrian Ranger Adrian feels about this, but ultimately loses the siege at Ninety Six because he's not able to take it and he has to pull out. But with Cornwallis's main Southern army now in Virginia, the Southern campaign for all intents and purposes is gonna come to a close after Ninety Six is abandoned. Almost all the British troops end up in Charleston and get bottled up by Greene in Charleston. And then, of course, George Washington and the French surround Cornwallis at Yorktown. We all know that story. It's always been written and been said by many people that there would not have been a Yorktown, Virginia if it wasn't for the Battle of Cowpens, and I think that I think that that is really true. Now, there's a lot going on between Cowpens and Yorktown, even contemporaries at the time of Cornwallis were writing that had Cornwallis had the let's call it, 900 men, that he lost at the Cowpens that Yorktown would have been different. It's hard to deal in absolutes or what ifs, but if people at the time in Cornwallis's army or writing and saying this, it’s got to have a little credence to it. So the Battle of Cowpens to sum that up resets the whole chess board. It gives Cornwallis a different mindset about where he wants to go, where he wants to be, and where he wants to be is anywhere but South Carolina, and he makes that happen. Adrian: I think that might be one of the few things that “The Patriot” gets right. What is one of your favorite stories from either the battle itself or from the surrounding area as a whole? Paul: There's so many stories, right? Umm, I guess the one that I find myself using to help explain the civil war amongst the population in South Carolina during the entire Revolutionary War, not just the Southern Campaign, is that there are three brothers with a militia company called the Dugan brothers here at the Battle of Cowpens, Robert, James and William. They come here, they're in Daniel Morgans army and during the fighting believe it's Robert, dispatches a British officer on the battlefield as a militia soldier, and then, after the battle, Robert goes out, finds the officer and takes his sword. Those boys from are from down around Orangeburg about a day's horseback ride away or so, they leave the battlefield on the day of the battle, head back down to Orangeburg. Two of them go to their family homestead moms house, Robert and James do, William goes off on his own and an indeterminate amount of time later, and some people put this in with Bloody Bill Cunningham's raid, maybe not, but at some point, not long after the Battle of Cowpens, the word has gotten out what has happened here. Loyalists down around Orangeburg go around and begin raiding and taking prisoners of their patriot neighbors, and they find themselves at night with other prisoners at the Dugan homestead. They begin ransacking the cabin. Robert James are there. And as the Loyalist are ransacking the homestead, they find the officers sword that Robert had taken from the battlefield at Cowpens. At that point, they bring the two brothers out, the Loyalists bring the two brothers out, literally to the front yard, and this is it's it's no way I can sugarcoat what's about to happen here, y'all, so I'm sorry, but they hang the brothers in the front yard and then they use the the British officer sword that they found and literally hewed the body to pieces. Both brothers in front of the neighbors in front of their family. They even kill another one of the prisoners who is trying to escape and who can blame him right after watching that, why would you not try to get away? But the one thing that the Loyalist didn't count on is that the other brother William was not there and sometime after this horrible event, William tracks down all of his Loyalist neighbors who did this to his brothers, and he exacts his revenge on those Loyalists. And I use that as an example when I'm giving tours of the battlefield, because that is almost everything that is happening to Loyalist and Patriot families within South Carolina. In a nutshell, this is murder and it's revenge and it's rinse, wash and repeat from family to family, district to district throughout the entire American Revolution in the South. Adrian: John Wick of the American Revolution. Paul: I know, right? William: So, Paul, as you've been sharing with us, there's just so much to understand and to research and learn about, not only this battle, but like you just shared with the Dugan brothers, kind of these surrounding connecting stories. And whenever there is something like this that is important and I don't want to say popular history, but it is remembered, and there's many stories that come out of it. There's always going to be misconceptions, or there's always going to be legends that grow bigger than the stories themselves. Do you have some favorites that you've kind of run across and heard at the national battlefield, either the most frequent questions that you get or misconceptions that a lot of visitors have about the Battle of Cowpens? Adrian: Where's the bathroom? Paul: Yeah the number one question in national parks is “where's the bathroom?” and number two is “have you seen my husband?” So I guess Ranger Will, I guess I'll go with some misconceptions over frequently asked questions. A lot of the visitors that come into the visitor center at Cowpens are surprised to learn that the Cowpens National Battlefield is not a Civil War battlefield and that it's a Revolutionary War battle from nearly 250 years ago. And when we start talking about the Revolution in the South, the Southern campaign that is so vital to both sides during the war, many of them say, and I've heard this repeatedly is “I had no idea the American Revolution came this far South.” And I think that speaks volumes as to how underrepresented, underreported, misunderstood the Revolution from 1775 until 1783. For most Americans, I think it's, umm, minute men in Massachusetts, it's the Declaration of Independence, it's George Washington, and it's Cornwallis surrendering at Yorktown. And I think I mentioned this earlier that as a historian, and as a someone who is reads a lot of military history, I thought I understood the American Revolution when I accepted the seasonal position here in 2019. And then I stepped off into the Revolution in South Carolina and realized that I knew nothing. Which is again what put the hooks hit me in and really got me wanting to come back here so I could learn more and explain more to visitors to the battlefield. When General George Washington surrounds Cornwallis's army in September of 1781 at Yorktown, it's the first time since the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse in late June of 1778 that George Washington is leading an army on a battlefield. And that is 3 years time frame between the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse and the Yorktown campaign. And if George Washington is not fighting battles with the Northern Continental Army against the British Army, then where is the American Revolution being decided? And it's here in South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, in this southern campaign. And I think that is, I think it's a shame that we don't, as a people with our history, really understand the Southern campaign and and what went down in South Carolina in particular in the American Revolution. William: Nice. Adrian: So Ranger, Paul, if people are interested in learning more about Cowpens, where can they go? Paul: Well, first, I'm gonna encourage everybody to come to the Cowpens National Battlefield near Chesnee, SC, right off the highway 11 near the big peach in Gaffney, come see us. We'd love to have you come in the visitor center if you've got the time and the means. If you're on your way and during spring vacation to Florida or the South Carolina coast, we are easily accessible off I-85. Stop in, say hello, we'd love to see you in the National Park and get you out on the battlefield. Otherwise, there are many different outlets these days. You can visit us at the Cowpens National Battlefield website through the National Park Service, we have a Facebook page for Cowpens as well, it’s the national battlefield, there's even a Twitter account for the Cowpens National Battlefield. And if none of those digital outlets work for you, or you can't come physically to the battlefield, send us a letter and ask for some information and we'll be happy to mail it to you with the United States Postal Service. Adrian: Are there any books that people could maybe read to learn more; really good ones you would suggest? Paul: Uh, they are some really good books. One of the main go-tos that the staff uses here at Cowpens is Doctor Lawrence Babits, “A Devil of a Whipping,” that is one of the main go-tos. Another good option is Buchanan’s “The Road to Guilford Courthouse” that begins with the Battle of Cowpens and follows up with what we talked about a little bit earlier that race to the Dan River between Cornwallis and Nathanael Greene. That is two really good resources, really good books. There are also biographies on Daniel Morgan and a really new scholarship, a good one, by an author named John Knight on Banastre Tarleton and the British Legion called “War at Saber Point” as well if you want to get a little bit more into the personalities. Good stuff. Adrian: Awesome. [Violin music] William: Well, thank you so much, Paul. I really appreciate your time here discussing with us and all of our listeners, one of the quicker but very important battles of the Southern Theater, and that is going to conclude another episode of Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. To learn more about the American Revolution, our home National Park sites for Ranger Paul, you can check out www.nps.gov/COWP, for Ranger Adrian and Ninety Six National Historic site head to nps.gov/NISI, and for myself, Ranger William and the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, nps.gov/OVVI. So thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and we'll see you next time we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. Adrian: Bye. Paul: Thank y'all. (musket shot)

The Battle of Guilford Courthouse with Jason Baum

Rangers William and Adrian are joined by Ranger Jason Baum to discuss the 1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the fight that one British general described as "long, obstinate, and bloody." --- TRANSCRIPT: --- William: Hey everyone and welcome to Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. [Intro sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting] Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian from Ninety Six National Historic Site. William: And together we will get into some of the known and not so known stories about the American Revolution here in the South. Let's dive into it. [sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting] William: So today we are joined with our special guest Jason Baum from Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Jason, thanks for joining us. Jason: Well, thanks for having me. I was excited when you guys told me about this project. William: Absolutely. Before we get too much into the details about Guilford Courthouse and this amazing battle of the American Revolution, let's talk about you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your connection with this topic? Jason: So yeah, so my journey into the world of being a Park Ranger starts way back when I got a history degree at Ohio University. And then from there I spent four years in the Army as an intelligence officer and I bring that up because to me, those same skills are what any historian needs, which is the ability to take a bunch of different information, bring it all together and try and understand what the coherent picture is from all those details. So after I spent about four years in the Army, I then came to Greensboro, North Carolina, not specifically for Guildford, originally I came here to go to grad school at UNC Greensboro. I got a degree in Museum Studies and then while I was doing that, that's when I started as an intern at Guilford Courthouse. And then I was lucky enough to turn the internship into a seasonal Ranger position. And then I had the dumbest luck in the world when I turned that seasonal Ranger position into a permanent position and I have been here at Guildford for going on 8 1/2 years now. Adrian: Awesome. William: You caught the Unicorn, my friend. Jason: I did. I really did. Adrian: Well, that's great. So you said, sounds like you're still in Greensboro, for the listeners that don't know, can you tell us where’s Greensboro? Was it called Greensboro at the time that the battle took place? If not, what's it called? Jason: Ohh yeah, so Greensboro is in the central Piedmont area of North Carolina. So when we talk about the Piedmont, if you were to divide North Carolina into thirds, we were in the upper part of the middle third of North Carolina and Greensboro wasn't founded until the 19th century. So if you were to be here on the day of battle, March 15th, 1781, it would have been very sparsely populated and the county we are in Guilford County was brand new. It had only been created back in 1771 and it was much larger than it is today, and so the whole reason this place is even here, the reason we know about it is, as you can imagine, the name Guilford Courthouse is because the original County Courthouse was originally put in this area. Eventually it will get moved in the 19th century and that will is what will lead to the founding of Greenesboro. And so today, we're the park is is if you were to come visit the city of Greenesboro, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park is in the northwest kind of corner of the suburbs. Uh, we have an outer belt around the city, so you can almost imagine like a giant clock face. If the center of the city, is the middle of the clock, we're up around the 11:00 o'clock part of the clock face. William: Do we know who Guilford County was named after? Jason: The Earl of Guilford. And so it's funny that it was named for the first Earl of Guilford. But the ironic thing is that the Prime Minister during the war, Lord North, he would eventually become the next Earl of Guilford. William: So not named after Lord North, thankfully, we're going to avoid that one. Jason: Yeah. William: So we're talking about this, you mentioned that the Battle of Guilford Courthouse is going to take place March 15th, 1781. Before we get into the nitty gritty of the actual battle itself, can you set the scene for us? What is going to be leading up to the battle? What is bringing these armies into a part of North Carolina where it sounds like there's not any key features that they're gonna be fighting over? And then who are some of the players on the board bringing their armies to the field? Jason: So I always tell people the battle of Guilford Courthouse or the Guilford Courthouse campaign starts because of the Battle of Cowpens. It starts the day afterwards, so basically day after Cornwallis now has to figure out what to do now that a huge chunk of all his light troops have just been killed, wounded or captured, and so very quickly, he has reinforcements who are already on their way up to him, who are going to meet him up in northwest South Carolina and he decides to launch after Daniel Morgan's troops. Daniel Morgan would be the American commander in charge of the wing that had just been at Cowpens, and initially the idea was Cornwallis is gonna lunge after him, and at the very least maybe he would free his prisoners from Cowpens. Or at maybe you know, things go his way, he catches Morgan's troops and crushes them, which is the what they were trying to do at Cowpens. He goes after him, he falls behind very quickly and Morgan gets away and he will get across the Catawba River. And while that's happening Cornwallis has to decide what he’s going to do because he had wanted to invade North Carolina at the end of 1780 but had had to the pull back because mainly of camp sickness running through his army but he'd also met stiff militia resistance around Charlotte. So what he's gonna do is he's gonna decide to keep going. He's gonna burn his excess baggage and wagons. So he's not burning everything, but they're burning all the nonessential baggage and they're burning several wagons, but they do keep a few. They have just enough wagons with them that they will be able to carry salt because in that time, if you've got, you found any food or you foraged for food, the way you preserve things like meats with salt, you would keep another wagon to carry your ammunition, and you kept a couple of wagons to carry any wounded you might incur along the campaign. So with that in mind, corn loss is burning the excess baggage and wagons to lighten up his army. So hopefully he can catch the Americans, and he's gonna spend the next several weeks, January, February and early March chasing Greene around North Carolina trying to get him to stop trying to get him to turn and fight him so he can finally crush him. And failing to get him to do so. We call it the race to the Dan as one section of it, because Greene is going to get his army all the way up to Virginia, crossed the Dan River, and when Cornwallis finally catches up to him, he sees that the river is swollen from winter rains and all the boats are on the other side of the river, and so he can't get after him. So at that point, Cornwallis comes back into North Carolina. He goes to Hillsborough and he reassesses what's his options are. He didn't free his prisoners from Cowpens. He didn't get the Americans to stop and fight him, so he couldn't destroy that army. Well then