Greene challenges Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse.

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Foreign hello, and welcome to the political history of the United States.

Following the American victory at Cowpens, a cat and mouse style chase had broken out between Cornwallis and Greene as both sides fought to reach Virginia first.

The Americans had won the race, but rather than remaining in Virginia, he decided to travel back towards the south to confront Cornwallis directly.

Greene was acting on intelligence that Lord Cornwallis had significantly grown his army as Loyalist militia continued to flock to his cause.

Greene was desperate to cut off this flow of support for the British because the very last thing that the Americans needed was Cornwallis having a ready supply of local reinforcements.

In reality, it was the intelligence that was bad.

Following defeats first at King's Mountain and then at Cowpens, the Southern Loyalists most assuredly were not eagerly awaiting the opportunity to help their British brethren.

And by the time of Guilford Courthouse, the support had all but completely dried up.

However, Greene does not seem to have known that fact and now was standing out on a field awaiting the imminent arrival of the British.

Now, before we go any further, I will mention that in order to keep everything nice and clean, we are just going to pick right back up from where we last left off and remain in the South.

At Guilford Courthouse this week.

There are other things happening that are important, like, say, the state's finally ratifying the Articles of Confederation, which occurred at roughly the same time.

We will of course get to that, but, but just not this week.

So a lot of stuff is going on, but for this week, let's head on over to Guilford Courthouse.

Nathaniel Greene had learned an important lesson from Daniel Morgan's victory at Cowpens.

He was able to see that Morgan's success had come from understanding the strengths and more importantly, the limitations of his men.

Morgan was aware of the reputation of the militia to give into that base desire for self preservation and to turn tail and run.

As soon as the fighting started at Cowpens, Morgan had made things easy on the men.

All he asked of them was to fire two shots and then please make an orderly exit to the left.

Thank you very much.

And for the most part, the men agreed that this did not sound too awful.

They fired their two shots and then they got out of there.

Greene, upon arrival at Guildford Courthouse, found a small town built around a small hill.

This gave Greene the advantage of having the high ground going into the battle.

Although the area near the courthouse was cleared.

Most of the battlefield was a heavily wooded forest.

It was an ideal location for Greene, as the two small hills to the south of the field meant that the British were going to have to enter through a road carved into the valley.

For the Americans, they would have a nice clear view of the British as they approached.

Importantly, although the Americans would have a clear view of the British approach, Cornwallis lacked any such advantage.

While Cornwallis would be able to see the front of the American lines, the rest of Greene's men were going to be obscured by the dense woodlands.

Now, this would prove to be something of a double edged sword.

The advantage for Greene was obvious.

Cornwallis would be unable to easily form a clear understanding of the American positions.

However, the thing to understand is that the battlefield here was far larger than a Cowpens.

We are going to discuss the lines in just a second here.

However, for the purpose of understanding the field, be aware for the moment that like Morgan, Grant Greene organized his men into three lines.

Unlike Morgan, the size of the field meant that each line was going to be largely independent and not supported by the one behind it.

Sure, Cornwallis could not see the entire American deployment, but nor could the three American lines see each other.

Likewise, unlike Morgan, Greene himself could not see the entire field, meaning that his reaction time would be predicated upon how long it took the information to travel to him, rather than being able to personally see the field and react in real time.

Despite these limitations, Greene did have a couple of things going for him.

First, he considerably outnumbered his British counterpart.

Greene, having been reinforced by Baron von Steuben amongst others, boasted a formidable advantage.

In total, the Americans had some 4,400 men that day, with more than a third of those men being Continentals.

The British, on the other hand, had an army of right around 1,950.

Having a significant manpower advantage as well as having chosen the site of the battle, Greene quickly set to the task of arranging his men.

Taking a page from the Daniel Morgan playbook, Greene assembled his men into three lines.

Now, as a quick aside, if you are asking yourself the question of where exactly is Daniel Morgan during all of this, back on February 10th, he was forced to head home to Virginia, where he was recovering from a particularly nasty bout of sciatica and a painful case of hemorrhoids.

So even though Morgan was sitting out this round, Greene had seen the usefulness of his formations during Cowpens and set out to emulate the same.

To this end, Greene set up his men in three lines at the southernmost point of the field, he placed right around a thousand members of the North Carolina militia along a rail fence.

These were not the cream of the crop.

Indeed, these were the troops that were most likely to turn and run without firing a shot at the first sign of danger.

