The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (106 page)

ceeded in pushing Lee and Campbell to higher ground on the American left where they fought, in virtual isolation, until the battle was decided. On the American right, Lynch's riflemen and Washington's cavalry delivered an enfilading fire. Webster shifted his line to clear them away and brought up his jaegers and the Guards, hitherto inactive, in ."support." Although the Americans gave ground only slowly, give way they did, and the British left stabilized itself. These shifts outward by the two British wings left the middle relatively open. To cover this part of the field Cornwallis called up O'Hara's grenadiers and the 2nd Battalion of Guards.
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The Virginians along the second line soon felt the attack of the reconstituted British center. Stevens, one of the two commanders of the Virginians, had felt shame at Camden, but now his men fought with great determination. In this struggle in the woods Cornwallis himself was very nearly captured or killed. Sergeant Lamb, ever alert, spotted him remounted on a dragoon's horse -- his own had been shot -- seeking to lead his men forward. But so bewildering was this fight, shrouded by branches and brush, that Cornwallis was a leader with no followers. Lamb grabbed the bridle of his horse just as Cornwallis was about to blunder into a nest of Virginians and guided him back to safety, if any part of that woods of bees and bullets could be considered safe.
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It was Webster's men on the British left, probably of the 33rd, who smashed through first to the third American line. The 2nd Battalion of Guards soon joined them and before long so did the remaining British units, with the exception of those conducting a private battle on the far left of the American lines.
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The third line consisted of American regulars -- two regiments of Virginians on the right and next to them the 1st and 2nd Marylanders. These men stood in the open with the Reedy Fork road to their backs, heavy woods to their right, and the Great Road on their left. On the left flank Greene stationed two six-pounders. Farther to the left across the road Washington's cavalry rested. These horsemen had been pushed there in hard fighting from the right flank of the first line. To the front of these units, the hill fell off into a ravine and small gullies. All in all, the Americans held a fine defensive position.

The battle along the third line also went through several phases with control of the field shifting back and forth.
Webster's light infantry

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and the 33rd made the first assault without pausing as they left the woods. They may not have realized that a new fresh line opposed them but perhaps in the eagerness of pursuit believed that their combat was almost over. The Maryland and Virginia Continentals cut them down with a volley and then drove them back in chaos with a bayonet attack. At this moment, Lee and later historians suggest, Greene might have sent his entire line forward and won the field. Greene did not want to risk everything in this battle of surges and surprises -- and was satisfied simply to bold his ground.

Simply holding the line soon proved impossible. The 2nd Battalion of Guards supported by the grenadiers now hit forward and dislodged the one inexperienced regiment on the line, the 5th Maryland Regiment, which fled without firing. The Americans recovered through the action of Washington's cavalry, which plugged the hole in a fierce charge. The 1st Marylanders and small detachments of Virginians -- swung about and concentrated on driving back the guards. O'Hara, their commander, now steadied them, though he was wounded, and the Fusiliers and the Highlanders were soon sucked into a compressed, savage struggle -- much of it hand-to-hand with the Americans gradually gaining control. Seeing that his men must lose in this tight, swirling affair where for the moment at least they were clearly outnumbered, Cornwallis took a dreadful chance. Two three-pounders had been brought to a high point along the Great Road between 200 and 300 yards from the line. Cornwallis ordered that these pieces should fire grape over the British troops immediately to their front and into the unsteady mass of guards and Americans. O'Hara, lying near by, begged him to revoke this order, but Cornwallis held fast and the grape was fired, killing men on both sides. Its effect was to separate the two, and separation worked to the advantage of the British. At close quarters they were unexcelled with the bayonet so long as they were in formation. Tumbled together incoherently, with the greater numbers on their enemy's side, they lost the advantage and were rapidly being consumed in an unbalanced conflict.
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Drawn apart, the two sides reformed. The British knew how to reestablish formations more effectively and soon resumed the attack. At this point Greene gave way and ordered a retreat, abandoning his artillery and his wounded. The horses that drew the guns were casualties too, and pulling these pieces out by hand could only cost more lives.
The

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British were far too disabled to pursue. That night the living gave thanks, and the wounded, as always in these eighteenth-century battles, bled and suffered and died.

