A Devil of a Whipping Read online

  The worsening backcountry situation is a difficult aspect of the southern campaign to understand. British plans to maintain royal control behind a military screen were thwarted by Loyalists wanting to settle old scores and men calling themselves militia simply to plunder.26 Taking advantage of the unrest, Morgan and Greene authorized forays that did little to ease Cornwallis’s mind. Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee and Colonel Francis Marion attacked Georgetown, South Carolina, on 25 January 1781.27 In the west, Lieutenant Colonel William Washington’s Continental dragoons and militia first destroyed a Tory force at Hammond’s Store in late December, then moved farther south and burned a fortification a short distance from Ninety Six.28

  Cornwallis knew of Greene’s activity. Spies and scouting parties around Charlotte reported departures with fairly accurate estimates of American numbers.29 Cornwallis was perplexed because Greene violated a principle dictating consolidation of inferior forces in the face of a superior enemy. Cornwallis felt Morgan could threaten Ninety Six while Greene might move against Camden, Georgetown, or other eastern British posts.

  Cornwallis was in difficult straits because the region north of Winnsboro had been subjected to intense foraging by both sides and was virtually stripped of resources. Cornwallis located here partly because the town commanded a backcountry road network and because potentially adequate supplies were available just south of Winnsboro.30 Greene placed Americans upstream across the rivers most important for supplying British forces at Camden, Georgetown, Fort Granby, and other interior posts, including Winnsboro. While supplies could be floated downstream to American camps, resources the British could not obtain from the interior came from the coast, upstream, or over difficult roads where they were vulnerable to partisan raiders. This crucial logistical aspect of the southern campaign would, in the long run, help ruin Cornwallis and the British southern army.

  Greene’s innovative response to superior British numbers compounded Cornwallis’s dilemma because he wanted to invade North Carolina and march through Charlotte against the American bases at Salisbury and Hillsborough. While Cornwallis gathered supplies, recruited his forces, and made dispositions to defend his rear, he had to deal with Morgan and Ninety Six.31

  Morgan’s threat against Ninety Six so concerned Cornwallis that he wrote Tarleton, “I sent Haldane to you last night, to desire you would pass Broad river, with the legion and the first battalion of the 71st, as soon as possible. If Morgan is still at Williams’, or any where within your reach, I should wish you to push him to the utmost: I have not heard, except from M’Arthur, of his having cannon; nor would I believe it, unless he has it from very good authority: It is, however, possible, and Ninety Six is of so much consequence, that no time is to be lost.”32

  Tarleton moved westward and placed his force between Morgan and Ninety Six. Privy to Cornwallis’s plans for an invasion of North Carolina, Tarleton was aware of what Cornwallis had in mind. After learning that Ninety Six was not in danger, Tarleton reorganized to “push [Morgan] to the utmost.” In addition to acquiring supplies by foraging and impressment, he requested wagons and additional troops because he needed more men to destroy Morgan, and then explained how his movements fit into Cornwallis’s plans.33

  Letters between Cornwallis and Tarleton explain the British response to Morgan. Tarleton would protect Ninety Six, then deal with Morgan. To accomplish the latter, he requested a reinforcement of light troops. Knowing he would move rapidly, he ordered that no women accompany his baggage. If Tarleton pursued Morgan, Ninety Six would be reinforced by the 7th Regiment. At the same time, Cornwallis would invade North Carolina, and by advancing slightly northwest, cut off Morgan. Tarleton clearly saw an opportunity in Greene’s division of the Americans. His letter confirmed an understanding of Cornwallis’s basic plan and proposed action to destroy a wing of the American forces.34

  Once it was clear Morgan did not threaten Ninety Six, Cornwallis authorized Tarleton to employ the 7th Regiment and its cannon in the effort to destroy Morgan. Tarleton had about 1,100 men, including local Tories who served as guides. He was now free to drive Morgan out of South Carolina. By advancing, Tarleton’s detachment would screen Cornwallis’s left flank and protect it from overmountain militia who destroyed Ferguson. British officers with Tarleton later said the force was “designed to penetrate into North Carolina.”35