Greene stuck some cavalry under William Washington and Henry Lee on the sides of this line to hopefully I'll buoy it as long as possible.

There was no real hope that this line was going to go forward and put forth a fierce defense.

Greene was well aware of that and knew that eventually they would end up running for their lives and that there was little he could do about it.

His solution was to request the same thing that Morgan had asked of his men.

Becca Cowpens fire two or preferably three volleys at the approaching British and then make an organized retreat.

This first line would have a clear view of the British approach and would have to stand there and wait for them to get close enough that they could do anything about it, which as we have seen, is a pretty big ask for the inexperienced militia.

Furthermore, despite being posted up against a rail fence, it should be understood that this fence offered very little, if any, protection for the men.

So don't get the thought that they were firing from anything that could meaningfully be considered cover.

Some 350 yards behind the North Carolina militia was the second line, made up of Virginia militia with some 1,200 men.

Although this was still militia, they were not exactly the same as the North Carolina militia in front of them.

Many of these men had previously been in the Continental army and were, as a result of their previous service, more aware of what was expected.

This likewise meant that they were at least less likely to break and run prematurely.

One of the two American commanders, Brigadier General Edward Stevens, wanting to take no chances, lined up approximately 40 men behind this line and ordered them to shoot anybody who attempted to run.

Although it should be noted that many of these men were hardly hearted veterans, for many this would be their very first major engagement.

It is important to note that Greene's army did not include any real kind of reserve holes that formed or treble spots were going to remain, just that.

The lines were far too separated from each other to support each other, and Greene was putting it all out there, holding nothing back.

Although Greene had a significant manpower advantage over Cornwallis, there was a very real risk that should something go wrong somewhere on the battlefield, the entire army could find itself in very serious Danger.

As the Americans stood waiting, Cornwallis and his men were marching from their position some 10 miles away to the southwest.

It was around 1:30 in the afternoon of March 15th that the very first British troops came into view as they marched down the New Garden Road towards Guilford Courthouse.

Pretty much as soon as the British made their first appearance, an artillery battle broke out, first with the Americans and then, in short order, the British, lobbing cannonballs at each other, although neither side appears to have really hit much with said cannonballs.

As Cornwallis approached, he found himself walking into what was pretty much an ideal situation, at least in theory.

We have talked about before how the American Revolution quickly developed into a war of posts, which, if you will recall, meant that it was primarily a defensive war for the Americans.

It was that idea that you could lose every single battle but make those losses so costly to the enemy that you end up winning the war.

The Battle of Bunker Hill stands as the primary example of this, as it was a British victory that had come at an unsustainable price.

Really.

This is what the war had long been.

There had, of course, been major battles.

However, the Americans were always very cautious about general engagements, often preferring to poke incessantly at their enemy rather than walking up and punching them in the mouth.

Therefore, as Cornwallis and the British moved towards Guilford courthouse on the 15th, what Cornwallis saw was a golden opportunity.

If he could deliver a crushing blow to the Americans right now, then the disastrous losses of Kings Mountain and Cowpens would be forgotten because they would quickly become irrelevant.

It was always difficult to get the Americans to agree to a general engagement, and here they were, ready to go.

This was, simply put, the exact opportunity that Cornwallis had needed for months, and he was not about to allow it to pass.

Without giving it more than a few seconds of thought, Cornwallis decided that today was the day that he was going to finish off Greene and his army once and for all.

The problem is, maybe Cornwallis should have given it a few moments of thought.

In his book the Road to Guilford Courthouse, John Buchanan writes that Cornwallis rushed into a battle where he was unaware of how many men Greene was commanding and actually thought it was more than it really was.

He did not know the train.

He did not know the American deployments.

He knew nothing.

His men were hungry.

Recall that to speed up the march after Cowpens, Cornwallis had ordered the baggage train to be burned.

The decision, although arguably necessary in the moment, was starting to really catch up with the British.

Now the men had to skip breakfast.

That Morning, which.

Which, as we all know, is the most important meal of the day.

Making things even worse is that a moment ago I mentioned that Cornwallis was camped just 10 miles or so to the southwest of the Americans.

Well, in the context I used it, it was meant to imply that the British were camping right down the road.

But it also means that to start the 15th, the men were going to have to march over 10 miles just to reach Guilford Courthouse, a march that they did on empty bellies.

