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History of Jeremiah in the Revolutionary War

The Battle of Guilford Court House

The Battle of Guilford Court House [image of battle] was a battle fought on March 15, 1781 inside the present-day city of Greensboro, North Carolina, during the American Revolutionary War. The battle saw 1,900 British troops, under General Lord Cornwallis, fighting an American force, under Rhode Island native General Nathanael Greene, numbering 4,400.

Despite the relatively small numbers of troops involved, the battle is considered one of the most decisive of the Revolutionary War. Prior to the battle, the British appeared to have successfully reconquered Georgia and South Carolina with the aid of strong Loyalist factions, and that North Carolina might be within their grasp. In the wake of the battle, Greene moved into South Carolina, while Cornwallis chose to invade Virginia. These decisions allowed Greene to unravel British control of the South, while leading Cornwallis to Yorktown and surrender.

Prelude- Following the Battle of Cowpens, Cornwallis was determined to destroy Greene's army. However, the loss of his light infantry at Cowpens led him to burn his supplies, so that his army would be nimble enough for pursuit. He chased Greene in the Race to the Dan, but Greene escaped across the flooded Dan River to safety in Virginia. Cornwallis established a camp at Hillsborough, and attempted to forage supplies and recruit North Carolina's Tories. However, the bedraggled state of his army, and Pyle's massacre, deterred Loyalists. Meanwhile, Greene, having received reinforcements, decided to recross the Dan and challenge Cornwallis. On the 15th of March, the two armies met at Guilford Court House, North Carolina (within the present Greensboro, North Carolina), and a virtually drawn battle was fought.

The Action of the Battle - Hostilities opened on the morning of the 15th of March with a clash between advance guards near the Quaker New Garden Meeting House. With the arrival of the British 23rd Regiment of Foot, American Light Horse Harry Lee ordered a retreat to Greene's main body.

Greene had prepared his defense in three lines. North Carolina militia formed the fist line, with backwoods riflemen on the left and right flanks to pick off advancing British. In the second line, he placed the Virginia militia. His regulars comprised the last line. While superficially resembling the deployment successfully used by Daniel Morgan at Cowpens, the lines were hundreds of yards apart and could not support one another.

After a twenty-minute cannonade, Cornwallis began his attack around 1:30 PM. The British army forced its way through the first two lines, but with significant losses. However, the wooded terrain, the width of the battlefield, and uneven resistance hindered a coordinated advance, and British forces arrived piecemeal at the third line. At the climax of the battle, British Guards and American Continentals engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Lord Cornwallis, against the advice of his artillery officers, ordered grapeshot to be fired indiscriminately down onto the battlefield. While many British soldiers were killed, the Americans broke off and retreated from the field.

During the battle, Lord Cornwallis had a horse shot from under him. American Col. Benjamin Williams was later decorated for his personal bravery at Guilford Courthouse.

Aftermath - The British, by taking ground with their accustomed tenacity when engaged with superior numbers, were tactically victors, but were weakened by a loss of nearly 600 men. Seeing this as a classic Pyrrhic [def: Greek pyrrhíchios literally, pertaining to the pyrrhíche a dance imitating the motions of warfare] victory, British Whig Party leader and war critic Charles James Fox echoed Plutarch's famous words by saying, "Another such victory would ruin the British Army!"

Greene, cautiously avoiding another Camden, retreated with his forces intact. With his small army, less than 2000 strong, Cornwallis declined to follow Greene into the back country, and retiring to Hillsborough, North Carolina, raised the royal standard, offered protection to the inhabitants, and for the moment appeared to be master of Georgia and the two Carolinas. In a few weeks, however, he abandoned the heart of the state and marched to the coast at Wilmington, North Carolina, to recruit and refit his command.

At Wilmington, the British general faced a serious problem, the solution of which, upon his own responsibility, unexpectedly led to the close of the war within seven months. Instead of remaining in Carolina, he determined to march into Virginia, justifying the move on the ground that until Virginia was reduced he could not firmly hold the more southern states he had just overrun. This decision was subsequently sharply criticized by General Clinton as unmilitary, and as having been made contrary to his instructions. To Cornwallis, he wrote in May: "Had you intimated the probability of your intention, I should certainly have endeavoured to stop you, as I did then as well as now consider such a move likely to be dangerous to our interests in the Southern Colonies."

The danger lay in the suddenly changed situation in that direction; as General Greene, instead of following Cornwallis to the coast, boldly pushed down towards Camden and Charleston, South Carolina, with a view to drawing his antagonist after him to the points where he was the year before, as well as to driving back Lord Rawdon, whom Cornwallis had left in that field. In his main object, the recovery of the southern states, Greene succeeded by the close of the year; but not without hard fighting and repeated reverses. "We fight, get beaten, and fight again," were his words. On April 25, 1781 he was surprised in his camp at Hobkirk's Hill, near Camden, by Lord Rawdon, and was defeated, both sides suffering about an equal loss.
Source: The Wikipedia