something else he could possibly do is recruit Loyalists because I mean, that's one of the major motivators for them coming down to the South to begin with; recruit Loyalists to kind of bulk up your army since you have to send more men and more ships to go fight the French once they join the war. So Cornwallis goes to Hillsborough. He raises the King’s standard and tons of people come into town. They say thank God you're here. we're still happy to see you and then they go home. The recruits and the supplies do not materialize that Cornwallis was hoping for. Meanwhile, Greene knows he can't just let Cornwallis sit in North Carolina uncontested. So Greene comes back down and he sends ahead Andrew Pickens and Lighthorse Harry Lee to harass and keep an eye on Cornwallis’s army. And there's gonna be an event called Pyles Massacre that happens. Pyle’s also, sometimes called Pyle’s Hacking Match, and basically what happens was that there was a body of Loyalist who are trying to come in trying to meet Cornwallis, and in the process of coming in they knew they were supposed to meet Banastre Tarleton, the British cavalry commander, meet his cavalry to be escorted in. But they run into Lighthorse Harry Lee's troops, and Lee's troops wears uniforms that are similar in color to Tarleton. The idea what we understand is that Lee was hoping to capture the men, but in the process of coming alongside them, they actually greeted them and we're coming alongside each other in a very narrow road in the woods. Somebody discovered who the other side was and once that happens Lee’s troopers pull out their swords and proceed to chase down a lot of the Loyalists into the woods, hacking them down. That's why it's called Pyles Hacking Match. But events like that, along with the fact that you could look back at battles like Kings Mountain where Ferguson's entire troop force was wiped out, things like Kings Mountain, things like Pyle’s massacre, are going to pretty much kill any hopes for the British to recruit lots of Loyalists while they're here in North Carolina. That being said, the chase again begins once Greene has come back into North Carolina. Cornwallis is gonna again start pursuing him, now they are in the eastern part of the state, coming back West towards Guilford Courthouse and Greene is finally going to turn and stop the fight him because what has happened is that up to this point, both armies have been similar in size. But in early March, Greene finally gets a massive influx of reinforcements. Lots of militia. And so almost overnight his army doubles in size. And so he's gonna have 4,400 men while the British are have about 2,100 men at this point. And with that huge advantage, Greene's gonna have confidence to find a turn and fight the British. And he comes back to Guilford Courthouse because he knows the terrain. They've been through here before. They passed through on the initial race to the Dan, so Greene’s coming back to a place he knows, he's coming back with way more troops than the British have, and that's really what's motivating him to finally stop running and to finally turn and fight the British. Adrian: Talk about being outnumbered. William: Awesome. So I wanna circle back real quick, and some of the things that you were mentioning, this decision to launch headlong in pursuit of the American Army, Cornwallis reinforced with this group from that's just marched up from Charleston; how much do we know, are there any fun tidbits you wanna tell us about this decision about burning the supplies? And do we know where that took place today? Jason: It took place at a place called Ramseur's Mill. It would have been to the West of where modern-day Charlotte is and what we do know about it is that the officers of his army also made a big show of making sure everybody saw them throwing their own unnecessary baggage into the fires It was meant to really show that this is a sacrifice, but everybody is making this sacrifice. And what we are about to do is do a very hard campaign to try and catch this rebel army. William: Awesome. And talking about Pyle’s Massacre and the hacking match, I read somewhere that there was actually another incident with Loyalist militia shortly following Pyle’s Massacre that even more destroyed the Loyalist support of the British Army. Is that right? Jason: Yes, yes, similar. Something similar happens where Loyalist forces it's, if I remember correctly, it's a slightly smaller body, but they're also trying to come meet Cornwallis. Tarleton was sent to meet them and this time they meet Tarleton, but Tarleton doesn't realize who they are, and he accidentally attacks the Loyalists and doesn't realize his mistake until it's too late. William: Geez, so you're looking at two instances of Loyalist militia totally being destroyed, one by a, I don't want to call it a feint, one by a disguised, I guess that’s not the right word either. Jason: I guess it’s like, it's like I guess you could say a ruse, a a trick. William: Ruse! That's the word. Thank you. One group destroyed by this ruse by Patriot cavalry. This other group destroyed by a mistake by Loyalist cavalry. I can see that where that would greatly destroy any hope of the local people wanting to step up and go with the British Army when they're not even sure what's going on. Adrian: Alright, Jason, so we've got the buildup, what actually happens at Guildford Courthouse? Jason: So Greene's army is gonna come to the site that is today Guilford Courthouse, National Military Park. And he's gonna come here on March 14th and then on the morning of March 15th, he sends out cavalry to keep tabs on what the British are up to. They are 12 miles away at a Quaker meeting house on the Deep River. It's about southwest of modern-day Greensboro. And what they report early in the morning around 5:00 AM is that the British are up and moving around and then they start reporting that the troops are clearly getting ready to go somewhere. And once that happens, Lee is gonna go out even closer to where his pickets are to figure out what the British are actually up to. Because again, they're not trying to start the battle anywhere. What they're trying to make sure is where the British going, is it the entire British Army on the road? And so what's gonna happen is around sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 AM on March 15th it’s going to be the first fighting of the day. It's gonna be three short, sharp little skirmishes around what was another Quaker area called Newgarden Meetinghouse. Today it's about four miles away from the park. The Quaker society still exists there today and on the other side of the road from where they are, there's now Guilford College out there. But what happens on the morning is that first it's gonna be the cavalry versus cavalry. Tarleton’s cavalry is gonna pursue Lee's men up the road. Lee's gonna turn on them when they bait them down a narrow strip of lane and fire on them and counterattacke when they are bunched up in the lane and can't expand their cavalry out into a proper formation. And they drive Tarleton back. The next clash of the morning will be that then Lee pushes back down the road and runs into the Light Infantry and advanced infantry units of the British Army gets fired on and then he falls back, and then the last little clash of the morning will be the Light Infantry of both sides exchanging shots before the Americans finally pulled back because again, they're not trying to start the battle down there. They just want to see what the British are doing and after those little clashes they can confirm the entire British Army is on the road and is heading towards Guildford Courthouse. So they're going to retrieve all the way back. William: Now, do we know, do we know how much time is taking place between these different clashes or are they pretty like back-to-back, one is slowly bleeding into the next? Jason: They should be, uh, we believe they're probably back-to-back, very happening one after the other. William: Wow. Adrian: Okay. Jason: So then all those troops come back to the main army here around the courthouse or report to Greene what's happening, and Greene starts deploying his men into three lines. Now he puts them into three lines, it's a very similar formation as to what you would see at Cowpens, but on a much larger scale. And the idea comes from Daniel Morgan because Daniel Morgan encouraged Greene to use militia to what they are capable of. Most these guys have no combat experience. A lot of them don't have proper training. They bring their own weapons and equipment from home, so many of them don't even have bayonets. So the idea is that don't treat them like regulars. Don't put them out somewhere and expect them to stop the British Army. Let them shoot shots. Let them cause casualties. Let them cause chaos. Then let them fall back and get out of the way. So Greene’s decided to do that by putting a first line of North Carolina militia close to the Hoskins farm, which is on the western part of the battlefield. So these guys are stationed along open farm fields where they can see the British deploying and coming. Uh, about 400 yards east of them in the dense woods is going to be the second line of militia made up of men from Virginia. And then the third line, another 800 yards east of them around the courthouse itself is where Greene is gonna station himself with his Continentals. And idea again is that if the first two lines are just supposed to fight a little bit but then fall back, the main effort will be the Continentals. Greene’s hope is that as the British are pushing through one line after another, as they’re having to fight through way through dense woods, hopefully they will be so badly beaten up and so badly disorganized by the time they get to him and his Continentals at the courthouse, maybe they can destroy the British with that main effort at the third line. Adrian: Just out of curiosity, how many militia are there? Jason: On the first and, first and second line, we think there's about 1,000 to 1,200 militia on each of those lines. William: Geez! Adrian: And where are they from? Do we know? Jason: So the first line is North Carolina, mostly men of central and a little bit to the east in North Carolina, eastern North Carolina. Not, not a lot of men were pulled from the east because there's already British troops in Wilmington, so a lot of them are being pulled down there to deal with that threat. But we all, amongst the many units that are here are even the Guildford militia, this county, its own militia, are one of the many units that are going to be stationed at the first line, waiting at the Hoskins Farm. William: And then I know, as far as talking about where they’re coming from, Adrian, I know regarding some of our Overmountain guys or Kings Mountain guys, Benjamin Cleveland and his militia from, you know, Wilkes County, western edge of North Carolina, they're in the area but they were more harassing the other region and keeping support from getting to Cornwallis. So I don't think you have a lot of like westerners there. Jason: Correct. Adrian: Well, you said Pickens was there, right? Jason: Pickens had been there during the campaign, but the funny thing is that Pickens is gonna be sent away a couple weeks before the battle with South Carolina and Georgia militia because of what happens at a small skirmish called Wetzell’s Mill. At Wetzell's Mill, what happens is that Cornwallis, again trying to find the Americans trying to get them to turn off item, catches the American army off guard and pursues them, but in the process the militia are made to delay the British forces as the Continentals can get away across a stream. The South Carolina and Georgia militia felt they were being sacrificed to try and let the Continentals get away. And apparently they were in such bad humor, Greene felt the only solution was to let Pickens take them back home to rest, resupply, and then once they're down there, maybe they can get back to harassing British outposts and British supply lines. Adrian: OK, cool. William: Well, and this is Pickens and those same militia that had escorted, you know, fought at Cowpens, escorted the prisoners through North Carolina to the Virginia border, and now have returned from the Virginia border, they haven't been home since mid-January and now here they are in mid-March, or you know early mid-March with Wetzell's Mill. I can see why you've got some real hurt feelings here. Very sensitive issue. Jason: Absolutely. Adrian: I think it worked since they joined back up for the Battle of Augusta and Ninety Six so. Jason: So we've established Greene’s using three defensive lines. What he's trying to accomplish with that? Who is at each defensive line? The British are gonna arrive on the battlefield sometime between anywhere between 11 and noon. And I mean, that's one of the many funny things about this era is that we can't always pinpoint the time things are happening because not everybody's carrying a watch around. Not everybody's consulting a watch. More often you will see somebody reference where the sun is in the sky, than you will see them reference a specific time. So we're we think at some time between 11 and noon and the British are showing up at what is now the western part of the park as they come near the Hoskins Farm. And waiting on them at the first line amongst the North Carolina militia are also two 6-pounder guns, two bronze 6-pounder guns. Artillery in this era is classified by the weight of the shot it throws. And when they see the British coming down the road, they start firing at the British, who are a perfect target at that point because at that point you have a dense column of men stacked up one behind the other. And in this era, you're not shooting shells that explode. You're shooting a solid ball on a flat trajectory. So what you want it to do is to go through several human beings, hit the ground, skip back up, go through several more human beings, and a bunch of guys stacked up down the roads is the perfect target. So the British do the smart thing and immediately start deploying off to the sides of the road to get out of the way. They bring up their own artillery to start countering, and really the first 20 minutes of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse is an artillery duel. British artillery and American artillery firing back and forth at each other about four or 500 yards away, as the British get deployed into their long lines. Adrian: Do we know what size the British artillery is? Jason: That is an interesting one because some historians think that they probably would have brought their 6’s up because if you're being fired at with a good size artillery, you'd wanna counter with something similar. But Tarleton in his memoirs says that he says the 3-pounders are brought up to fire. Adrian: Okay. Jason: And that also would make sense because 3-pounders are lighter, they’re more maneuverable, so they might be up at the head of your column. And then the last little kind of twist is that the one map we have made by people who are here, sometimes it's called the Haldane map as the original. Most people, if you've seen a map of Guilford Courthouse, you've seen what we call the Tarleton map. It's the Haldane map made by an engineer and then kind of spruced up so it could be put into a book. And if you look very closely at the bottom of that map near the Hoskins Farm, you can see the representation of three guns in the road that area. So I me I think Tarleton probably has it right in that if there are three guns down there, then it would make sense there might be two 3’s and they brought up a 6 to help support as well. William: So we’re blasting away we’re thundering away with solid shots, skipping hundreds of yards across the field. When does, when is the step off? Jason: So it's probably around 12:30 and this British Army that's about to step off is also very hungry. They didn't, they ran out of food for everybody that day before. Because the thing about this long campaign these weeks that it took to get here, they, when they at the same time they're burning their baggage and wagons, they're having to detach from any logistics chains. Now in the 18th century, any army going on a campaign, you wouldn't have the ability to ship everything you need from behind in wagons. You would need to forage, which is when you're taking from the local countryside. Whether you're just stealing it or whether you're purchasing it to help feed your army. That's been a major problem because this is, you know, winter, this is the middle of winter. So not much is growing. Anything that's been preserved for the winter has likely mostly been consumed already. And then an added problem for the British is that if you are chasing an entire American army around everywhere you go, they're getting to the food first. So after weeks of this, you now have a British Army who has been marching about 16 miles a day, six days a week and has run out of food. They arrive here and they know they have 2,100 troops, but they're only bringing 1,900. They leave 200 Loyalists, North Carolina troops, behind as baggage guards. They don't know exactly how big the American army is. The American Army, as I said, is 4,400, the British have estimates of anything between 7 to 8,000. So they think they're outnumbered three to one, and yet they have such confidence in their ability and they have such a low opinion of American militia that despite the fact that they are worn out ,despite the fact that they are hungry, despite the fact that they think they are outnumbered three to one, they are going to attack forward with the hope of driving the American army off