Cornwallis was therefore sending his tired and hungry men into a battle where they were certainly outnumbered, maybe seriously outnumbered, and with almost no intelligence of the situation that they were walking into.

Cornwallis saw a battle, and he would be damned if he was not going to take it.

The main part of the battle began with Cornwallis sending his men towards the American right, which was marginally less heavily wooded as compared to the left.

Reports here seem to be somewhat confusing of what the North Carolina militia actually did following the battle.

Greenwood placed much of the blame for the failures of the Americans to win that day on the actions of the North Carolina militia.

There is ample evidence that when the British were about 150 yards out, the North Carolina militia did fire a volley, one that did significant damage to the approaching British.

In the weeks following the battle, Greene would complain that much as had been the case at Camden, a lot of the men just dropped what they were doing and took off without firing even a single shot.

The problem with this is that Greene was nowhere near that first American line and in fact, was over a thousand yards to the south of them, completely unable to see what was actually happening.

Commanders closer to the militia reported that the men acted pretty well, all things considered.

This seems to be backed up further by the fact that in those opening moments of the battle, the British did quickly take significant losses.

Furthermore, John Buchanan writes in the Road to Guilford Courthouse that when the British line got within 40 yards of the Americans, they were momentarily unnerved by the Americans all taking aim along the rail fence.

The British quickly recovered their nerve and rushed forward towards the American position as the Americans quickly unleashed a round of fire upon them.

Despite the apparent damage from being hit with that second volley, the British just kept coming, which was enough to get the North Carolina militia to call it a day.

If these reports are correct, it means that the North Carolina militia remained in significant numbers right up until the British closed within 40 yards.

It also means that they fired at least two volleys, which, if you'll recall, is all that Greene was asking for.

Fire two Rounds and then retreat.

Now, ideally, the retreat could have been better.

Greene had likely hoped that the men would fall back and then reform a line in the rear, although that did not really happen.

Most of the men just kept on running.

Greene had never exactly been clear about what, or more specifically, when or where the men should go when they were done retreating.

While they were ultimately going to get the blame for the outcome of the battle, it does seem misplaced.

They appear to have done just what Greene had asked by firing those two shots.

And indeed, the piles of dead British troops would indicate that they had done their jobs well.

Woody Holton writes in Liberty Is Sweet that the first line of the Americans was always at something of a disadvantage.

He points out that there was 400 yards between the first two lines, which was more than twice the distance between the lines at Cowpens.

This meant that for the men retreating, they were going to have to go that much further before they were behind the next line and presumably back to safety.

Furthermore, the men in the front enjoyed considerably less tree coverage than the other two lines.

These two things meant that they were not only going to be more exposed, but that they were going to be exposed for a longer period of time than Morgan would have asked for at Cowpens.

Like Buchanan, Holton writes that the complaints by Greene afterwards about the behavior of the North Carolina militia were largely exaggerated.

Per his own instructions, Greene had always meant for the first line to do just some damage and then get out of the way.

Pete knew well that the stand was going to begin with a second line.

Unlike the first line, the second line was fighting from a far more wooded space, meaning considerably more cover.

This cover, while providing some protection for the men, would also cause some problems.

In one notable incident, Henry Lee and a British and German detachment ended up getting pulled way off of the main line to the southeast.

After an ongoing battle, they had managed to migrate about a mile from the main fight.

This would ultimately cause a strange situation where the British center moved further south than where the extreme left fringe was fighting, and therefore they were actually fighting behind the American lines.

This caused a chaotic situation for both sides.

You see, both sides were fighting in a way that had become common throughout the backcountry of the Carolinas.

They were using the hills and the trees for cover.

More than once, the British found themselves getting assaulted from behind by the rapidly moving Americans.

The problem with all of this is that for both sides, it was utterly pointless.

Both Greene and Cornwallis could have used the men now engaged in this battle within a battle.

The fight did nothing to help either side win the overall objectives, and it just sucked up critical resources from the actual battle.

Back at the actual battle, the second line would provide some of the most brutal fighting of the entire day.

The heaviest fighting would come along the extreme flanks, both on the left and on the right.

On the left, the British were taking heavy losses while really only bringing everybody to a standstill, neither side able to move forward nor interested in a retreat.

Over on the American right, the British likewise found themselves ripe targets for the Americans here.

However, despite damage being dealt by the Americans, the British were making slow but steady progress.

With the flank now bending, Cornwallis led an assault on the center, which very nearly saw him personally stumble into a detachment of Virginia militia.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the American right, which had been bending for a while, that finally gave way to the British advance.