  Unfortunately for the British, weather interfered with their planned movements. Rains delayed reinforcements marching from the coast under Major General Alexander Leslie, and Cornwallis waited. The rain delayed Tarleton but did not stop his movement against Morgan. While Tarleton had problems gathering basic food to feed his men, his wagons carried some luxurious condiments for the officers.36

  Aware of coordinated movements against him, Morgan was concerned with feeding his troops.37 The Flying Army rarely bivouacked together because scattered detachments were positioned where they could obtain food more easily. Given Tory/Patriot animosities, American forces unsurprisingly supplied themselves at Tory expense because they were not required to issue them receipts.38

  Despite supply problems and the coming and going of militia who claimed enlistments were expiring, Morgan accomplished Greene’s strategic aims. He posed a threat to the Carolina backcountry that Cornwallis could not ignore; moreover, he raised American spirits. When Tarleton came after him, however, Morgan withdrew. Over the next week, both commanders prepared for a fight as they moved north. On 17 January 1781, when Tarleton’s advance patrol came out of the pine forests and deployed south of the American battle lines, the Americans were ready. Knowing an engagement with Tarleton was inevitable, Morgan chose the ground and his men were rested, ready, and waiting.

  What happened was standardized over the years. British infantry drove in Morgan’s skirmishers before advancing against American militia. The South Carolinians stood their ground. Every battalion fired at least one close-range volley before retreating around the American left flank with Tarleton’s dragoons howling in pursuit. Tarleton’s infantry advanced again and engaged the Continentals and Virginia militia in a firefight.

  When Tarleton moved to break the main-line deadlock, the American right withdrew. In the crisis, Morgan selected a point where the Continentals would halt, turn, and fire. When they did so, the British infantry collapsed in shock and began a panic-stricken withdrawal. The British fled, and although Tarleton and most of his dragoons eluded pursuit and rejoined Cornwallis, few infantrymen escaped the Americans.

  This summation is drawn from popular traditional accounts. Official accounts and later historians related only part of the battle. Participants from the lower ranks provide additional details for incorporation into the battle’s history. Morgan, as he described in a letter to his friend William Snickers, had given Tarleton “a devil of a whiping [sic].”39 Later, almost nine months to the day, British survivors of Cowpens and ensuing campaigns surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia. How Morgan managed to win with minimal support and a potentially disastrous mix of Continentals, state troops, and militia from six states is the tactical story of Cowpens. How Morgan took a disparate group of men and welded them into a force capable of using traditional European tactics in a new American fashion is the real story of Cowpens, which emerges from new study of published materials and the pension documents.

  1: Tactics

  The art of disciplining armies, and ranging them into forms . . .

  —George Smith, An Universal Military Dictionary

  Battlefield military operations are called tactics. Tactics are dictated by the weapons and troops available. At Cowpens, the British used infantry, cavalry, and artillery; the Americans, infantry and cavalry. Any soldier, whether infantry, cavalry, or artillery, had specific weapons dictating his employment in battle.1

  American Continentals and British infantry were armed with smoothbore muskets which also took a bayonet. American militia carried a variety of rifles as well as some muskets, probably with few bayonets. Some Scottish Highlanders in the Britis
h army were armed with broadswords at times. Cavalrymen, or dragoons, were armed with short muskets called carbines, but they relied primarily on pistols and sabers. Artillerymen carried muskets in addition to working their cannon. Officers and noncommissioned officers carried swords. Some company-level officers carried short spears called spontoons, which symbolized their rank.

  In the eighteenth century, regular, or line, infantry relied on two primary weapons: the musket and the bayonet. During the Revolution, muskets were called firelocks because they generated their own fire, hence the later term firearm. A musket was a single-shot smoothbore; the barrel had no grooves on its inside surface.