the battlefield and destroying it. William: God save the king! Jason: And so at 12:30 on the day of battle, the British are deployed into their long lines at the Hoskins Farm, and they're gonna push forward towards the American first line of North Carolina militia to actually start the main portion of the battle. So we now have the British walking across open farm fields. Some of them are in the woods cause these farm fields aren't big enough to host the entire British force. If you can imagine being North Carolina militiamen, you've never been in a battle before, and 400 yards away across this open field, you can see the British Army deploy and then come closer and closer. But because you're all using smoothbore weapons, you can't do anything about it. You have to wait till they get within 100 yards before you can actually have a hope of hitting something. So the British approach to about within 60 yards and then the North Carolina line's gonna erupt with their volley. And we have two guys at the front line, one man who's with the 71st Highlanders, another man who's with a Hessian unit, the Regiment von Bose. And essentially what both of them say, they both describe it as though half of their units are being killed with the first volley now. That's not what happens. They both take horrible casualties in this battle, but neither unit loses 50% and neither of them are losing it with that first shot. However, what that tells us, though, is just how intense that volley must have been, because both of the witnesses that tell us this, they had been in several battles before and they had fought in the Seven Years War as well. So this is not the first time they've ever been under fire, and yet that's the experience they had from the first shot that they received. The British quickly recovered their composure, fire at the Americans and then proceed to charge in immediately because again, they don't wanna get into a prolonged firefight. They don't have any confidence that the Americans can stand up to them. So just fire at them once, charge them with the bayonets, and make the cowards run away. As they go charging in Greene’s plan starts to work and starts to fail in different ways. The way it fails is that the first line was supposed to fire two shots, but most of the middle of that North Carolina line only fires once. We have accounts of guys at the end of the line firing four or five, six shots. So that's one way it fails, it gives away a little sooner than I was supposed to. The success, however, is that it is causing chaos. Because if the center is disintegrating, that means the British units that are in the center along the New Garden Road, which would have been the road that ran through the battlefield, can now proceed forward without anybody stopping them. But as you go farther out to the ends of the British lines into the woods, those guys are slower because they're meeting more resistance. And then one last little thing that happens is that on the South end of the first line, if you look at any maps of Guilford Courthouse, you'll see the open fields, then you'll see a separate little farm field down there as well. As the Hessians came to that field, they were getting shot at in the flank. So an additional unit from the British reserve is sent to go push that threat away, and as they push that threat away, they follow it off to the southeast, away from the main effort on the New Garden Road. So the British have essentially cracked the first line, but already they have units getting ahead of their units to their left and right because they're meeting different levels of resistance. And now we have one unit wandering away to the southeast as it tries to pursue the threat that's in the woods. So now they keep going forward. They're gonna have to go 400 yards until they find the second line again. Something to keep in mind is that the British don't know if there is a second or third line. They know the Americans outnumber them, but when you arrive at the Hoskins Farm, you can only see what's across the farm fields at you. You can maybe see 1,000 guys. So that again, that's how confident they are that they can defeat this American army. How desperate they are to have a big battle. They push through the woods and they finally meet the American second line. And a similar thing is gonna happen here, where the lines gonna give away sooner than it was supposed to. Essentially what happens is that on the both the northern end of the American Virginia line of Virginia militia and the southern end of the line, you have these independent units decide they think they know what's coming. They think they see isolated British units coming to the woods and so they moved their men out of line to try and exploit what they think is an opportunity to destroy a British unit. In both cases, they quickly realized that there were more troops coming through the woods. On the north side you have whole sections of men flee the battlefield when they suddenly find British troops coming around their flank, one quote that's famous for this battle is Major St. George Tucker describes it as “a bunch of sheep scared by dogs” as the way he describes his own men. So just like that, you have a giant hole punched on the North end of the line. Meanwhile, in the southern end of line, you have a another case of mistaken identity. Almost in a similar way, you had mistaken identity with Pyle’s Massacre. What you have is Virginia militia who swung out a line. They saw the red-coated unit that was wandering away to the southeast and they proceeded to attack them and they get in their own little mini battle and the next thing they know is that marching through the woods is a blue-coated unit. And so I'll ask both of you, who typically wears blue coats? Adrian: Normally the Continentals. William: The Continental army! Jason: Exactly. And if you are a militiaman who's only been with the army for about a week, you know, you know Maryland troops, Virginia troops of the Continental line where blue. So these guys see them come and they start cheering at them. They start cheering liberty at them. William: Oh no. Jason: They think, oh, we've got this British unit pinned and these guys are gonna swipe them off the battlefield. What they don't realize is that the Regiment von Bose, the Hessians, also wear blue coats. William: Oh no! Jason: The Hessians March right up to them and blast them in the flank. Adrian: Ohh! Jason: And so the second line is finally going to give away when one last unit under General Edward Stevens finally gets it's, his men hold out the longest, and it's when Stevens himself gets wounded that they finally gives the order to fall back. So at this point the second line gets broken. It finally dissolves. But yet at this point the British have now lost all cohesion. So as these different units have given away at different time periods and with different levels of resistance, the British Army has at this point pretty much devolved into individual units spearheading their way through the woods, having their own little independent battles. So while the majority of the British Army continues to the east along the New Garden Road towards Greene’s Continental line around the courthouse to the southeast, that one British unit will now be joined by the Hessians, who saved them. And now you have two units wandering away to the southeast, a full third of Cornwallis’s combat power is now wandering away from his main effort. And so the the climax of the battle is gonna be the third line. And so if we have British units coming through the woods on their own, the first unit that will appear is the 33rd Regiment of Foot. They go to attack the American third line because they think they see artillery unsupported, but as they approach the American third line would be across open fields that are near the courthouse and are up a hill. If you go out there today, it's unfortunately wooded, it was allowed to grow up during the 20th century, but for the British they would be, essentially it's almost like a ravine, they'd appear on one end of the ravine. It'd be a clear ground. And then on the other side of the ravine is where more woods we would continue and that's where the Continentals are at the first British unit derived, the 33rd gets down into that low ground and it's then they realize they've made a mistake: It's not unsupported artillery, there's an entire line of infantry there and they get blasted from three sides. Artillery straight on, Virginia Continentals to their left, first Maryland Continentals to their right. They get smashed and go right back up the rise that they just came down. And so it seems like Greene’s plan is now working perfectly. It's exactly what he wanted. No sooner had those guys get repelled though, then the next unit appears. It's gonna be the 2nd Guards. The Guards units were elite units, very experienced in the British Army and they are gonna come up the New Garden Road. And they're gonna attack immediately across the open ground. And the thing about who they're attacking is they are attacking the 2nd Maryland. So, 2nd Maryland is a Continental unit, so they're professionals. They're well trained, well equipped. The problem was that this was the first time they've ever been in the battle before and they were in an awkward position. Instead of being in a straight line, you almost imagine they're line being like an L shape. The left flank was refused because again, if you look at any map of the battlefield, you had a bunch of open ground around the courthouse area, so they had to cover one section of open ground and then facing to their South they had a refused flank looking at all that open ground down there. So when the 2nd Guards appears they now need that entire line to swing back so that they're all facing the same direction and they can fire all their muskets at the oncoming Guards. As they try and swing their left flank down confusion ensues because at one point of the line, it's even a kind of hard to discern when you look at the sources, It seems like as the left flank is kind of swinging down so they can have everybody online together, the right flank seems to think that they're advancing, so they start to push forward and they have to be told to stop. And as they are doing all these maneuvers, the Guards are coming on, shooting at them, about to charge. 2nd Maryland fires one weak volley gets charged by the guards and shatters. And just like that, the left flank of the Continental line has completely disappeared. The guards now go to sweep up, they sweep over the artillery on that end of the line, they're going near the courthouse area, which is where Greene and his staff would have been, forcing them to flee. And as they're doing that, what's going to help save the day is that cavalry is going to come in, led by William Washington. So throughout the entirety of this battle, on both flanks of the American Army, we've had Lighthorse Harry Lee, who we talked about skirmishing in the morning, he is on the south end of the line, going back from the first line to the second line and then back into the separate fight. On the north side, William Washington's men have been up there, they've also had riflemen with them, and they go back and when he gets back to the third line, he's looking down the road and he can see the Guards attack, shatter 2nd Maryland and start swinging up. So William Washington leads his troopers in a charge and they hit the 2nd Guards and stopped them in their tracks. And that's just enough time for 1st Maryland to turn around because they, since they had attacked the 33rd Guards to the north, they now pretty much need to do an about-face to face in the correct direction to hit the Guards, and they're gonna march right up to them, they're gonna fire at each other at point blank range, one witness who was in the area, who was at the courthouse, the way he describes it is that it looked as though they were so close that the flashes of their muzzles were touching when they fired at each other, and then they're gonna charge and just like that you're gonna have a giant melee of about four or 500 guys fighting each other hand to hand. So the next thing that, the next twist in the story that happens, is that coming up to the opening around the courthouse on the West side of the open ground would be Charles Cornwallis, the British commander and his 3-pounders. So when he arrives on the scene, he sees his men in hand to hand fighting with 1st Maryland across the open ground and in the ground between them he has American cavalry. So what he's going to do is he's gonna take his 3-pounders, he's gonna have them fire grapeshot to disperse that cavalry because that cavalry could either attack his men again, or they could just easily turn and attack him and his artillery. And when he does that, that's actually a big myth that we have for this battle. The big myth surrounding this battle is that when Cornwallis chooses to do this, what he's actually doing is that he's firing his grapeshot into the mass of infantry because he is so desperate for a victory, he doesn't care if he kills his own men. The reality is that he is trying to disperse that cavalry, but in the process he's using grapeshot. Grapeshot is when you put instead of one iron ball into the cannon, one solid shot, you're putting a bag of iron balls about the size of golf balls. It's called grapeshot because when you see this package, it looks like a bag of grapes. And so when you fire it, you're turning your cannon into a giant shotgun and at about 100 yards that stuff spreads out to about a 10-yard wide cone of iron flying through the air. So if you have two guns doing that side by side, the way I describe it is that you're essentially throwing a wall of iron the size of a house through the air. He fires it. He hits the calvary. It disperses the cavalry, but a lot of that, a lot of those munitions are going to carry through and accidentally hit some of his own men, as well as some of the 1st Maryland. That's gonna get the American army, two infantry units, to pull apart. 2nd Guards retreats, 1st Maryland starts retreating and Greene is getting his army off the battlefield at this point, because once 2nd Maryland got overran, he was afraid of getting all of his Continentals destroyed. And when he came down in December of 1780, when he got command in the South, one thing that was established was that Washington made it very clear to him that he needed to preserve his Continentals. Militia have short terms of duty. Not all militia companies are great. Some have better training than others, so you can't always rely on them. But if you have a core of Continentals, you always have something to build around. So with that in mind, Greene was determined to get his Continentals off the field intact. So now the American army’s in full flight, they’re heading 12 miles north to the, their preestablished campsite at Troublesome Creek, and the British are gonna pursue them just for a short while. They get up the road, they take one volley from a a Virginia unit that really hadn't been heavily engaged, and they stopped the pursuit. They're going to start gathering on the courthouse. But that's not the end of the battle, because around the time this is happening, they're still hearing heavy firing going on somewhere to the South. If everybody remembers we had a one British unit, the 1st Guards, and the Hessians Regiment von Bose wandering away to the South. Cornwallis doesn't know this. Cornwallis doesn't know what the sound of the fighting is, so he sends Tarleton's calvary to go figure out what it is. They head about 1/2 mile to the South, and there they find those two units nearly surrounded by riflemen, light infantrymen, and militia. So when Tarleton arrives, he makes contact with the infantry and the plan is that they will fire a grand volley and once they fire their volley, he'll come charging in with this calvary to disperse them. Now what he's going to be aided by in this is that Lighthorse Harry Lee, who had also been down there with calvary, unfortunately, had left just before Tarleton arrived. Because what Lee did was he heard the fighting around the courthouse and went to investigate. Unfortunately, leaving those militiamen uncovered. So the two units fire, Tarleton charges in and he disperses the militia, and that's what actually ends the fighting at Guilford Courthouse. After 2 1/2 hour battle, the Americans are on a retreat to the north, the British are gonna start consolidating around the courthouse site to decide what has happened and what has been achieved. William: So this this clash at the end of the battle to the southeast, separate from the main fight, is this where Banastre Tarleton is famously wounded? Jason: Possibly we think so. The more reliable source on that is the, there's a Hessian major who says in his memoirs that that is where Tarleton is wounded. There is another story I don't even know the full details of it, so take this with a huge grain of salt, but there's some story about a family near the Quaker meeting house in the morning skirmish allegedly helping to patch up a wounded British officers hand, but again, the details are so vague that I've always, I've always leaned on the idea that the Hessian clearly saying Tarleton was wounded at the end fight, that's what I believe it is. William: Especially if that's where his regiment was in the southeastern little detached fight being there to see it. And I had one other question about that part and actually about that, that regiment, the Regiment von Bose. I'd heard a story about their engaging in those thick woods and a wildland fire. Is this