In short order, British all over the line finally managed to break through the American defenses.

However, if the British, who came limping out of the fight with that second line, thought that their day was over, they would be dismayed moments later when they ran headlong into the American third line.

In a confused moment, and one that seemed to indicate that at least some of the British were unaware that there was going to be an additional American line, many men ended up charging directly into that third line.

These British troops, who were largely the same that had been the first to break through the second line, were easily dispatched with by the Americans, who, following firing a volley, themselves moved forward with a bayonet attack.

It is right here at this moment that we have to stop and consider what might have been.

The American volley against the British 33rd instantly threw them into a sense of disarray when speculating that the advancing men were unaware of the state of the American defenses.

It really is because they, those who were not cut down by it, seemed to be genuinely stunned by the volley.

Military historians often pick this moment as the time that Greene could have pivoted to a more aggressive stance.

There was a moment when the British were disorganized and confused by what had happened.

Had Greene brought the entire American line forward and into an attack, there is a possibility that Greene might have overwhelmed and defeated the suddenly disorganized British.

Greene did not do this, and I would argue, based on everything we have seen from him, that was probably the right choice.

Remember that the Americans did not need to win.

Their directive on the day was to not be wiped out.

It was the British that desperately needed a victory.

As John Buchanan states it, Greene was not looking to risk his entire army with, and I'm quoting here directly, a roll of the tactical dice.

The battle along the third line was chaotic and constantly shifting in who had the advantage.

The fiercest fighting of the entire day came between contingents of the Maryland and Virginia troops against the elite British 2nd Battalion of the British Guard.

This fight was very nearly over before it took off when one group of Marylanders, choosing self preservation, turned and ran before firing a shot.

Before the British could seize the advantage, William Washington and the militia would race up and plug up the hole.

The Virginians and the remaining Marylanders turned and engaged the guard.

This quickly devolves into close quarters hand to hand combat.

In short order, Cornwallis had a serious problem.

His elite guards were giving ground and it looked very much like they were in danger of being annihilated.

Washington's cavalry attack had come as a complete shock to the guards, who in addition to taking significant damage, were now completely disorganized.

The the loss of the guards would not only have put the British in danger of being overrun, but it would have likewise meant that the cream of the crop of Cornwallis army would have been destroyed.

The solution, one that nearby officers apparently tried to talk Cornwallis out of, was to order that grapeshot be fired into the disorganized mass of men.

This would of course lead to injuries from friendly fire, but Cornwallis hoped that it would be enough to stun the Americans and save the guard.

Over the objections, Cornwallis made the order which had the intended effect of breaking up the Americans.

It is for the sake of accuracy worth noting that there is still at least some question to the veracity of this story.

The claim comes from Henry Lee, who was not present at this part of the battle.

Some historians believe that any incident of friendly fire was accidental and not some intentional undertaking by Cornwallis.

Historian Woody Holton further points out that Henry Lee had a bad habit of occasionally exaggerating.

Either way, we know that the guard did survive, although quite a bit worse for the wearer.

Regardless of if it was an intentional bit of friendly fire or a mere accident, the reprieve that came following the breaking up of this hand to hand combat gave the British a chance to quickly regroup and reform for another assault.

The Americans were not in any particular danger at this point and remained a cohesive unit.

However, Green, who recall was plagued with slow, if not outright poor intelligence all day, believed that his left flank had already turned and that the right was not far behind it.

Although Greene can be criticized for not pushing forward and going for the outright Victory.

He was working without a clear picture of the battle and could not afford to risk his Army.

At around 3:30 that afternoon, he ordered a retreat, abandoning his artillery in the process.

Although this was more because the horses that were used to pull the artillery had not survived the day.

The American withdrawal remained orderly, with the rear guard providing enough cover to keep everything from becoming disorganized.

Cornwallis briefly gave a little bit of a chase, but it was always half hearted at best, and quickly he abandoned it altogether as his men were just as exhausted as the Americans.

As the dust settled, the full scope of the battle came into focus for both sides.

The Americans had suffered 79 killed and another 184 injured, which was about a 7% casualty rate.

The British counted their losses as 93 killed, 23 missing and 413 wounded.

This was an astonishing 28% casualty rate for the British.

The British had won the battle.

The Americans had abandoned the field.

But the victory came at a stunningly high cost to Cornwallis.

