OneManGang
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Author's Note: I would like to wish the entire VolNation family a happy and safe Fourth of July. The term "Founding Fighters" belongs to my friend Mike Dahl whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the Battle of King's Mountain is second to none. If you ever get a chance to hear him tell the story, drop whatever you are doing and pay heed. - WPG
America's Founding Fighters:
Making the Declaration a Reality
Making the Declaration a Reality
It was cold.
It was that kind of cold that settles into the bones and amplifies every little ache and pain. And God knew, the 44 year-old Brigadier General had enough of those. Besides the constant pain of sciatica, he suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, pain from a wound to the face courtesy of a Redcoat musket ball in 1778 and the aftereffects of the 499 lashes he had received as a young militiaman for decking some supercilious twit of a British officer in 1754. The fire outside his tent had banked down and frost covered every exposed surface.
But in the pre-dawn of 17 January 1781, the old War Horse felt none of that. Shouts and reports reached him from his pickets and scouts and focused him on the task at hand. Brigadier General Daniel Morgan arose and quickly went to the camps of his combined force of militia and Continental Regulars rousing the men and officers shouting, Old Bennie's a-comin'!
The cause of this commotion were twelve hundred British regulars under the much-hated Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton coming down the road toward the American camp. Tarleton had sworn to hang every Rebel and burn out anyone who supported them. In a lightning campaign in the Carolinas in 1779 and 1780 he and his boss, General Lord Charles Cornwallis, had very nearly made that threat a reality. Tarleton's Quarter became a watchword among the tatterdemalion survivors of Continental General Horatio Gates' disaster at Camden when Bloody Bennie's fast-moving columns had run their comrades down and put them to the sword whether they had surrendered or no. It was a reputation Tarleton was only happy to add to as he raided and ambushed his way throughout the southern Colonies.
By 6 AM, the Americans were drawn up in lines of battle across a clearing that the locals in northern South Carolina used to rest and water herds moving to market and known as The Cow Pens.
It is very easy for us, looking back from the perspective of 238 years, to get lost in the noble words and flowing prose of Thomas Jefferson. That document and the signatures of the Founding Fathers affixed and enshrined forever as the Declaration of Independence inspire and provide the philosophical basis for our nation and its Constitution. What we lose sight of is that all of that would have been meaningless without the blood, determination, and steadfast dedication of the Founding Fighters.
There was nary a professional among them when the war began. Their roots were in the militias formed by the thirteen colonies to guard the citizenry against Indian raids or civil disorders. Their first real moment had come during the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763) when militiamen took the field or occupied fortifications along the long border between the French colonies in Canada to the north and others west of the Applachians. Among these militiamen was a land surveyor and sometime Lt. Colonel of Virginia troops named George Washington.
The French and Indian War was the North American manifestation of the larger Seven Years War that was fought on the European mainland. Wars are expensive undertakings and in the aftermath, which saw the French ejected from Canada and from everything east of the Mississippi River, the British Parliament passed a series of taxes on the American colonies to pay for it all. It was this high-hat behavior, this taxation without representation that lit the fuse which exploded in 1775.
It wasn't a well-trained company of professionals that defied the British order to, Disperse, ye Rebels! at Lexington and Concord.
The Professionals were on the other side.
By the late 18th century, the British Army was a killing machine. It was a combined-arms team of infantry, artillery and cavalry. They were trained to within an inch of their lives to obey, unquestioningly, any orders from their officers and to think and move as one. The standard "Brown Bess" musket was not aimed as much as it pointed. But then, with notable exceptions, the militia used the same (or similar) smooth-bore muskets. The difference was literally at the sharp end. British regulars were trained to deliver a volley or two and then advance on the enemy with the bayonet. No militia troops were capable of resisting a bayonet charge. Lacking their own bayonets, the sight of several hundred bayonets implacably advancing and held precisely at throat level would unnerve the most stalwart patriot.