correct? Jason: Yes. There is an account. There is a soldier who says that, and again one of the difficulties about studying history and trying to piece what happens is that that is also the only person who says anything like that. I don't see in the sources anybody else mentioning one, so to me that says at the very least if there is a fire starting, it must not be too huge. William: So as a former Army Intelligence guy, how aggravating is it to have these incomplete spotty documents? Jason: It's, it's, it is extremely frustrating. That's why I think sometimes we have to rely on, I don't know what's called, like experimental, basically the idea is that if you want to try and figure out any details missing, that's when you guys start being like, alright, well, how many men do they have? How wide does each man in a file? How fast do they march? And then that's where you have to start trying to like mathematically like piece together how fast they're moving through areas to try and, especially with like things like the second line. That is difficult because you have these distinct different things happening at different sections of the line but there really is very little way to tell what happens first. William: So Jason, that was an amazing walkthrough of the of the battle, of the intricacies, you referenced the Battle of Cowpens a few times and looking at some of the similarities, but also some of the major differences, you're looking at this massive 2 1/2 hour fight, hundreds of yards several hundred yards between the lines, and now the British hold the field. Now, Greene has achieved his mission of preserving his Continentals, saving them that core of the army that you were talking about. What is gonna be the the aftermath? You have the British holding the field, but what is kind of the immediate next steps for both sides? But then also where do we see the ripples through the rest of the campaign, even the rest of the war? What ripples do we see because of what's happened here at the courthouse? Jason: Yes. So, so the immediate aftermath is that Cornwallis holds the field. Greene sends surgeons and some additional personnel to help treat the wounded. Both sides are agreeing to help treat the wounded. Wounded are gonna be treated at the Quaker meeting house at New Garden, and Cornwallis is only gonna stay for a couple of days. Again, he's run out of food for everybody, so he now has to get to his resupply point. And so after a couple days, he issues a proclamation about how great his victory was and proceeds to head towards Wilmington, 180 miles away. Now he didn't wanna go this far because when the campaign started, they had sent a unit into Wilmington and the idea was they would come up the Cape Fear River and extend the supply lines. For anybody who's unfamiliar with North Carolina, Fayetteville, which is the area of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, is up on the Cape Fear River. Cornwallis is hoping that that river would be where his supply line would be, extending up to meet him, but the British unit in Wilmington was never able to get out because of the North Carolina militia were too uh, were harassing them too much. They couldn't establish a foothold outside. So Cornwallis has to go all the way to meet them now. Greene pursues him to the Cape Fear River, but then does not go all the way to Wilmington. Partly because he doesn't want to pursue him close to the coast, because the closer you get to the coast, the more inlets and rivers you have, so the defensible terrain will more and more heavily favor Cornwallis. So Greene decides to go down into South Carolina instead. And so what these two guys are now have to decide is what's the next step? What do we wanna do? And they almost have very similar ideas. The idea is that they want the other guy to chase them, so Greene wants Cornwallis to come back down into South Carolina because he thinks that would free up Virginia and North Carolina to send him men and troops. Cornwallis wants Greene to follow him up into Virginia, thinking that that will free up Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina to be pacified. Neither guys follows the other. Greene's gonna head down towards the British outpost near Camden, and Cornwallis is gonna head up the North Carolina coast into Virginia, where he's hoping to meet up with British troops who are already present in the Chesapeake area. Adrian: Cat and mouse. Jason: Exactly. William: I'm I'm actually reminded of when I was teaching my kid how to play tag and they weren't quite getting it like “I'm it come chase me” and like, “no, I’m it come chase me too!” It's like, no, that's not how this works. Adrian: Yeah. William: Oh that's great. So you got both sides just kind of going their separate ways. Almost like Cornwallis “I won. It was a victory. Bye.” Jason: Yep. William: When you're trying to win the hearts and minds of people, like you were saying, not only do you have all these other challenges and these issues from Pyle’s Massacre and from the missing the mistaken identity, but now you've had this major battle, and it's a British victory, but you got to think when you have such an amount of casualties, you described how there are surgeons from both sides being sent. Do we know the number or at least the estimates for each side that are left there at the Quaker meeting house? Jason: Umm, we don't have exact numbers for who is left at the meeting house, but in terms of uh, just general casualties, the Americans lose over 300 men. The British lose over 500 men and which for them again, being the smaller force, over 500 men is about 28% of Cornwallis’s force is gone with one battle. Adrian: You can't, can't win a war that way. Jason: Exactly. Adrian: So you've already kind of hit on one myth with the whole Cornwallis firing grapeshot into the melee and just not caring about taking out his own men. But are there any other myths or misconceptions that you wanna try to set straight? Jason: One that is not so much specific to Guilford Courthouse was one that we still talk to folks about a lot today is the idea that the British didn't know how to fight in the woods and just were, there's still this existing myth that, you know, the plucky American rifleman hiding behind trees and walls was shooting down these long lines of British soldiers who just didn't, could not comprehend fighting in uh, you know, scattered formations. And the thing I like to always bring up is that first of all, we gotta remember which war happened before this. We had the French and Indian War, so the British have a huge war in North America and there they are learning how to fight against Native Americans. How to fight alongside Native Americans. They are creating Ranger units. They are creating Light Infantry units. And so they're they are getting those ideas already so that by the time we get to the American Revolution, you have soldiers who are writing manuals on Light Infantry tactics. So the British understood how to fight in the woods. And the same sense the, you know, the American army isn't just a bunch of riflemen. They have Continentals. Continentals are fighting exactly the same way the British redcoat would have: dense lines, smooth bores, bayonets. And so when we think of combat, we gotta think of both units having those kind of standard line infantry units, both armies are using riflemen, both armies know how to use open order, which is another thing to think of is that we sometimes conceptualized the British marching around shoulder to shoulder at all times. It's likely that down here in the South, we would have seen them using open order, which is basically instead of having guys shoulder to shoulder, you'd be able to about, you know, kind of raise one arm and have enough space to just barely touch the shoulder of the guy next to you. So you have gaps in between each file, which makes it easier to push a line of infantry through dense woods and stuff like that. William: And now on that topic, isn't isn't there an account from this battle of British troops engaging in a firefight with the third line from the prone position? Jason: That I think that would have been that would have been the 33rd after they get smashed and go back, they do go up onto a rise and continue to fire at the Americans yeah. Also, up on the north side of that battlefield, that's also where you would have some British Light Infantry and also another Hessian unit of jaegers. So those are German riflemen. William: Yeah. Talk more about them! Jason: So yeah, uh jaeger, it translates to hunter in German, but those guys are, you know, they're carrying rifles. So the inside of the of the weapon’s bore is rifled, has a groove that will spin the ball, give it an accurate flight and they're trained to fight in loose formations just like the Americans are. And in Babits and Howard’s “Long, Obstinate and Bloody” even they they looked at the casualties on the north side and it seemed like the conclusion they drew was that the Hessians were also shooting at officers the same way Americans were, because to them, it seemed like there were in an unusually high amount of officer casualties on that part of the battlefield. William: Interesting. So Jason, you were talking about the the story of the battle and, you know, doing a little bit of myth busting. Is there any kind of special topic related to this story that you just love to highlight, love to point out related to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse and the surrounding campaign? Anything that Jason: I'm always interested to tell people about the Hessians because you know that is something everybody learns about and you, you know, there's, like the Headless Horseman myth. Everybody knows the Headless Horseman and he was a Hessian and so not everybody realizes the Hessians were down here in the South as well, and specifically the Regiment von Bose is a wonderful, just weird unit to study because these guys, most of them, had never been far from home before. Next thing you know, they are being shipped across the Atlantic. They will not see home for nearly eight years. Adrian: Wow. Jason: And their war, their war experience is they land in New York in 1776, they spend about four years of mainly doing Garrison duty. Not really extensive campaigning or long campaigns. And then in the winter of 80-81 they get shipped down to the South and have the hardest campaign of their lives, having to march, like I mentioned earlier, the reason they came up with that stat of 16 miles a day, six days a week, I know that because the Hessians kept great records, they kept records of how far they marched on a daily basis, where they were campaigning, what was happening. So the Regiment von Bose‘s journal is how I know how far they are going. And so these guys uh went from four years of almost like Garrison like duty to a hard campaign, a bloody battle, and they are just a fascinating group to talk about. And the the whole thing about them being mistaken for Continentals is such a unique thing that happens here, and I even had a walking tour, I still do sometimes, where I lead people through the battlefield in the footsteps of Regiment von Bose, and to the South of our park we have a park run by the city of Greensboro, and that's where we think the apex of that separate flight happens, and I always ask permission of that park that I can take groups in and take them onto the actual area where that separate flight was happening as well. So they… that is one thing about this battle that really caught my imagination and made me dig in deeper about what their experience of the war was. William: That's awesome. Adrian: That's really cool. William: I mean, so while we're on the topic, I'm this is actually I believe the first time in our podcast, we've discussed the topic of Hessians. Adrian: Yeah. William: Do you wanna do just a real quick introduction explaining kind of who these guys are, why they're here? I know there's that big understanding, misunderstanding, “Oh, they're they're mercenaries.” I think a lot of the recent histories have been able to kind of put that one to bed and disprove that. But if you wanna just talk a little bit about who these guys are and where they're from. Jason: Absolutely. So for anyone who's not familiar, Germany doesn't exist at this point. There is no one consolidated German state. It's a bunch of principalities in central Europe, and the British had for about 100 years at this point routinely kind of worked with German units like this. And the way I saw one author describe it is that they are not mercenaries because they're not individual soldiers of fortune. The way he describes it is that the Hessian states were mercenary states, so the idea was they would rent out their army and the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel would use those funds to to do, amongst many things, public works. He would make public markets. He did a very low version of kind of a health care for his people and he set up educational institutes. So the idea was that he was doing these public works and was able to do it without taxing his own people. And they did it by renting out their army to the British. So in that sense, that's what what my favorite description of them is that they were not mercenaries, but they were a part of a mercenary state. And so a lot of these guys are, I mean, similar to Americans, are coming from an agricultural background. There wasn't a likelihood to be able to get your own farm, really. Land was at such a premium that they are, amongst the many things they are surprised by when they come to America, is they're surprised by the standard of living most Americans have, the availability of land is very nice looking to them as well, and yet they didn't buy into the American idea, ideas and the principles behind the American Revolution, because the way some of them describe it is that the British Army, just won you a continent in a previous war and now you're rebelling against them? How ungrateful are you? So it's not so much, and yet we do know there are tons of Hessians who will desert and start a new life in America. And so it's interesting that that kind of give and take of not believing in the ideology, but seeing that things they have opportunities in America that they will not have if they go back home. And it's fascinating. And then there's also the fascinating part that in the propaganda of the time Hessians are described as these blood thirsty monsters. They'll bayonet, they'll bayonet your family and babies to trees, they'll eat human flesh, and yet at the same time that propaganda like that is being put out there, also, putting out offers for any Hessian who would desert with his weapon could get land. So it's again, it's like on one hand we're calling these guys monsters and at the same time, if you desert, we'll give you what you can become a citizen here and we'll give you a farm. William: “That's what we need in our nation!” Adrian: Gotta love propaganda. William: So you mentioned all the different principalities, where was the Regiment von Bose from? Jason: They are from, they are true Hessians, which I'm glad you asked that because we call German troops all Hessians. But they're not all Hessians. So it's several German principalities, but there's Hesse-Kessel is one so they are genuine Hessians. The reason we use that umbrella term is because of about the 30,000 or so ish Germans who come over 18,000 of them are genuine Hessians, and that's why the umbrella term. But there's actually I can't think of off the top of my head, but there's several different kind of small states in Germany and the German region at that time who are giving troops up. William: Now do we have any records from the Regiment von Bose to have any idea how many of those guys, if any, did end up taking that offer of land and citizenship? Jason: Umm, no, I don't think we have anything that could kind of give us a good number. The only kind of interesting number I ever saw was that we do have kind of a broad idea of who deserts or how many guys are deserting and when. And oddly enough, the biggest desertions occur after surrenders. It's almost like after Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga and after Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, it's almost like some of these guys could like justify it to themselves in their own head. That all right at this point, I've done my duty so I shouldn't feel guilty if I run away. Adrian: So you gave us some great, great stories, Jason, if people are interested in learning more, what are some places, resources that they can go to find more about Guildford Courthouse? Jason: Umm, so our park has a YouTube page that includes some videos. It has our park movie on there if you wanna watch that. And it also has a virtual tour I created. Some of the best books on this battle are, umm, a former Ranger who used to work here, his name was Tom Baker, he wrote a book called “Another Such Victory,” so if you want a very concise book on the battle, “Another Such Victory” by Tom Baker is wonderful. The deep dive into the battle is gonna be Babits and Howard's “Long Obstinate and Bloody.” And then there's books about the entire Southern campaign, which are great. The ones I think of are John Buchanan's books “The Road to Guilford Courthouse” and “The Road to Charleston.” Adrian: Yeah. William: Jason one last final question for you and we've we talked a lot about you know, the past of course historians, but looking at a little bit of our future, you know with the time of our recording, we're a couple years away from the 250th anniversary celebrations, the 250th anniversary of the revolution beginning, of the Declaration of Independence. So as we're thinking about what is the future of our histories, what is the future of our our battlefields and our stories; what is something that kind of you personally would like to see or be able to do or be a part of as we move forward with commemorating and interpreting these places in the Revolution? Jason: I am very interested in doing more programming to connect the war to the Constitution to understand how you get from being a colony, to having the Articles of Confederation, to the Constitution. I am interested in helping and doing programs, but I'll studying more to show how you know people are essentially having to create a brand-new government structure from scratch and when you do that, not everything's gonna be great ideas. Not everything's gonna work. And so exploring that and exploring the ways that these people are on the fly, having to try and conceptualize uh representative democracy is, you know, I I want more programming like that. And I'm trying to do more to essentially connect what I would say is connect the war to the Constitution, which is to say that the Constitution is the “So what?” of it all. You have a big war, well, what's the outcome? This is it. William: Kind of figure out that bullets-to-ballots pipeline. Jason: Yes, exactly. Adrian: I love how we get so many different answers. Well, thanks Jason for joining us and educating us on all this great, great history and information. That's going to conclude and another episode of Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. To learn more about the American Revolution and our home national parks, check out www.nps.gov/NISI for me, Ranger Adrian at Ninety Six National Historic Site, www.nps.gov/OVVI for Ranger William at Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, and www.nps.gov/GUCO for Ranger Jason at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Thank you for listening, and we hope you enjoyed it, and that we will see you again next time when we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. William: Bye! Adrian: Bye! [Outro sounds of drums, muskets, horses, and men fighting]