Cornwallis sent most of his wounded from the battlefield two days later in seventeen wagons with instructions: "Each Waggon to carry as many of the wounded men as can Possibly be put into it." He and the main body followed on March 19, heading for Cross Creek, a community of Scottish highlanders who he hoped would supply him and who even might contribute recruits to his shrinking command. The Scots did neither, and Cornwallis then resumed the march, with Wilmington his destination. He had hoped to remain at Cross Creek rather than put his command on the road once more, but he needed food. American irregulars along the Cape Fear River made sending supplies up from Wilmington by water impossible, so he had no choice but to move once more. By this time he feared a trap in South Carolina -- or said he did -- and clearly had his fill of chasing Greene. On April 7 he made it to Wilmington with about 1400 rank-and-file fit for duty. Lt. Colonel Webster was one of many who died along the way.
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Two weeks after the arrival at Wilmington, Charles O'Hara noted that the "Spirit of our little Army has evaporated a good deal." Undoubtedly it had. The feeling expressed later by several who fought at Guilford-that the victory had been "honorable" and even "glorious" but of no value because of the terrible losses -- was widely shared. Cornwallis did not deprecate his victory, but neither did he dwell on it.
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Rather, he pondered what he should do. The recent campaign had disabused him of the notion that the Carolinas housed large numbers of loyalists. It had also convinced him that he had very little chance of smashing Greene even if he managed to join his army to Rawdon's, which in April still sat in Camden. He did not know what to do, and as he wrote his closest friend, Major General Phillips, who in March had taken some troops to Virginia where he assumed command from Arnold -- "I am quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures." He was more discreet in a letter to Clinton asking for instructions, though the letter, with its reproachful declaration that he was "totally in the dark as to the intended operations in the summer,"

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laid out a plan. The heart of this plan was an extraordinary proposal "that the Chesapeake may become the seat of war, even (if necessary) at the expense of abandoning New York." What he had in mind was of course that Clinton abandon New York and bring the northern army to Virginia. There, as he wrote to Phillips in a fit of wishful thinking, "we then have a stake to fight for, and a successful battle may give us America." These suppositions about the crucial location of the Chesapeake and the possibility of ending the Revolution with a single battle reveal once more the limitations of Cornwallis's strategic thought. Frustrated by a long, miserable, and costly campaign, he dreamed; and dreaming, he deluded himself. There was no one to stop him, and on April 25 he began the march to Virginia.
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Although Nathanael Greene's army had been forced from the field at Guilford Court House, its spirit remained high. Perhaps the soldiers who enjoyed the highest morale were in the militia; their enlistments were expiring and they were leaving military service, as Greene sardonically observed, to "return home to kiss their wives and sweethearts." Even they probably shared Greene's opinion that "The Enemy got the ground the other Day, But we the victory. They had the splendor, we the advantage."
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How to use this advantage remained a troubling question for several weeks. By April, Greene had decided that he would march into South Carolina to clear that state of the enemy. Cornwallis had taken himself far from the scene and could make his army's weight felt only by the most strenuous effort. Greene thought it unlikely that Cornwallis would follow him southward, for if he did, he gave up North Carolina. And Greene assumed, incorrectly, that Cornwallis wanted very badly to hold North Carolina If Cornwallis followed Greene into South Carolina the advantage lay with the Americans -- Cornwallis's army still suffered from the last battle, and Pickens, Marion, and Sumter would aid the main army in giving the British more grief. What Greene wished to prevent was the joining of Cornwallis's force to Rawdon's then at Camden. Late in April Cornwallis removed any possibility of concentrating troops in South Carolina. Yet in May when Greene learned conclusively that Cornwallis had left for Virginia, he felt little relief -- the linking of Cornwallis and Phillips created a large enemy force.
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Unaware of Cornwallis's inclination to shake the Carolina dust in favor of Virginia's, Greene on April 7 started down the Cape Fear River as if he were going to Wilmington, and the next day, after this feint which was designed to confuse the British, peeled off in a march against Camden. This move was one of a series of actions which he now undertook to push the British from South Carolina. In the west, Pickens was to strike Ninety-Six, Marion and Lee were to meet below Camden to attack Fort Watson on the Santee, and Sumter, after establishing magazines with food supplies near Camden, was to add his partisans to the main army.

Lee and Marion did their part brilliantly, and Fort Watson fell on April 23. This attack seems to have marked the first use of the Maham Tower, named after its inventor, Hezekiah Maham. The tower, a high platform erected near the fort, permitted the American riflemen who stood on it to deliver a plunging fire against the enemy manning the walls. Pickens also enjoyed success though his force was far too small to reduce the fortifications at Ninety-Six. He did, however, sweep the countryside around the post and isolated its defenders. Only Greene failed to take his objective, Camden, which, he remarked immediately after his failure, seems to have some evil genius about it [,] whatever is attempted near that place is unfortunate."
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