Perseverance to Victory The first two years of the War of American Independence witnessed the growth of the Continental Army from a nucleus of New England and New York units patterned after the Provincials of earlier wars into a force with men from every state as well as foreign volunteers. Through those volunteers, particularly Steuben…
All posts tagged January 17
Washington and His Comrades: Chapter XI
Yorktown The critical stroke of the war was near. In the South, after General Greene superseded Gates in the command, the tide of war began to turn. Cornwallis now had to fight a better general than Gates. Greene arrived at Charlotte, North Carolina, in December. He found an army badly equipped, wretchedly clothed, and confronted…
Francis Marion, Chapter III, Campaign of 1781, part 1
The year 1781 commenced under auspices more propitious than those of the last year. The British had exercised so much oppression and rapacity over all those who would not join them, and so much insolence over those who did, and were in the least suspected, that the people of South Carolina found there was no…
Battle of the Cowpens
From Diary of the American Revolution, Vol II. Compiled by Frank Moore and published in 1859. January 17.—This morning, after a very severe action, General Morgan, with a detachment of the southern army, obtained a complete victory over Colonel Tarleton at the Cowpens, with eleven hundred and fifty men, the flower of Cornwallis’s army. Tarleton,…
Thomas Jefferson to General Horatio Gates
Richmond, February 17, 1781. Dear General, The situation of affairs here and in Carolina is such as must shortly turn up important events, one way or the other. By letter from General Greene, dated Guilford Court House, February the 10th, I learn that Lord Cornwallis, rendered furious by the affair of the Cowpens and the…