One of the critical things that we must also consider is, is what the objectives were for both the British and the Americans.

As had been the case in the Carolina backcountry, the British needed a victory at Guilford Courthouse.

While the Americans would have certainly liked a victory, it was not necessarily a prerequisite to their success that day.

Greene's primary objective was to emerge from the battle with his army intact.

The Americans could not afford to lose another southern army.

And while I do not want to play the game of guessing what would have happened if the Americans had been dealt a catastrophic loss, it does not really seem like that big of a stretch to imagine that the Carolinas and Georgia would have become very hard, if not outright impossible, to recover.

As far as actually winning the battle, well, Greene did not really need to do that.

If he could keep his army intact and force Cornwallis to pay a high price for the victory, well, that would be good enough.

Despite Greene's lament over losing Guilford Courthouse, this seems to be the exact thing that he had done.

The British had their victory, but it is difficult to pretend that it was anything other than a Pyrrhic victory.

Earlier today I had brought up the American Revolution.

Being a war of posts, few battles fit this archetype better than does Guilford Courthouse.

The Americans did not require a victory that day.

Holding the field, something that seemed to be a prerequisite for an 18th century victory, was not terribly important to Greene.

In fact, this day had gone almost perfectly for Greene, whose army was more or less intact.

As compared to a British army that had lost over a quarter of its fighting force.

If that loss alone had not been enough, when you combine it with Tarleton's defeat at Cowpens weeks earlier, the number becomes even more stark.

Cornwallis had seen his army reduced by over 50%.

Making matters worse, and maybe ultimately fatally worse, is that even before Cornwallis and Greene had faced off at Guilford Courthouse, support from the Loyalist militia in the south had all but completely collapsed.

We talked about this in our last episode, when Cornwallis put out the call for Loyalists to come and help out and fight.

All he got was crickets in return.

Not that the Loyalist militia had ever existed in the huge numbers that the leadership back in London had either believed or deluded themselves into believing.

Now, though, even that underwhelming support was gone.

It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the one group that seemed strangely oblivious to just how well things were going were the Americans.

Nathaniel Greene was convinced that he had lost the battle.

Just three days after the battle, Greene wrote to Washington to let him know of the unsuccessful action against Cornwallis, while pointing the finger at the North Carolina militia as having taken off without firing a shot as being the reason for the loss.

The day after the battle, Greenwood write to Jefferson an account that seemed to at least acknowledge the differential between the American and the British losses.

He wrote that despite losing, the Americans had suffered what Greene calls trifling losses, whereas the British losses were far more significant.

He furthermore makes the comment that the British have nothing to boast of and that he had nothing to lament.

It is also interesting to note that Greene goes out of his way to compliment the Virginia militiamen, especially as compared to those from North Carolina.

While they did indeed perform well during the battle, I also do wonder if Greene was attempting to nurse Jefferson's ego a bit after that far more terse exchange back at the beginning of Greene's command.

It is interesting that the letter to Jefferson seems to be far more enthusiastic than the one a few days after that to Washington.

There was, of course, some level of politics at play here.

He needed to be sure to give both men the delivery that they needed.

Greene was wanting men and supplies from both Washington and Jefferson, and likely crafted his letters in such a way that was most likely to achieve that end.

However, it still seems to be a bit of a curious omission that he did not engage in a little bit of self congratulating in his letter to Washington.

Regardless of how Greene may have viewed the events, Cornwallis was well aware of how the Battle of Guilford Courthouse had gone.

Although Cornwallis was proclaiming a complete and total victory in the days after the battle, it was all for propaganda.

He was hoping that the Southern Loyalists would pick up on the hint and flock to the service of the Crown.

What Cornwallis found was a people who were neither eager to fight nor were they meaningfully able to give support.

By the time of the battle, the British were desperately low on supplies.

After the battle, he was desperate to procure food.

However, even amongst the Loyalist communities that he came across, they had nothing left to give.

On April 7, Cornwallis led an exhausted army into Wilmington, where his men could get some much needed rest and where he could figure out exactly what comes next.

Next time, we are going to look at exactly what it is that Cornwallis was going to do next.

We are going to welcome a new combatant into the war.

And then finally, we are going to see the return of a former friend, now in the role of a despised enemy.

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful two weeks.

I hope that you are staying healthy and that you are staying safe, and I will see you all back here next time.

As the Americans prepare for the summer's campaigns, it.