1776 Battle of Moores Creek with Jason Howell

Rangers Adrian and William are joined by Ranger Jason Howell from Moores Creek National Battlefield to discuss the 1776 Battle of Moores Creek Bridge in North Carolina. --- TRANSCRIPT: --- William: Hey everyone and welcome to Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian from Ninety Six National Historic site. William: Together we will explore some of the well-known and not so known stories from the American Revolution here in the American South. Let's dive in. [sounds of drums, muskets shooting, and horses] Adrian: Thanks for joining us today and today we have special guest Ranger Jason Howell from Moores Creek National Battlefield in North Carolina, and I'm gonna let him tell you a little bit more about himself. Jason: Yeah, I'm, I'm a Ranger here at Moores Creek National Battlefield, Umm and I was a I'm a U.S. Navy veteran I was on a submarine when I was in the Navy and I got my degree in history at UNCW and then I got a Masters in U.S. Military history at American Public University, or American Military University, I'm sorry, and I wrote my thesis actually on the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, so that should help out with the day's topic. William: Now how long have you been a, a Ranger there at Moores Creek, Jason? Jason: Ohh, I've been here probably since ‘09. Adrian: 14 years? Jason: Yes. William: So you're definitely someone who's we’ll say, well, steeped in the story, both academically and professionally. So when we're talking about Moores Creek, let's start out with kind of the basics here with where we are looking at. We mentioned that it's in North Carolina, but where in North Carolina is this site located today? But also in the American Revolution, where would this place have been known? How is this known then and now? Jason: Um Moores Creek, probably during the revolution was not widely known. It was it set on a naval store plantation in New Hanover County. What is now today Pender County. And it I mean, and there was a road that ran through here and there was a bridge that ran over the creek and there was very few roads in North Carolina, very few roads to the coast and that's one of the reasons why the battle’s being fought here, because it was a road and bridge. Today, uh, you know Moores Creek, like I said, it's in Pender County. It's 23 miles above Wilmington, North Carolina, right here on the coast. So not too far from from the beach. If you, you know, if you ever want to come visit us. We're right here at the beach. Adrian: Now, Jason, you said it was on a naval store plantation. What does that mean? Jason: Oh yeah, uh naval stores, so. It's the lifeline of the British Navy. So you have your tar pitch and turpentine that is created from the sap of the long leaf pine and that helped, that went into actually help building ships as far as with the tar and the pitch, you would seal the hulls of the ships and stuff and grease the riggings. Turpentine was basically used for medicinal purposes and stuff like that, but it was all, you got all of that from the from the pine tree. Adrian: Alright, so very important, important place for anybody any big nation, really. Jason: Yes, Great Britain. I think we we've determined that they got about 95% of their naval stores from North Carolina. Adrian: Oh wow. William: Wow. Jason: So very important little colony during the American Revolution. Adrian: So we've covered where it's at; when in the revolution is the battle at Moores Creek going to take place? Jason: Sure. Um very early on. This is going to be February 27th, 1776. Four months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. So very, very early. William: Now, being that early in the American Revolution, and this is one of the points of why we talk about this being a podcast about the Southern Theater and not the Southern Campaign to take the focus away from that traditional 1780-1781 main British Army focus. But being this early in the war, this is prior to that time. This is prior to Lord Cornwallis, these British regulars being here in the American South. So who are some of the kind of the key players and influential leaders on both sides of this story? Jason: Sure. Yeah, so, uh, you first of all, we'll start with the British side of things. Your your main player probably I would say it would be Governor Josiah Martin is basically the guy that gets everything going. And then you have a lot of key players and I mean this is a huge campaign. Martin would ask for actual British troops to come down. You have Sir Henry Clinton, who's on his way. You have Lord Cornwallis who is on his way over from Cork, Ireland. He's bringing with him 5,000 troops. They were all supposed to meet up here in North Carolina and bring about 10,000 extra guns to hand out to the folks of the North Carolina Backcountry. There's quite a few folks here that don't like the Patriots, and I'm not talking about the football team. Umm then the the boots on the ground here in North Carolina, the guys that are already here is you have Lieutenant Colonel Donald McLeod and you have General Donald McDonald, who would be overall in command. There's also another British Army officer who's already living here on half pay, basically retirement status, you have Alexander McLean and we could go on and on and on and on but I think we probably should stop there. It's probably enough. And then, of course, the the Patriots side of things, probably a little bit lesser known folks for many people, you have, I would say the main patriot leader would be Cornelius Harnett. And then from there, we're gonna drop down into, oh, you got Samuel Johnson. You have General Robert Howell. You got General James Moore. You would then have Richard Caswell, who's overall commander here at the Battle of Moores Creek and Colonel Alexander Lillington. Adrian: That's a lot of people to remember. Jason: That's a lot, yeah there. But this this huge campaign, you know, this is the first time this the British would attempt to invade the South. And I mean, you know, everybody looks at Moores Creek as kind of being this, the small little battle and it was, but it it's part of a much larger expedition and and has a has a pretty big impact. This little battle that we have. William: Okay s we talked a lot about we have all these different commanders, a lot of moving parts, things that are happening; crossing the Atlantic, British plans trying to come into the coast in the South, what is gonna happen here? What is the story of the Battle of Moore's Creek? Jason: Umm, you know, it's it's quite a long story, Will, it's this is a battle that had been brewing for about 10 years. Umm, there's much more going on here than just the battle itself. This is where North Carolinians have divided themselves on very firm sides and the British hoped to exploit that, you know, and I don't have to tell you guys this, but you'll listeners, they, you know, they probably don't realize the British are not sending large armies over here. They're sending just enough to prop up the Loyalist and the chief aim is to get those people who are going to be loyal to the crown to fight the war for them. So the British are looking for these opportunities and North Carolina presents a very interesting opportunity for Great Britain. Josiah Martin, the royal governor of North Carolina at the time, would lose control of the colony in 1775 early on. And when that happens, he basically writes the uh, he writes Parliament and say, hey, you know guys, he's saying, hey, send me 7,000 regular British troops with an additional 10,000 guns. I've got a large group of people here that don't particularly care for the Patriots, and that large group of people are, is not the Highland Scots that we talk about primarily, it's a group of people called the Regulators. There was a rebellion fought here early on in North Carolina, called the Regulator Rebellion. Um, only one battle, the Battle of Alamance, pitted backwoods farmers against the royal, then royal governor, Governor Tryon, William Tryon, I'm sorry I didn't mention him earlier, but William Tryon and his government. And everybody kind of looks at that, oh well, that's a royal governor. And you got all these poor backwoodsmen. They're fighting a royal governor, so therefore it has to be that these these backwoodsman are hardened patriots and the and they're not. They're good British subjects. They have been probably unfairly taxed by the local government and it keep in mind the local government, not parliament. And when they're unfairly taxed, there's this, it, I could go ohh all day about this little subject, but essentially what it comes down to is both sides really begin not to talk to one another and they take up arms and a battle is fought. And when that battle is fought, the royal governor and his army would win pretty handedly and to add insult to injury, after that battle is fought they deem all these Regulators as being outlaws and they're still made to pay taxes and without any representation in the colonial assembly, which is really odd because the Patriots here in North Carolina are telling Parliament hey, you can't tax us, we have no representation in Parliament. And the Regulators never really forgot that. And to divide it even more, Governor Tryon leaves. And when he leaves, he, insteps governor Josiah Martin in 1771, and Martin comes in and starts looking at the situation with the folks in the Backcountry, this Regulator rebellion, and Martin, and he, he he's completely night and day between Governor Tryon and Governor Martin. Governor Martin is by the book British law, like everything is by the book. You better show me policy, because that's what we're gonna follow. Whereas Tryon was ah I’ve got some things to do, but if I need to bend the law, I'll do it. And I think that's probably the reason why he got along with the Patriot leaders here in North Carolina so well, because he was the type of person that was, well, I need to get this done and I’ll kind of turn the eye on this type of deal. Whereas when Martin comes in and he starts reviewing what happened during the Regulator rebellion, he starts really cracking down on these patriot leaders saying, hey, you guys really did these backwoodsmen wrong. They shouldn't be called outlaws. In fact, I would suggest that you take the moniker of outlaw off their names and the, and the Patriots never really come off that. Which is gonna leave a bad taste in the the Regulator's mouth. And everybody knew what was going on here, even in way over in England. Everybody had heard about this Regulator rebellion, and no one wanted to come to North Carolina, so that would bring in your, your, your Highlanders. They start sending Highlanders in here because where do you send the people you don't want? The place you don't want to go. So you get a large influx of Highlanders starting in 1771 onward. So you got a bunch of a fresh new lot of Highlanders coming in. And when this happens, and when Governor Martin loses control of the colony in 1775, the large group of people he's talking about are the Regulators and these Highlanders are kind of like this icing on the cake. He's looking at, he says, ohh yeah, we've got Regulators, but we also have a large group of Highlanders that's been coming in and I think I can get them these guys on my side as well. And eventually the British will sign off on it mainly after the Patriots would attack Fort Johnston in the cap, in the mouth of the Cape Fear River. In July of 1775, the Patriots will attack this place in what is present day Southport, and when they do that, they the Patriots had attacked the government installation. And so, Governor Martin then declares war on North Carolina. And so after that happens, uh, the British kind of sign-off on this plan. They say, yeah, we'll send you some troops and and we really believe that you can get all these people together. So this plan starts to breathe. But the Patriots, they don't sit back. You know, they could be sitting back and just kind of maybe waiting in the wings, but they really started getting themselves prepared. They start developing minute men units as opposed to your militia. Your militia are typically men between the ages of 16 and 60. Your minute men are probably going to be between the ages of 16 and 25. Sort of going to be a lot younger. They're gonna get a little bit more training than your militia. Your militia gets, uh, probably three or four days a year. Whereas your minute men were to be trained for three weeks straight and then after that they were to meet once a month to to train and drill. And they were to carry their weapons and to be ready to go in a moments notice. So they would then also start developing their Continentals. There's the 1st and 2nd North Carolina that will be developed during between September 1775 and the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, which occurs in February ’76. So you have all that being built up. And so there is a there's a, a time between 17, 1775 and 17, you know, the September ‘75 and ‘76 where the Patriots were training, and but the the Loyalists they went into hiding. They are not training, they're just kinda hanging out. Not really making themselves known. And eventually Governor Martin would call for them. Sometime in January, I don't remember exactly when, but he would call out for the Loyalists to to make their way to the coast. But before he had actually done that, General Donald McDonald, not to be confused with Ronald McDonald, he and Lieutenant Colonel Donald McLeod would come into North Carolina probably around September 17th, 1775. And they went into the Backcountry. But as they came into North Carolina, they actually come into the port of New Bern and tell the Patriots, hey, we're here to live with our countrymen. We don't want to cause any trouble. We were we are formally of the of the British Army, but we don't want to have any part to do with that. So you know, they're they're already coming in and telling lies, but the port authorities let them through and they go into the backcountry and they're starting to try to raise an army from the Highlanders and the Regulators. And so they're going around during this time and they're talking to Regulators and, or former Regulators and Highlanders, saying, hey, you know, the governor's gonna call on us pretty soon. And and there are some pretty big numbers, according to Donald McLeod of who he talked to. There's one number they said that he said that he had talked to a large body of Regulators, at least 3,000, that had agreed to to form. And he and several thousand Highlanders actually had agreed to form as well. But as things draw near to February, the only people to really show up in great numbers are your, your Highlanders. You're probably looking at least I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of close to 2,500 Highlanders in Cross Creek, which is present day Fayetteville, and you're looking probably only about 200 Regulators. There had been a large body of Regulators that did turn out, but by a lot of accounts these guys went home when they saw the Patriots forming and moving towards the east. And so a lot of those guys went home and when some of them got to Cross Creek, they thought that Governor Martin would be there, but he was nowhere to be found. So even more of them turn around and go back home, leaving only about 200 Regulators or former Regulators there. And because they didn't really wanna be led by Highland