  A musket was fired by a spring-loaded mechanism called the lock. The spring drove the cock holding a piece of flint forward. When the flint struck a piece of metal called the hammer, sparks dropped into the pan and ignited the priming charge. Fire from the priming charge flashed through a hole in the barrel and set off the main charge, forcing the ball out of the barrel toward the target.

  A soldier in either army loaded his musket from a paper-wrapped cartridge. The soldier tore the cartridge open and shook a little powder into the pan alongside the barrel. The remaining powder was then poured down the barrel. Next, the ball was placed in the barrel and forced down onto the powder by the ramrod. The bullet was smaller than the barrel. The difference in respective diameters created a space between the bullet and the inside of the barrel called windage. The British .75 caliber ball was actually about .70 inch in diameter; the American .69 was about .63 inch.2 The entire loading process was very structured and designed to eliminate error. The American manual exercise was simpler than the British, largely because Baron Frederick Wilhelm Von Steuben recognized that a reduction in complexity would shorten the time needed to introduce the system into the Continental army.3

  FIGURE 1. Nomenclature of Musket

  Source: Peterkin, Exercise of Arms, 47.

  The standard British musket was the Short Land, New Pattern musket, often called the Brown Bess. It fired a .75 caliber ball about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Some American militiamen carried British-style muskets, but the American Continentals were armed with French muskets which fired a .69 caliber ball.4

  Today, muskets have a reputation for being notoriously inaccurate, in part because Tarleton’s second in command, Major George Hanger, wrote a critical statement about common soldiers’ muskets.5 Hanger is often cited without clarification, and his observation has become something of a truism. The reputation for inaccuracy is not entirely warranted. In 1781, muskets were state-of-the-art weaponry in large-scale use throughout the Western world. Hanger, in a much less cited observation, pointed out that practice was essential for accuracy.6

  A well-drilled musketman, given practice and encouraged to shoot rapidly, could deliver fast and accurate fire. Even with undersized bullets it is possible, without ramming, to hit a man-sized target eighty yards away with five out of six shots in one minute.7 Although special troops called rangers fired this way, regular infantry did not. Since regular infantry rarely practiced firing at targets, the question of musket accuracy should be directed at the shooter rather than the weapon.

  Both sides increased musket lethality, if not accuracy, by issuing buck and ball cartridges containing one large ball and at least three smaller (.30 caliber) balls. Washington ordered that “buckshot are to be put into all cartridges which shall hereafter be made” in 1777. One sixty-man Continental company could launch at least 240 projectiles with a single volley. Buckshot could deliver a fatal wound, especially at ranges within fifty yards where volley fire was most commonly used.8

  American militiamen carried either muskets or rifles. When they had muskets, militiamen commonly used multiple balls and buckshot, but rifles are different in ways that affect loading speed and tactics. Rifle barrels have twisting slanted grooves cut into their interior surface. The grooves cause the bullet to spin in flight and increase accuracy. Evolving firearms technology occurring on the eighteenth-century American frontier resulted in a distinctive American rifle. American rifles were lengthened to allow full burning of the powder charge and to increase accuracy. The bore was reduced to save on ball weight, but by increasing the powder charge, the impact of a heavier ball was maintained. The stock was thinner than European rifles, resulting in the famous “long rifle,” “Pennsylvania Rifle,” or “Kentucky Rifle.”

  Rifles used at Cowpens fit a generalized pattern with “a barrel length usually over 40 inches, a bore averaging .40 to .60 caliber (with seven or eight grooves); a long thin stock extending to the muzzle . . . and a patch box.”9 The rifles weighed about six pounds, give or take a few ounces, with balls as “small as thirty-six to the pound, or about” .50 caliber. American rifles used about as much powder as “is contained in a woman’s thimble.”10

  Unlike muskets that had a bayonet-locking lug on the front of the barrel by which men might aim, rifles were equipped with front and rear sights. The American rifle had “one rear sight. . . not more than two-sixteenth of an inch in height above the barrel.” Tarleton’s second in command, George Hanger, later wrote that American riflemen “thought they were generally sure of splitting a man’s head at two hundred yards.” Hanger “also asked several whether they could hit a man at four hundred yards,—they have replied certainly, or shoot very near him, by only aiming at the top of his head.”11

