60. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse

Lord Cornwallis now found himself in a position often faced by imperialist commanders fighting against guerrillas and a revolutionary people. By classical standards he was in an excellent position; he was the conqueror of Georgia and all of the Carolinas, and no real army was left to oppose him south of the Dan River. But, in fact, he had no boats and few supplies, and could not pursue Greene into Virginia. Furthermore, Greene’s army would outnumber his when it was reinforced by the divisions of Continentals being raised in Virginia by General Steuben. Cornwallis, therefore, fell back on the fundamental axiom of British strategy: the rallying of the supposed majority of North Carolina Tories to form the solid support for a British occupation and regime. He withdrew to Hillsboro and eagerly issued a proclamation on February 20 inviting all loyal subjects to join his army in the reestablishment of legitimate government in the province.

Meanwhile, Greene was having his troubles across the Dan. His militia, their enlistments up, had largely left him, and neither the expected reinforcements from Steuben’s Virginia Continentals nor Virginia militia had appeared. In addition the level of the Dan was falling, exposing him to a potential blow from Cornwallis. He therefore determined to cross the river back into North Carolina. He sent Williams and Lee across to join Pickens’ guerrillas in harrying the British and suppressing armed Tories. On February 23, they found a company of 400 mounted Tory recruits at Haw River under the command of Col. John Pyle. Pickens and Lee duped, surprised, and virtually massacred the enemy. Most of the Tory force was killed or wounded; not a man in the American force was even injured. Understandably, the massacre at Haw River dried up Tory recruiting in the state.

On the same day, Greene, finally reinforced by Virginia riflemen, recrossed the Dan and headed towards Hillsboro, his force now numbering 2,100. His plan was to harass Cornwallis, discourage Tory risings, and wait for reinforcements before engaging in any frontal action. Cornwallis found to his dismay that Greene’s recrossing and the harassment by his light infantry under Williams were, like the rout of Pyle, effectively crushing the incipient flocking of North Carolina Tories to the British cause. At Hillsboro, Cornwallis found himself among more and more enemies and ever fewer friends, the increase of enemies aggravated by British plundering and requisitions of foodstuffs, which were growing increasingly scarce in the area. It was clear that he had to leave Hillsboro. On February 27, he marched southwest to the south side of the Alamance, where he would be in a strategic position to march west to Guilford or Salisbury, or southeast to Cross Creek or Wilmington on the Atlantic coast. Greene encamped on the north side and shifted his camp continually, keeping Cornwallis offbalance while awaiting reinforcements. On March 6, Cornwallis tried to attack Williams in a sudden surprise, but Williams’ corps managed to escape. Finally, both armies rested. Greene received his long-awaited reinforcements of over 1,000 North Carolina militia, nearly 1,700 Virginia militia, and a few Virginia Continentals. By mid-March, he was at peak strength, over 4,500 men, greatly outnumbering the better-trained British force of about 1,900. Finding his food supplies running low, Greene decided to make his stand promptly at Guilford Courthouse. This decision to do battle was strategically sound; Greene’s great numerical superiority insured that the worst would be a minor defeat and victory could well have led to the final rout of the British troops. For his part, Cornwallis could do nothing else; the entire long-run British strategy of occupying the South and calling forth the Tories rested on triumph over the American army in open battle.

Following Morgan’s earlier advice, Greene arranged his army as Morgan had done with such success at Cowpens: a front and second line of militia, a third line of crack Continentals, and two cavalry units on the flanks under Washington and Lee. But while Greene was a brilliant strategist, he was far inferior to Morgan as a tactician, and he made the grave error of stationing his three lines much too far apart. Morgan had placed the lines 150 yards apart; Greene now placed them 300 and 400 yards apart, leaving the militia too great a distance before they could find cover. This also forced the cavalry to cover too much ground before it could come up to aid the front lines.

The British swung into battle on March 15; the first American line of North Carolina militia panicked at the British advance and fled from the scene without bothering to re-form at the rear. The second line of Virginia militia fought well, however, and did great damage to the British troops with its withering rifle fire. The third line of Continentals was again very effective, but twice Greene failed to administer the coup de grâce to the British for fear of risking his army. Cornwallis finally managed to stop Washington’s advance by firing his artillery indiscriminately into the fray. As the British re-formed and advanced, Greene withdrew from the battle —a technical defeat for the Americans, but actually a smashing victory, for at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse the British had lost no fewer than 530 men, more than one-fourth of their army. In contrast, Greene had suffered only 260 casualties.

After his severe mauling, Cornwallis retreated southeast to Cross Creek; but there he made a fateful decision that was to bring the war to a close: disregarding Clinton’s instructions to safeguard Charleston and South Carolina above all, he abandoned the entire South below Virginia. Pushing on to Wilmington, on the coast of North Carolina, where he could obtain supplies by sea, he allowed Greene to turn into South Carolina, leaving the Tories of Cross Creek to their fate. Never a man to assume a strategic defensive, as a withdrawal into South Carolina would have been, Cornwallis decided on his own to march north into the “privileged sanctuary” of Virginia, the supply route for the Carolinas, where other British forces were already deployed. For this unilateral change in fundamental British strategy in abandoning the South and the southern Tories, Clinton sharply criticized Cornwallis.

As Cornwallis pushed northward into Virginia at the end of April 1781, Clinton and the British could only come up with a middle states variant of the now abandoned southern strategy: the plan now was to conduct a campaign in Maryland, Delaware, and lower Pennsylvania, where, again, Tories could supposedly be relied upon to organize and control the area after its conquest by British troops. Cornwallis, disgusted with the extent of Tory support, now scorned the Tory strategy and continued the offensive against Virginia, an offensive Clinton knew to be unworkable because, unlike the middle states, there were few Tories in that state to hold it after conquest. In this quarrel, each man was right in his criticisms of the other; on the one hand, Virginia ultimately could not be held; on the other hand, there were not sufficient Tories to implement Clinton’s new project.