officers. And so when governor or when Donald McLeod gets his troops together, he kind of splits him in half, leaving a part of his men in Cross Creek to defend the city because they would raise the royal standard above the above the city, and taking about 1,600 of his men and moving towards the coast, giving him a roughly around 1,400 Highlanders and 200 former Regulators who then move out. As he moves out, keep in mind we have the Continentals that have formed, um, Continentals under James Moore then Colonel James Moore, would move up from Wilmington, the 1st North Carolina, along with the Wilmington District Minutemen, about 1,100 troops would come up and meet General Donald McDonald just south of Cross Creek. And they had with them roughly about five artillery pieces. And they're just kind of waiting at the south of the city. And General Donald McDonald comes marching out and he sees them across this small creek. And they kind of stop and start sending each other messages, you know. And it was really kind of to buy time. General Donald McDonald is waiting till nightfall because he's actually spotted the Patriots with their artillery, knowing that he had no artillery of his own and he that he needed to preserve his force. He decides to evade that force in the middle of the night. And he started marching down a road which is the road that they're actually gonna travel down and actually fight that, fight the Battle Moores Creek on which is the Black River Road. And they get ahead of that group of Patriots. Now, when Colonel Moore wakes up and realizes that the Loyalists got ahead of him, he quickly sends word over to another minute men unit led by Richard Caswell, who's the principal commander at the Battle of Moores Creek, says, hey, you know, get to Corbett’s Ferry. Corbett’s Ferry is about 18 miles north of where the Battle of Moores Creek will take place. Get to the ferry crossing now. Ferry crossing is basically just the flat bottom boat that takes you from one side of the river to the other. So get to Corbett’s Ferry, burn the ferry crossing, and wait for the Loyalists there. Caswell has with him at that point around 800 men, primarily minute men, a few militia, and he actually gets to Corbett’s Ferry first. He gets to Corbett’s Ferry, burns the ferry crossing. Meanwhile, Colonel Moore will send Colonel Lillington and a portion of his minutemen down the Cape Fear River on rafts, about 250 men to come and support Colonel Caswell. They get off just south of Moores Creek, off the river, off the Black River, and they come up off the Black River and head towards Moores Creek, to actually come up behind Caswell, which is north of Moore's Creek at Corbett’s Ferry. General Donald McDonald has his men fanned out along the the two rivers, the the South and the Black River, looking for ways across both of them to get around the Patriots. And they actually find a place on the Black River, where they find an enslaved man who knows where a sunken skiff is. And when I say sunken it isn't… they had a hole in the bottom of the boat and they, the Patriots, had put rocks on the boat to sink it into the river. So the enslaved man goes down, takes the rocks off, brings the skiff up and General Donald McDonald starts ferrying his men across the Black River, 5 miles beyond Caswell's position. And Caswell didn't know what was going on, and so he's just kind of waiting there at the ferry crossing and then all of a sudden, he hears the bagpipes starting to play General Donald and his bagpipers and his drummers to the ferry crossing. So the Patriots are kind of just there, at the ferry crossing, thinking hey, the Loyalists are coming up to the ferry. And but they had the main force had actually got across the river and they were about to make another attack. Um at one point there, or somehow, Caswell realizes that he's about to be outflanked, and he leaves Corbett’s Ferry and he leaves it in a hurry and he falls back onto Moores Creek Bridge. And we know he leaves it in a hurry because the Loyalists capture several wagons, some of them with weapons. They capture about 23 Patriots, and Caswell will fall back onto Moores Creek Bridge. And it's once he gets to Moores Creek Bridge, Colonel Lillington had come up and had gotten to Moores Creek Bridge, and at that point they decided, hey, let's make a stand here. Moores Creek is very important because there's very few roads, Moores Creek is 10-feet deep in most places, the size of regulation basketball, so you're not wading across Moores Creek. And so they're gonna make this stand here so they start throwing up earthworks. And not only did they put up earthworks on the east side of Moores Creek, but they put up earthworks on the west side. The west side is the same side as the Loyalists would be on, the east side would be towards the ocean, toward where the Loyalists are trying to get. We believe, we don't know, there's not a whole lot of writing or thought out there as why Caswell did that. We believe that Caswell did that to deceive the Loyalists. There’s not a whole lot of information as to why he did that. Caswell never writes down “Oh yeah, I did this to deceive,” we just don't know. We can kind of gather that that's probably what's his plan. But he places them on the west side and on the east side is where the battle, you know, where they're gonna take up and defend themselves. But they start building these earthworks probably on the 26th of February. Late in the afternoon, the Loyalists would have camped about 6 miles north of this position here at Moores Creek Bridge, and they send a Loyalist courier down. This courier is a well-educated man and he comes riding into the Patriot camp, and on the west bank mind you, about 6 o'clock that afternoon or 6:30 in February. So, you know we're here in the South. About 6:30 in February is dark, so the only things that he sees, um, is the Patriots on the west bank. And he describes hey, there's earthworks there, and there's about 1,000 men because by that time with Caswell’s force and Lillington’s force, we're looking somewhere around 1,000 Patriots given the various different accounts that I have. But they, they're all camped on the west bank that night. And so the Loyalist courier sees them on the wrong side of the creek, um, and kind of not very well-defined earthworks, but some earthworks, umm, and he leaves after that he actually delivers a message for Caswell and his men to surrender. Caswell, of course, says no. But he takes back the information that he gathered and he gives it to General Donald McDonald. Now from what I can gather, is he probably doesn't really give it to McDonald more so that he gives it to Donald McLeod. Um, McDonald had become sick and from what I can tell, very ill. A lot of the Loyalists, or at least most of them, had no tents to sleep under. They were just basically sleeping out and, you know, under the stars. And it had been raining for a couple of weeks, so they're probably sick and and and cold and and everything else. And General Donald McDonald's probably about 70. So he come down with something as something like pneumonia from what I can understand, umm from what little bit of account that I do have, umm. And so McLeod takes this information and decides to make a night march. He decides to start marching about 1:00 AM because seeing the opportunity of the Patriots on the west bank with their back to the water, he feels that he can come down here and surround the Patriots, somehow get a group of men behind the encampment to cut off the bridge, he can capture the Patriots here at Moores Creek and and and alleviate that army in front of him and then make his way to the coast. Umm, so he starts marching and he gets down here and he actually sends a group of men around the backside of where the Patriot encampment was, towards the bridge crossing. Meanwhile, the forces, they kind of, they spread out into two units: one led by Donald McLeod, and the other led by Alexander McLean, another former British Army officer. And they start leading their men into the encampment on the west bank. And they're creeping through the woods. It's probably about 4:00 o'clock in the morning and they can see campfires still burning, lights flickering, maybe some tents here and there, and and once they get into the encampment, they realize there's no one there. The Patriots have actually fallen back onto the east bank into the earthworks they had uh built the day before. And now why did they do that? Maybe they heard the Loyalists coming. We don't know. One of the things that we do know is that there was a sheriff that would go on trial after the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, the Duplin County Sheriff. He was he got in trouble for being a go-between. He would go to Loyalists and say, hey, I know where the Patriots are, how much money you got? Then he turned around and go over to the Loyalists, hey, you know? And so he was basically playing both sides. So it's it's possible that the sheriff tipped off the Patriots. But either way, the Patriots would then follow would fall back into the east side on the east side of Moores Creek, into the earthworks. And so when the loyalists get there, they're creeping through and they don't find anybody in the encampment and all of a sudden out towards where the bridge is, they see muzzle flashes and shots, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The Loyalists that went to secure the bridge had actually seen some Patriot sentries which is your guards. They're there at the bridge and they shoot at these Patriots, and the Patriots run off up this causeway behind them and to the commander at the bridge, a Captain Campbell, would explain to him, hey, we saw some sentries on the other side. We shot at them. They ran up this causeway. They're in... from what I can gather, like I said, there's very little evidence out there, but we we believe that they thought these Patriots had set up a kind of a rear guard or a kind of a, a way to kind of allow them to know that, hey, the Loyalists had got there, but the Loyalists decided that, hey, there's just a very few Patriots probably left. Looks like they left their encampment, kind of in disarray, looked like they got out of here in a hurry so they start forcing men across this bridge. But the problem is with Moores Creek Bridge at this point, the Patriots have dismantled it, at least a portion of it. And then they greased the girders with soft soap and tallow to make it difficult to cross. They eventually get about 50 men across and once they get 50 men, they feel that's probably enough. Lieutenant-Colonel McLeod is across the creek with his men, and so he charges up this narrow causeway and they and they charge headlong into the Patriot position. They probably run about 100 yards up this causeway and all of a sudden the Patriots just opened fire, a devastating fire. Not only do the Patriots have 1,000 men with muskets, but they have anywhere from 2 to 5 artillery pieces. And at this point blank range it's it's very deadly. Some of the stories that come out of that is that McLeod gets back up to his knees after the first volley rings out and he orders his men forward and then another volley rings out and the initial charge is all but over. The Loyalists would fall back on to the bridge, umm, rally up again, try to force themselves across the bridge and come up and take the Patriot position. They actually try this four times to no avail and eventually after probably about 40 minutes or so, they decide to kind of figure out a another way across the creek. Realizing there was no other way across the creek they head back to General Donald McDonald. McDonald orders his men to go inland to get away from the Patriots. Hopefully the British Army would be here. The British Army should have been here. They were supposed to be here in mid-February, but this is 1776 and no one's got a cell phone. General Donald McDonald can't call up Sir Henry Clinton, “Hey, man, what's going on? Umm, you know where you at?” Because both units, both Sir Henry Clinton, coming from Boston with his 2,000 men, he'd been delayed by storms in Virginia. Lord Cornwallis had also been delayed by storms coming out of Cork, Ireland, and neither one of them were gonna be here in time. Clinton doesn't get here until March. Cornwallis don't get here until I think it's May even that he arrives in, actually arrives in North Carolina. But the plan was for the Loyalists to try to get away and and kind of wait it out for the the British Army to get here. And the battle would be over relatively quickly. Some accounts have it as as less, as as 3 minutes. You'll hear if you ever come visit the park, it'll say by some accounts the battle was over in 3 minutes. That's probably the initial charge. But, and that's really, that's really how it kind of played out. There's no British Army here. The Loyalists get defeated very soundly, they probably have at least 30 casualties, 30 to 50 casualties that we know of on the field, and another 35 or so are MIA, missing in action. And so you're looking roughly at about 85 casualties on the Loyalist side and you have two casualties on the Patriot side. So very low numbers on the on the Patriots side when it comes to casualties. William: Wow. Now I wanna ask a quick follow up question talking about, cause I've heard some of the traditional stories like you're talking about with the dismantled bridge and the the soft soap on the girders; can you tell us more about the “King George and broadswords” thing? Jason: Sure. Yeah. So where that comes from is a body of Loyalists actually make it to the coast, umm, they did a huge loop around the Patriot lines and they get to the coast and they link up with Cornwallis. And Cornwallis, when he gets here in May, he writes a report and he says, hey, you know, there's a, yeah, I think it's May, it might be April, late April, but I can't remember it. Either way, he writes a report and in his report of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, he says that the Loyalist charge cry was to be “King George and broadswords” in his official report. And so when you see that “King George and broadswords” that comes from Lord Cornwallis himself, as far as what the body of Loyalists had told him, their their battle cry was to be so. William: Now, do you believe this? Do you think that is a battle cry that they used, or is there a potential that they this is being embellished a little bit because either they know how Cornwallis will receive it if they mention King George? Or Cornwallis is embellishing it to show the loyalty of the people? Jason: You know, I mean, it's very possible, but you know there there's no information out there as to you know why, what his thought pattern was behind it. You know, we could go down many of different rabbit holes and and as to why this was done and and it's very possible that you know trying to to rally the the support of certain people by mentioning “King George” or or maybe even the Highlanders with the “broadswords” itself. But you know but there again there's there's there's nothing out there that you know that says “This is why I did it.” Adrian: So the Loyalists are defeated, does that kind of tamper with Loyalist support in North Carolina for a while at least? Or does it, does it do anything? Jason: I think it does. For at least the Highlanders, I think after being kind of left here, I think that kind of softens the Highlanders stance towards the crown, or at least helping them out at this point. The Patriots would go around and commit several atrocities against Loyalists. And the Loyalists kind of, or at least in the Highland community, kind of shy away from, you know, saying, hey, I'm for the crown. And we we know that when they come back here in in 1781 after the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, when they come, when Cornwallis comes back down through Cross Creek, which is present day Fayetteville, umm, the Highlanders don't want to have anything to do with them. They they remember what happened here in in 1776, kind of being left out the dry. So it's very possible that it kind of quelled that. Now from what I can gather with the Regulators, it was almost a Hatfield-Mccoys type thing. Like almost every time they got a chance to join up with British forces; they did. Mainly because of what had happened during the Regulator rebellion in 1771. They never forget, gave the Patriots for that. To give you an example of the animosity they held towards the Patriots: a week prior to the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, there was this Patriot officer and he was in this backwoods town trying to rally Patriot support. And these former Regulators, there's ten of them and I don't know exactly how the situation went down, I don't know if they grabbed the guy and lined him up against the wall, or they all just kind of went on and, you know, they all saw him at once. But in the court proceedings that has so and so shot this officer. So and so shot this officer, all ten of them shot this guy. And that's kind of give you an idea of, I mean, they just rode into town, they saw him, all right, you know, we're going to kill this guy. William: Wow. Adrian: Talk about holding a grudge. Jason: Ohh yeah, there's a lot of bad blood in North Carolina. I think it was Bradford Jay Wood who said that North Carolina was probably the most violent place in the in all of the colonies prior to the American Revolution. And it had got pretty bad between the Regulators and the Patriots prior to the American Revolution. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of holdover from that. William: And I want to thank you for sharing this because, like we were talking about, you know, so many people think Moores Creek Bridge and the Highlanders because of their role at the battle. But when you're looking at the larger campaign like you're explaining, so many people say “Ohh a former Regulator. They were they must have been against tyranny and against the king!” Jason: Right. William: And as you explained, no, they are for the king. They are against the local government, the corrupt government. Jason: Right. William: So when you have these coastal North Carolinians who had been part of this governor Tryon’s militia and his movement, now those coastal Carolinians have become Patriots. The former Regulators are not wanting anything to do with those guys. I've seen this in South Carolina records before, but it's great to hear this in North Carolina as well. Now all these great stories that you've shared with us; is there one that kind of really stands out with you? Is there one that you would say is kind of your favorite, either from the battle itself or like we're talking about this larger campaign? Jason: I think really it is the story of the Regulators. Um mainly because it doesn't get told. They’re a very marginalized portion of the Battle of Moores Creek. I think it kind paints the Patriots in a less than positive light. And I think people haven't talked about the Regulators mainly because it hadn't, you know, it does kind of get that negative vibe towards the, the, the Patriots themselves because during the Regulator rebellion they, uh, the the colonial government here in North Carolina had had told the Regulators “Hey, you're going to pay for this mansion that we're going to build the governor and you, by the way, don't need any representation we’re your representation” and the Regulators were, you know, you know, they're not very educated people, but they were educated enough and realized that, hey, that's kind of against British law and wasn’t you're saying the exact same thing to Parliament in 1766 about the Stamp Act? That doesn't really jive. And, I just find that to be a very fascinating story, mainly because it kind of contradictory with the Patriots, the Patriot saying hey, no taxation without representation, but then they kind of turn around and do the same thing to their people of kind of lower standard here. It's it's really a, a class struggle I guess. It’s a class struggle. It’s your classic class struggle. You have your poor backwoodsmen in the periphery, you got your kind of eastern elites over here saying, hey, we're the government you do what we say. I think by far that's probably one of my favorite. I think also another one of my favorite things is to get into the the whole discussion of kilt or no kilt. It's always, it's always fun to hear both sides of that argument. What I will say is we did find a document not too long ago, an actual newspaper article that said that in November 1775 a large body of Highlanders came to North Carolina and actually landed in the Cape Fear, they were all here, they were, they were outfitted for war, and all 500 of them had kilts on. So one of the the interesting thing is there's a there's always this one group that says “Ohh there are there are no kilts in the in the in the colonies” and well we got a newspaper article here that says these guys, these 500 guys actually had kilts. Umm. Now, were they at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge? I don't know. It's very possible they could have been a portion of the men that McDonald leaves behind at Cross Creek, they could have been at the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, we just don't know. They there is also the fact that there are some Highland officers that are went up to Philadelphia that people like to bring up. But if you look at the timeline I think November of ‘76 that they're discussing what these Highland officers look like, that's February to November. I mean is it possible they still have the same clothes on? Maybe but more likely they probably changed clothes. And then if you look at the account close enough there's about three of them where it said they give a really good description of their hat, what kind of vest and coat and shirt they were wearing, but then when it comes to the trousers or the lower, they, it has unknown. So are you telling me you gave me a really good description of everything, but then when you get to the trousers, you're telling me unknown? Or is it the fact that the jailer who gave the account was like, you know, didn't really know what a kilt was? Or didn't know how to describe this guy has a kilt on or that he's wearing a dress? Adrian: Thinks he has a blanket around his waist. Jason: Yeah, yeah, that he's got a blanket around. You know that, that whole, you know, argument is always interesting to to listen to both sides talk about. Typically tell people we don't know. There's this account and that account and we have this knowledge here, but we don't know there was actually any here at the battle. So yeah, there those are probably my two favorite. Adrian: Well, sounds like there's a lot of commonality in some of our stories when it comes to the contradictory nature of the Patriots. Jason: Sure. Ohh well yeah. I think it's a good time, you know, to use this is they were pretty good at quote unquote fake news. They could they could make a mountain out of a molehill for sure if they wanted to. Adrian: So are there any common questions or misconceptions that you get a lot from visitors that you maybe wanna set straight? Jason: Well, there's a, uh, there's the the cannons here. There is a swivel gun that we have here in the park and I cannot tell you that the Patriots actually had a swivel gun. In fact, the description of their artillery is is very sparse. The two guns that came from New Bern, they said the larger one was called Mother Covington and they had a smaller gun and but they both left New Bern on carriages, plural. Adrian: Yeah. Jason: I know that because on the February the 24th, the man who built the carriages for the cannons that left New Bern stood before the colonial, or the Committee of Safety in New Bern and said, hey guys, I built these carriages and I hired some horses to take them to Caswell. Can you pay me for it? Umm, so we know those two cannons at least left New Bern on carriages. And then we have three more supposed brass pieces, as it was in the description of of the man who talked about them, that came up from Wilmington. But it's it just said “we aligned three brass pieces with the bridge.” Now, were one of those a swivel gun? It's possible. Was it in a tree stump? Mmm I I can't say that for sure. Could they have put it in tree stumps? Definitely, but do I have any primary source that says that? No, I don't. I'm trying to think there's probably a couple of other ones that we could talk about, but unless you guys can think of any that you may have heard. William: Was Jamie Fraser really there? Jason: Yes, we did. We had we had four James Frasers here. Four. Now it was James Fraser, not Jamie Fraser. No, we had we had four James Frasers uh, we had 13 Donald McDonald's. There were several uh Donald McLeod's again McLeod, being a prevalent name, and Donald being very, you know, I can only imagine going into the Loyalist camps all “Hey, Donald!” everybody “Yeah!” I will say you know the importance of the Battle of Moores Creek is that this is the first decisive Patriot victory of the American Revolution. You know, prior to this, it's, you know, did did you, did the Patriots win it? Did we not win it? You know, or, you know, there's always this kind of like back and forth where all, you know, just for, like, the Battle of Lexington and Concord, you know the uh, British kind of crashed through the Patriot lines to get to the arsenal, but when they find out there's no uh weapons there, they kind of fight a, fight a pretty successful delaying action back to Boston. You know so there's always this iffiness of who wins? Who wins what? What’s going on? In the Battle of Moores Creek this is the first decisive Patriot victory of the American Revolution, and it allows North Carolina to be the first colony to allow its delegates to seek out and to vote on independence. It allowed them to go out to the Continental Congress and say, hey, North Carolina wants its independence. Say, what do you think you guys wanna join up? It’s become the first colony to do that. And it's also the last ever Highland broadsword charge anywhere in the world. The Scot Highlanders would would charge with their traditional broadsword. And from what we can gather and even over in Scotland they say the Battle of Moores Creek is the last ever, Highland, true Highland broadsword charge. Because when the Loyalists come across the bridge, the 50 of them that do, they charge with these with these weapons that are probably about 300 years old at this point or the design of weapons. They were designed for a time when men still wore armor on the battlefield. It was designed to cut through metal. It kind of had outlived its usefulness and this would be the last time there was this all out charge. So those that is the three things that make us a National Park. We were on designated National Park in 1933 for military study, and we were actually initially I think a Battleground, or not Battleground I’m sorry, a National Military Park and then they would change it over in 1980 from a National Military Park to a National Battlefield. Adrian: I had to go look up the meaning of Donald, and it means basically “world leader” or… So that might be why it was popular. People like me- name meanings. Jason: There you go. William: So you've shared a lot about how significant like you just mentioned the three reasons for it being protected by the National Park Service, but you also mentioned that one of those reasons being this allows, this enables, North Carolina to give the green light to their delegates to begin seeking independence. So at the time of this recording, we are three years away from the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Three years away from the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Moores Creek Bridge, as we're thinking about that, whenever people are listening to this or whenever they choose to think about Moores Creek Bridge or come visit the site, what is something that you think is important, kind of the major drop the mic walk away that all visitors and listeners should be aware about the battle of Moores Creek Bridge? Jason: As far as it regards to the um, the America 250 event; we here at Moores Creek are looking at it as more so a story not of Moores Creek, but a story of the United States. A story of us. You know, when did we become us? Moores Creek is kind of that starting point. But hopefully you know for the for our A250 event which will occur in 2026, we are getting a lot of local parks to tell the story of not only you know what's going on during the colonial period, but what's going on during the antebellum period and what's going on during the Civil War and what's going on during the early or the late 1800s with the Wilmington Race Riots and what's going on with all the history within this region and bringing all of our stories together in in you know why, you know, we're gonna basically hopefully tell the story of the United States, not only the good, but the bad, but taking all those stories and piling them together. Because while the while the US, while you know the United States, started in, you know 1776, we kind of look at it as your grandfather let's say and your your you're gonna give him a birthday party and he's like 89 years old. You know, are you gonna just invite those people who know him right now? I mean those closest to him, just you, or you gonna invite all of his that he's had throughout his life? And and so we kind of look at it like that. We wanna not only celebrate the US being born, but we wanna talk about the US as a whole as as our our entire story. So that's kind of way Moores Creek is going to go about that. It should be a very interesting program that week. I’d say anywhere from the American Revolution I think up to World War Two, and maybe even further into the history here in southeastern North Carolina. Adrian: Very cool. William: Very cool. Adrian: Well, thank you, Jason, for joining us. That's gonna wrap up our episode on the Battle of Moores Creek. If you would like to find out more about Moores Creek, Jason, where can they go? Jason: Umm yeah, you could definitely look up our website here for the park or Google Moores Creek National Battlefield. I don't have the actual website in front of me, but definitely check us out there. You can check us out on Facebook or any any of the social media, we got Facebook, what is it, Instagram there you go that's the one I was trying and also Twitter and you can probably and we also have a YouTube channel that you can get information on. I would suggest, my suggested readings for you, “The Moores Creek Bridge Campaign,” by Hugh F. Rankin. Uh, there is “Redcoats on the Cape Fear” by Bert Dunkerly. That's probably the two prominent ones. There is one that just came out, “March to Independence, 1775 to 1776” by Mike Cecere. I believe I said his name correctly and that one's a pretty good book. Umm come call me, I will send you some information via email and I'd be more than happy to do any of that. Adrian: Well, thank you. Once again that's gonna conclude this episode of Southern War, the podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. So thank you for listening and we hope you enjoyed and we'll see y'all next time when we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. William: Bye everyone! Adrian: Bye! [sound of musket shots, drums, and horses]

Anne Cruger with Ocean Dunbar

Intern Ocean Dunbar joins Rangers William and Adrian to talk about her research into Anne Cruger. --- TRANSCRIPT: --- William: Hey everyone and welcome to another episode of Southern War, a podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. [Intro sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting] William: I'm Ranger William from Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Adrian: And I'm Ranger Adrian from Ninety Six National Historic site. William: And together we will explore some of the well-known and not so known stories from the American Revolution here in the American South. Let's dive into it. [sounds of drums, horses, muskets, swards, and men fighting] Adrian: Alright. Well, thanks for joining us today. Today we have a special episode. We are joined by our HBCUI intern at Ninety Six National Historic Site, Ocean Dunbar. Ocean tell us a little bit about yourself. Ocean: Hi first of all like say thank all to both of y'all for having me on to the podcast. This is very nice. A little about myself. I'm a rising senior at Prairie View A&M University, about 40 minutes outside of Houston. I’m majoring in History and minor Af-Am studies and I just like to learn new stuff everyday. Adrian: What's Af-Am studies? Ocean: African-American studies. Adrian: Ohh OK awesome. William: So Ocean, can you tell us a little bit about this, this program that you're in? What is the HBCUI intern program and what what does that all stand for? Ocean: Ohh well HBCU does stand for historically black colleges and universities, and then the I is for intern in interp and the program is a gateway to connect HBCU students who want to connect with the National Park Services or connect with the youth. It's all about like, interpretation, education and stuff like that. William: Very cool, very cool. Adrian: So what got you interested in being part of the HBCUI program? Ocean: Well, at first I would say, I was looking for internships. I was in my junior year. I was like, oh, I need an internship. Something to do with my major and being a history major some might think there’s not a lot to do in our field or we're overshadowed, we don't really get our credit, it's all about, you know, the nursing majors, the engineering, the business. Well, that's for my school. But I was looking at internships and I came across um Greening Youth Foundation and I did like the description. I was reading about it. I applied you know had an interview, had an interview with Josh and Adrian at the park. I really loved that. And they really umm while doing the interview they said a lot of things that really I gravitated towards, caught my attention and it's not only like a job or intern its, I'm actually learning. That's the thing I'm learning and I will use these skills outside of the internship as well. Adrian: I'm glad to hear that. [Laugh] William: I think it's a great point that you made there Ocean. Is that with this with this program, this internship, you know, it's not just a chance to give students a job or experience, but there is something that the interns are helping the park with. There's programs that the interns are helping with, but also it's skills, it's knowledge that the park is then able to give back to the intern and help them further their not only academics, but their professional career. I think it's really nice that you pointed that out. So as you've been kind of learning about these stories and learning about these topics, what do you think is one that you've come across that you would say is kind of one of the more interesting ones about the Revolutionary War sites? You know what is something that's really spoken to resonated with you during your internship? Ocean: Umm, I have to say for sure the story of Anne Cruger. I actually did a little small presentation about her to the SAR. Anne’s story was so extraordinary. She