Battle of Cowpens

Background

By late 1780 the war had moved south, where Lord Cornwallis commanded the British field army in the Carolinas. On 14 October Washington gave the American Southern Department to Major-General Nathanael Greene.

Greene's army was too weak to face Cornwallis, so he divided it and sent Brigadier-General Daniel Morgan west of the Catawba with about 600 men, roughly 400 of them Continentals. Morgan was to work between the Broad and Pacolet rivers, protect the Patriot population and harass the British; Andrew Pickens joined him with South Carolina militia at Christmas.

Morgan threatened Cornwallis's left flank just as he was preparing to invade North Carolina, and false reports suggested Morgan was aiming at the British post of Ninety Six. In the first days of January 1781 Cornwallis sent Lieutenant-Colonel Banastre Tarleton, 26 years old and the most aggressive officer in his army, to find and crush him, reinforcing Tarleton's British Legion with regular infantry and two light guns.

Rain had flooded the rivers. Tarleton's scouts found Morgan at Grindal Shoals on the Pacolet on 12 January; Tarleton built boats to get across, and Morgan fell back north to avoid being caught between Tarleton and Cornwallis's main army. Early on 16 January Tarleton crossed the Pacolet and Morgan retreated so hastily that he left his breakfast behind. With the Broad River in flood ahead of him, he chose to turn and fight at Hannah's Cowpens, a well-known frontier grazing ground on the Green River Road. Pickens and more militia came in that night.

The armies

Tarleton's command was a picked flying column of just over 1,100 men. Its core was the British Legion, a green-coated Loyalist unit of about 250 dragoons and 200 light infantry, with a 50-man troop of the 17th Light Dragoons. The regular infantry were 177 men of the 7th Foot, the light company of the 16th, a Loyalist light company and the 1st Battalion of the 71st Highlanders under Major Arthur MacArthur, with two 3-pounder 'grasshopper' guns. Nearly half the column were Loyalists. Tarleton was a bold, fast cavalry leader, already notorious among Patriots after Waxhaws, but his men had marched hard for days on short rations and the column had little rest before the battle.

Morgan's army was a mixture. The hard core was Lieutenant-Colonel John Eager Howard's battalion of about 300 Continentals from Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, backed by about 150 state infantry and experienced Virginia militia. Pickens led several hundred Carolina and Georgia militia, and about 150 riflemen under McDowell and Cunningham formed the skirmish screen. Lieutenant-Colonel William Washington had 82 Continental light dragoons, joined by mounted militia and McCall's state dragoons. Morgan himself, a former wagoner nicknamed the 'Old Wagoner', planned around what militia could reasonably be asked to do.

The sides were close in numbers, though Babits's research suggests Morgan's force was far larger than his own report.

The battle

The ground and the plan. The Cowpens was a park-like pasture about 500 yards long and as wide, open woodland of scattered trees with no undergrowth, with a slope, a shallow swale and then a higher ridge, with a dip behind the crest that hid cavalry. With the Broad River at his back, Morgan's men could not easily run. Morgan expected Tarleton to attack straight ahead and planned for it. Forward stood the riflemen, told to pick off officers and dragoons and fall back. About 150 yards behind them stood Pickens's militia, asked for just two volleys before retiring round the American left. About 150 yards further back, on the rise, stood Howard's Continentals and the Virginians. Washington's cavalry waited out of sight behind the hill. Through the night Morgan went among the campfires explaining the plan.

Approach, about 7 a.m. Tarleton had his men on the road from about 2 a.m. and they reached the field near dawn on a clear, bitterly cold morning, after a march of about twelve miles without breakfast. He did not reconnoitre at length. He deployed at once: light infantry, Legion infantry and the 7th in line, the guns in the centre, 50 dragoons on each flank, with the 71st and the rest of the Legion cavalry in reserve. A dragoon probe was driven off by the riflemen; tradition says they killed fifteen, though Babits disputes the figure.

The militia line. The British line advanced. The riflemen fell back on Pickens, whose militia fired their two volleys, aimed at officers. A large share of the British loss here fell on officers and the line was shaken. The militia then withdrew across the front and round the American left, as planned. Tarleton's flank dragoons rode after them and were in turn charged and routed by Washington's cavalry.

The crisis, about 7.45 a.m. The British reached Howard's line and the two sides traded volleys. Tarleton sent the 71st round the British left to overlap the American right. Howard ordered the Virginia company on his right to turn to face them; the order was misunderstood, and the company, then the line beside it, began walking back. Morgan rode up and found the men still in order, not fleeing. The British, believing the Americans were breaking, surged forward in disorder.

The double envelopment. At about 30 yards the Continentals and Virginians turned and fired a volley into the crowding British, then charged with the bayonet and took both guns. Washington's dragoons came round onto the British right and rear, and Pickens's re-formed militia came back round the hill onto the left of the 71st. Exhausted and hungry, the British infantry collapsed; men threw themselves down and surrendered, and the encircled Highlanders gave up.

The end, about 8 a.m. Tarleton called on his reserve Legion cavalry to charge, but they refused and rode off. With the guns lost, he gathered about 40 horsemen and retreated. Washington pursued, and a sword-fight between the two cavalry leaders is part of the battle's lore, though accounts disagree. Washington followed for about 16 miles before Tarleton got away. The fighting had lasted less than an hour.

Aftermath

Tarleton lost about 110 killed, more than 200 wounded and between 500 and 630 captured, with both guns; at most a fifth of his column got away. Morgan reported 12 killed and 60 wounded, though Babits's work suggests the real figure was about double. Cornwallis lost most of his light troops at a stroke.

Morgan buried the dead, crossed the Broad and hurried his prisoners north out of reach. Cornwallis exonerated Tarleton, blaming the misbehaviour of the troops, but then burned his own baggage to chase the Americans across North Carolina in the race to the Dan. Greene drew him on and fought him at Guilford Courthouse on 15 March; Cornwallis held the field but lost about 500 killed and wounded, and marched away to Wilmington, then Virginia and Yorktown. John Marshall later wrote that few battles fought with so few men had such large consequences.

The argument since has been about Tarleton. British critics at the time, among them a wounded lieutenant of the 71st, blamed his handling, and modern historians list the night march, the attack without rest or reconnaissance and the late use of the cavalry reserve. His 'Bloody Ban' image is partly later invention: the nickname is not found before Robert Bass's biography of 1957; contemporaries called him 'the Butcher' after Waxhaws, and historians still argue whether he ordered the killing there. Cowpens National Battlefield now preserves the field.

Wargaming it

Cowpens is close to the ideal club game: two forces of about 1,000 each, an hour of fighting, an open field 500 yards square and a clear plan for each side. It suits company or small-battalion level, with each company of 30 to 60 men as a unit, and turns of five minutes or so; it can be refought in an evening.

The terrain is simple: gentle slopes, a shallow swale, open trees that do not stop cavalry, the dip behind the American ridge that hides Washington's horse, and the flooded Broad River at the American rear. The design problem is the American plan. Rules must let militia fire and retire deliberately without routing, give a misunderstood order a chance of going wrong, and model the exhaustion and hunger that sources blame for the British collapse. Hidden deployment matters: the British player should not know where the cavalry is.

The what-ifs are rich. Tarleton could rest his men, reconnoitre, open with his guns, flank the open American wings or commit the 71st and Legion cavalry earlier; his critics said he did none of these. If the Legion horse had charged when ordered, could he have saved the infantry? On the American side, try the militia breaking for real, or Howard's withdrawal becoming a rout. Strength is a design choice too: Morgan's report and Babits's reconstruction differ by nearly a thousand men, so scenarios can test both.

Maps and pictures