  Eighteenth-century rifles had several drawbacks. They were, first and foremost, slower to load at a time when speed of fire was paramount. Rifles loaded slower because the powder charge was not premeasured and the ball was “patched.” After powder was poured down the barrel, a piece of greased cloth was placed over the muzzle opening. The ball was pressed into the cloth and forced into the barrel. Excess cloth was then cut away before ramming the ball home. The greased cloth surrounding the ball caught the rifling, which made the ball spin and increased accuracy. The patch also acted as a gas seal that created greater muzzle velocity, increasing range and striking power. Experienced riflemen could fire one shot every fifteen seconds on a good day.

  American rifles were individual personal weapons with a wide range of bore sizes. The range of bores created problems for supply officers; consequently, they issued riflemen lead bars to make bullets, using molds made for their individual weapons. One-pound lead bars were provided to riflemen marching through Salisbury during the Cowpens campaign.12

  American riflemen had a fearsome reputation for accuracy. “An expert rifleman . . . can hit the head of a man at 200 yards. I am certain, that, provided an American rifleman were to get a perfect aim at 300 yards at me, standing still, he most undoubtedly would hit me, unless it was a very windy day.”13 This reputation may not be justified in combat. At a skirmish near Weitzell’s Mill, North Carolina, American riflemen fired thirty-three shots downhill at a mounted man less than fifty yards away and missed both man and horse.14

  A lack of accuracy when shooting downhill had implications for the coming battle at Cowpens. Despite constant drill and practical experience, soldiers tended to shoot high when firing downhill. The error was called “over-shooting” in the nineteenth century when Lyman Draper collected veterans’ Revolutionary War accounts. “Long experience proves, that marksmen in a valley have the advantage of those on a hill, in firing at each other, which is probably owing to the terrestrial refraction. The forest-hunters, though apprised of this fact, often shoot too high when their object is below them.”15

  At Musgrove’s Mill, South Carolina, low American casualties were attributed to the British overshooting Americans down-slope. Richard Thompson “observed the bullet marks on the trees—those of the British and Tories generally indicating aim above the heads of their antagonists, while those of the Whigs were from three to five feet above the ground.”16

  Even on flat ground, some British units often fired high. Before Guilford Courthouse, Henry Lee noted, the British “fire was innocent, overshooting the cavalry entirely; whose caps and accoutrements
were all struck with green twigs, cut by the British ball out of the large oaks in the meeting-house yard, under which the cavalry received the volley from the guards.”17 Since the Americans were mounted, the British fire must have been high indeed.

  One British unit at Cowpens fired high before the battle. North Carolina militiaman Joseph Graham recalled the British Legion infantry fired, “their balls passing directly through the woods where our line was formed, and skinning saplings and making bark and twigs fly. . . . [T]he firing in Charlotte and beyond had generally passed over their [our] heads, but here it appeared to be horizontal.”18 Henry Lee accounted for differences between American and British accuracy because “we were trained to take aim and fire low, he was not so trained; and from this cause, or from the composition of his cartridge (too much powder for the lead), he always overshot.”19

  Continental soldiers were “completed” to forty rounds and three flints as a standard load of ammunition. The night of 16 January, Morgan, knowing a battle was imminent, ordered militia riflemen to carry at least twenty-four rounds. Thus Morgan had an effective way of judging how much ammunition soldiers had. This was essential knowledge for evaluating a unit’s ability to conduct sustained firing.20

  Eighteenth-century muskets were augmented by using the bayonet, a triangular blade mounted on the musket barrel. Blades ranged from about seventeen inches long for the British Brown Bess to about fifteen inches for French models. American-made bayonets varied.21 Revolutionary War bayonets had a socket that fit over the barrel and were held in place by a stud two or three inches behind the muzzle.