just been through so much. For those who not familiar with Anne Cruger, she is the wife of John Cruger the leader of the Loyalists and they were specifically here in Ninety Six and other places as in Savannah and stuff like that. As I researched on Anne and her experience while following John to war, she's been through a lot of things. A lot of traumatic things. And we don't really see that when we're speaking about revolutionary figures is really about the men, but not so much of women. And I thought that was kind of cool, like, reading on her story and stuff. Adrian: So what's some of the stuff she went through? Ocean: Ohh well let's see the first thing she went through was when she was in Bloomingdale, New York where she lives, where her family lives. Some Patriots actually broke in through their home, ransacked it and burned it down, but one was actually planning on to cause harm to Anne and her family, but he changed his mind. Luckily. And the family ended up getting separated and was separated, she was lost into the woods. She had to walk several miles in the cold. It was October, I believe. Adrian: Up north too. Ocean: Yeah, in New York in October. It’s dark. You you don't know where to go, but luckily someone umm took her in for a time being. She did end up reuniting with her family and after that she decided to follow John into war almost. So she headed to Savannah on a ship and on her way to Savannah, it actually was a tropical storm. And the tropical storm end up knocking over her fleet or some sort of destroying the boat and they had to go overboard. But before she you know, she could drown, luckily she didn't. The French actually scooped her up, which is weird. Adrian: Ironic. Ocean: Yeah. Ironic, but she described her time with the French as they were polite to her, despite her being a loyalist coming from a loyalist family. But as she was on the ship, umm, the French actually engaged in war with the British at Savannah and at the Siege of Savannah. And it's crazy because you're on this ship. Meanwhile, you're on this enemy ship that's aiming towards your husband and like you're just on the ship, like oh my gosh, or they gonna kill my husband. Stewart: I hope one of these balls doesn't hit him. Ocean: Exactly. And that's not like officially all that she went through just to be there. But that's like the beginning of what she went through. Stuff like that. William: That's amazing because if our listeners aren't familiar you know this French assault on Savannah, I believe that's in in ‘79… Adrian: Yeah. William: You know it, it is this massive campaign. It is a thousands upon thousands of American and French troops attacking the British held city of Savannah, Georgia. Massive slaughter is gonna take place. A lot of American and French leaders are gonna lose their lives in the assault on the city, and I can't imagine being Anne, being on this French ship out in the harbor watching and hearing this battle take place because, I I know you know, Savannah is upriver a little bit. It's not right there on the coast, but it's definitely close enough that you can hear what's happening if you if not see in the smoke that that, that that is amazing. Adrian: And that your loved one is is out there somewhere. William: Right, knowing that your husband is involved in that. Ocean, do we know how or when Anne is able to rejoin John? Ocean: Umm well after the siege or whatever. The French was a little bit unsuccessful, so they decided to go back, but they did drop her off at the coastline and she did shortly reunite with John. And then after that, that's where they come to Ninety Six. And as you know, the siege of Ninety Six, 28 days, and her being in the Fort but not really because when the siege started, she actually took refuge about a mile away into a minister home. But then again, she was still close enough to the battle to hear. So second time she was put in this predicament like “Ohh is my husband's gonna make it?” William: Wow, you know, so many of our stories talk about these, these battles where there are local people who can hear what's going on and they know they have loved ones involved. But what you're talking about with Anne's story is the life of a follower. The the life of one of these women that has decided it is safer it is better for me for my family if I go with the army, go with the regiment and having to go through the trials of this, the campaign life, the hardships, the diet, the weather, the the physical exertion. But then also this roller coaster of there's a battle, did he make it OK? He's safe. Oh, there's another battle. Is he gonna make it OK, he’s safe. So how do we know what Anne is going through? Did she leave behind any kind of journal or diary, or is it is it letters? Where are you finding the information about Anne Cruger? Ocean: There are like little notebooks, as she said when she recounted her, when she did recount her experience with the French. She did write about that, and there's also in some books or claiming accounts and stuff, and then we can look back on, like the dates of, OK, Cruger was here during that time and stuff like that. So like adds up. Adrian: What's something that you've discovered that you think most people don't know or understand about the American Revolution just in general or specifically and you think that it's important that they remember or learn about it? Ocean: Umm well, I did just say Anne Cruger, but besides that, I say South Carolina roll overall in the revolution, the southern campaign. Being from Texas and Arkansas, you know those states didn't exist at the time of the revolution, so doesn’t kind of play a big thing in our own what is taught down there, to say, which battles or which war get more attention. So actually South Carolina role as a whole was very important to even discuss the, when speaking about the revolution. Like I know just, over 200 battles… Adrian: [laught] Yeah. Ocean: …that happened, a lot more than any other state. And I thought that was interesting. Adrian: Yeah, awesome. Yeah, that, that's true. I mean you, you've seen we get a lot of people coming in and being like I didn’t even know there was a battle in South Carolina or, you know… Ocean: It was multiple battles! Adrian: I didn’t know the revolution went farther south than Yorktown! Ocean: Yeah. William: Right, right, Yeah, it's always the great question is I didn't know there was something this far South or this far West and it's like, oh, man, do I have some maps to show you! We could talk for a long time. Adrian: Right. Well, and I think that's part of the reason we're doing this podcast, just bring awareness to not just South Carolina, but all the stuff that went on in the South during the revolution. William: Absolutely. So Ocean with all this research you've done and all these great stories that you're uncovering, not only this interest in South Carolina's role in the Southern campaign and in the American Revolution, the experiences of Anne Cruger and women like her, what is something that you you've kind of done with this? What is a any kind of program project? What's something that's gonna be kind of your legacy there at Ninety Six National Historic site? Ocean: Um well, right now I am working on an idea of an exhibit for Anne for herself. But what have I done so far? Umm. I have did a presentation over Anne with the SAR so so that was pretty nice. I got to kind of network and stuff like that and some people were like they wasn't aware of the things that Anne went through. Adrian: So yeah, the SAR was asking her to send them her talk. They were like what? William: No for sure, because when you're looking at at the story of Anne, you know it's a big, big push, it's a big desire with the National Park Service, especially as we're coming up on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution at the time of this recording, we're about two years away from it, really starting up. We're wanting to highlight these stories, these underrepresented, these hidden stories. So here you not only have a a loyalist, but a loyalist woman, so somebody who's story, who their their narrative maybe isn't included in a lot of the traditional histories. A lot of the traditional the the grand narrative, you could say of the American Revolution. So not only is this providing a little bit of a window into the experiences of a woman who's caught up in the Southern campaign, but a woman on the loyalist side. From a loyalist family. So it's it's fascinating research. I'm really happy to hear that this is what your program was about. Adrian: So you know, we're like Williams said, we're approaching the 250, the American 250, and it's only two years away for Ninety Six, really. But we'll have other things, other events throughout that time, and of course, all the other parks will have events and stuff when their anniversaries are as well. But what are some projects or ideas that you think we should work toward for the 250th and even beyond, say in another 250 years, for the 500th anniversary? Ocean: I think for sure, working more like the community, the Youth, because you know the youth are our future. So to teach them the history it will live on through them. We can't just have this history and not share it properly with the youth. Adrian: Yeah. Ocean: So I think for sure educating the youth more, more memorials, more research to just shine light on. There's always something new, like, even though this happened 250 years ago, because our country is very young, very young compared to other countries in the world. But at the same time, we do have a lots a lots of history. Even our founding history, it's a lot to uncover that still isn't uncovered, so this is just a start. Adrian: Still always learning. Ocean: Yeah, always learning. William: Did you really just say the children are our future? Did you really pull that line? Ocean: I think that. Adrian: Well, she said the youth, youth, so she didn't quite say it exactly like that. William: Ohh we, people know what she meant. OK, semantics aside. Ocean: It's true! Adrian: [laughing] So Ocean's told us about her awesome project and I did wanna let everybody know that it might be up by the time this episode is released, but it might not be up, but hopefully in the near future we will get the research that she's done on Anne Delancey up on the website. It should be going under the people tab that's under the history section. And we'll have, I think there's an area for like women and will definitely, definitely have it there. And then we might be able to work some of it into other programs and stuff like that, so hopefully we'll be hearing a little bit more about Anne and some of the other women and other, other stories. William: Now Adrian I do want to point something out. We've been talking about Anne Cruger for this episode, and you called her Anne Delancey. Adrian: I did. William: So what other cool connection do we have with Anne that might be of interest to our listeners? Adrian: So Ann was the daughter of… I forget his first name. Ocean: Oliver. Adrian: That's it. Oliver Delancey, who started Delancey Brigade, which is how Cruger came to be the commander for the DeLancey’s Brigade that was here at Ninety Six. Ocean: Because he had no prior, he had no prior military experience. Adrian: Yeah. Ocean: He was like the Governor of New York. Adrian: Yeah. Ocean: That didn’t work out. So I was now I'm ready to fight, yeah. William: So we're looking at not only is this going to be the story of a loyalist woman, but it's it's the story of the wife, of a loyalist provincial officer who is serving in the Southern Campaign in the siege of Ninety Six. And she's also the daughter of a prominent loyalist, helping raise provincial regiments to assist the British Army. I think this is really interesting to point out and to talk about because so many times you see this argument, especially looking at the 18th century of coverture where the woman does not have these legal rights outside of her husband or her father. So they kind of adapted that mentality into political thought and say, OK, well, the woman does not have a political leaning herself. It's just whatever her husband has. Like we see in some accounts of where the, the husband had been a loyalist during the war, and though the wife is able to say, well, that was his belief, not mine. Adrian: Yeah. William: But here not only is she the the daughter of a prominent loyalist, she is the wife of a loyalist officer with him throughout the entire campaign. So I think this is pretty safe to say that her opinions, her, her beliefs, her thoughts were in line with her family, that she herself is a loyalist following her conscience and following her beliefs. Do you all agree that that's kind of fair to say? Ocean: I would say so, but then again, even if it wasn't her beliefs she couldn't just step outside of it and like, no, this is wrong. I'm with them. Adrian: Especially when you're in higher society. Ocean: Exactly. And that's all that she knows. So it's not wrong for her. William: And especially like I believe when you started out, we were talking about her home being pillaged and burned by Patriots. And maybe one of those situations where, politics aside, you cannot align yourself with the party that would do that. Adrian: Yeah. Ocean: Right. Yeah. But I would say Ninety Six doesn't really get its credit though like when it comes to the, the war itself or even the southern campaign itself, I just feel like it didn't get a lot of recognition as it should have. Like you can kind of say you know, it's been the first the sight of the first land battle South of New England that that's something. And then almost like, you know, the siege happened in 1781. So it was there from the beginning of the war up until then, almost the end. Adrian: Yeah, I'm always like we're bookends! Ocean: Yeah. And even before the revolution, you know, with the Cherokee War and stuff like that. So Ninety Six actually you know, had a lot of history. Adrian: A lot happening. Ocean: A lot happened in the small town. William: And here's Anne Cruger being a witness to a big part of that. Adrian: Alright, so that's really cool about, Anne Delancey. Why do you think it's important that we research people like her and, you know, learn more about people like her underrepresented and all that stuff? Ocean: I know I'm saying a lot of cliche themes on this podcast, but you know it's it's the history. We don't know where we're going if we don't know, like, you know, the history of then. And then I remember we were at the Kings Mountain… Kings Mountain? Was it Cowpens? I can’t remember. We were on this tour. A group of elementary school children came and they were asking about, well, one little girl was like, where were the women during the war? And then one little boys like they didn't fight, this and that, and then tour guide like well, that's not true. So it's like, you know, not mis-education, but just it's not known. Adrian: Perception. Ocean: Yeah. Perception of that and the little girl just thought it was so cool. So things like that. You learn a lot. It's not just… like you said, it’s just a different perception of all you know, it's not just one sided and stuff like this, a one-sided history. You know what I mean? Adrian: Yeah, you don't have much of a story if you only have one side of it, yeah. William: If that's not a true statement right there, you can't go off of a one-sided history. This kind of ties in with something that we were actually discussing with another HBCUI, Cassie Chandler, who was working at Cowpens National Battlefield a little bit about perspectives and perception like you were saying. Here is this elementary school field trip who they've always kind of heard once description of the American Revolution. It's always soldier centric. It's fighting men. It is men leaders. And so here's this, this student, this child asking well, where's the bigger picture? She saw the narrative. She saw what was being presented and she saw the gap. So here we are trying to do this research. Here you are sharing this information about Anne Cruger, filling that void, and completing that full picture. That's really cool. Adrian: We need that child to grow up and be the next park ranger. William: Asking the questions exactly. That that is Park Ranger in the making, they just didn't know it yet. Adrian: Yep. Alright, well, thank you, Ocean, for being willing to sit in with me and Will and let us grill you on, on Anne Delancey. Just a reminder to everybody, we will hopefully be putting the research that Ocean's been doing this summer on the website, if not some other places and we should be able to get that up under the history section and the people section. So if you're interested, you know, hopefully we'll get that up there rather sooner rather than later. Thanks for joining us. Ocean: Thank you all for having me. Adrian: This concludes another episode of Southern War. I’m Ranger Adrian at Ninety Six National Historic site. Ninety Six can be found at nps.gov/N I S I or at our Facebook page for Ninety Six National Historic Site. [Outro sounds of drums, muskets, horses, and men fighting] William: And I'm Ranger William with Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. Same as Ranger Adrian, our website www.nps.gov/O V V I and our social media Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail. But that's gonna conclude another episode of Southern War, the podcast about the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. So thank you for listening, we hope you enjoyed, and we’ll see you next time when we revisit the Southern Theater of the American Revolution. Adrian: Bye!