In order to combat the Redcoat professionals, the Continental Army needed its own regulars. This is the true story of Valley Forge. Von Steuben may have been a "Bogus Baron" but he was a professional soldier. He relentlessly drilled Washington's army. ("Und vhen I zay ACHTUNG, I vahnt to hear dose rags CLICK!"*) Despite the privation and hunger of that bitter winter, the Continentals that emerged were well on their way to being capable of meeting the British on their own terms.
By 1781, the Continentals were as good as any regular army on the planet.
There came a moment that morning where a sort of quiet descended. Dan Morgan's boys were drawn up in three lines across the frost covered greensward at the Cow Pens. In the distance they could hear the drums beating cadence as the Redcoat horde came through the mists. Morgan's men in those lines stood silent save some muttered commands and exhortations. Men unconsciously gripped their weapons a bit tighter as the thought crossed their minds that very soon they might never feel anything again. Closest to the British were 150 sharpshooters carrying a mix of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Tennessee rifles. The British HATED these riflemen who could kill them at 250 yards and had the nasty tendency to specifically target officers and color-bearers, the latter vital to keeping unit alignment. Behind the sharpshooters were roughly 500 militiamen among whom were a hundred or so North Carolinians who had been at King's Mountain in October and, along with the Overmoutain Men and some Virginians, had annihilated Pattie Ferguson's Loyalists and sent the arrogant prig to hell with seven lead balls riddling his corpse. Finally, there were about 350 Continental Regulars.
Morgan had cut a deal with his militiamen. They were to fire two volleys and then skedaddle before the Redcoats could close to bayonet range. He correctly foresaw that the sharpshooters would slow down the British advance and cause a good deal of confusion before withdrawing. Then the two volleys of militia muskets would slow the advance even further. The planned withdrawal of the militia would cause the hot-headed Tarleton to believe the day won and order a general charge straight into the waiting muzzles and bayonets of the Continetal Regulars aligned in company fronts and hidden from view behind a small knoll.
And so it more or less happened.
The militia retreat was more a case of "running like hell" until their officers and Old Dan himself could rally them and get them sorted. However the very disorganized nature of the militia's flight convinced Tarleton to order his infantry and dragoons to charge - over the knoll ... and ... the Redcoats were shocked to see the Continentals waiting calmly for them and their advance disintegrated as the Continental line erupted in a sheet of flame and sent volley after volley into the British line as the range closed to less than fifteen yards. The British charge had too much momentum and the Continentals were forced to fall back behind another low rise where the process repeated. By this time, though, Morgan had his militia sorted and sent them in to attack the Redcoats on the flank while a detachment of Continental cavalry worked its way behind on the other flank. Daniel Morgan had achieved a tactician's dream - the double envelopment of a superior force.
The Redcoat regulars broke. Tarleton, despite several close calls, managed to survive. His force was gone, though. He rallied the survivors and made his way to Virginia where he met up with Cornwallis who had retreated to York Town to lick his wounds after his Pyrrhic tactical victory over Nathaniel Greene at Guilford Courthouse.
General Washington gathered his army and with a sizable French army under Rochambeau encircled Cornwallis and on 17 October 1781, one year and ten days after King's Mountain, the British regulars surrendered. The Revolutionary War, to all intents and purposes, was over.
Old Dan Morgan's constant pain had forced his retirement after Cowpens and he was at his home when he learned of Cornwallis' surrender. No doubt the old War Horse smiled.
The Founding Fighters had made the Declaration of Independence a reality.
Lord Cornwallis leads his army in surrender at Yorktown, October 17, 1781. Painting by John Trumbull (National Archives)
*h/t Bill Maudlin, Mud & Guts: A Look at the Common Soldier of the American Revolution
Suggested Reading:
Bearss, Edwin C., Battle of Cowpens: A Documented Narrative and Troop Movement Maps. Johnson City, TN: The Overmountain Press, 1996.
Carrington, Henry B., Battles of the American Revolution (reprint). New York: Promontory Press, 1973.
Martin, Joseph Plumb, A Narrative of a Revolutionary Soldier. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001.
Urban, Mark, Fusiliers: The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution. New York: Walker and Co., 2007.
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]© 2014, Pat Gang
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