Victory at Yorktown (15 page)

As darkness fell over the field, the cries of dying men were terrible to hear, for they had neither medical aid nor water. The next morning James Collins was witness to a pitiful scene: wives and children of the Tories came in great numbers to seek out their husbands, fathers, and brothers in the heaps of dead or among the wounded. The burials were badly handled, Collins later recalled; the bodies were thrown into piles and covered with logs, bark, and rocks, but without proper covering they were prey to a large number of wolves, hogs from the neighborhood, and ravenous dogs that persisted even though many of them were shot.

On the evening of the battle the rebels distributed the plunder by lot, and Collins and his father “drew two fine horses, two guns, and some articles of clothing with a share of powder and lead.” Afterward, when the rebel combatants returned to their tents or homes, “It seemed like a calm after a heavy storm … and for a short time every man could visit his home or his neighbor without being afraid.”

The end of the battle brought no respite to the defeated Tories. Hundreds of them were marched off toward the main patriot army, which was then in Hillsboro, but despite Colonel Campbell's general orders to officers of all ranks to “restrain the disorderly manner of slaughtering and disturbing the prisoners,” the furies had been set loose and these rebels wanted revenge against their former loyalist neighbors. Men were beaten, slashed with swords, and after a committee of colonels passed judgment on some of them for “breaking open houses, killing the men, turning the men and women out of doors, and burning the houses,” nine were executed. En route to Hillsboro a good many prisoners escaped, but enough were left that Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia was asked to help in disposing of them.

When George Washington learned of the victory, he observed, “This advantage will in all probability have a very happy influence upon the successive operations in that quarter.” Happy it proved. The loyalists were by then too dispirited to turn out in support of Cornwallis. The British general had ordered Tarleton to take his light infantry and his legion to aid Ferguson, but on the way news of that officer's “melancholy fate” reached him, and when he reported this to headquarters he was recalled immediately. Lord Cornwallis's hopes for conquering all of North Carolina were dashed, and October 14 found him retreating to the south.

To add to the earl's woes, the weather turned foul in anticipation of winter; heavy rains, changing the red clay roads to vast slimy mudholes, slowed his army to a creep. With rebel militia harassing his march and stealing horses, wagons disappearing and food along with them, hundreds of men took sick, many of them from sleeping on the cold, wet ground without tents. Cornwallis himself was laid up with a fever and confined to a cheerless, comfortless hospital wagon to contemplate his plight and reckon with the certainty that his plans for a winter campaign were entirely upset. As he wrote to General Clinton, he could no longer count on assistance from loyalists in and around Ninety-Six:
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they were “so totally disheartened by the defeat of Ferguson that, of the whole district, we could with difficulty assemble 100 [men]; and even those, I am convinced, would not have made the smallest difference if they had been attacked.”

5

A LITTLE PERSEVERING AND DETERMINED ARMY

Nathanael Greene had suffered
one disappointment after another, having anticipated seeing his beloved wife, Kitty, after their long separation, only to be ordered to the South before they could meet. In a parting letter to her from Fishkill, he wrote, “I am at this moment setting off for the southward, having kept expresses flying all night to see if I could hear anything of you—I have been almost distracted, I wanted to see you so much before I set out.” But he was out of luck, and after leaving Philadelphia on November 2 he conferred with Washington, Knox, and other old comrades-in-arms in Preakness, New Jersey, before heading south with the feeling of going to his doom, so dire was most news from his destination.

The situation in the southern department was truly disheartening. Writing to François Barbé-Marbois, secretary to France's ambassador, Alexander Hamilton pulled no punches: “The want of money makes us want everything else, even intelligence,” adding, “I confess I view our affairs in a gloomy light.” He understood that a congress of neutral powers would meet during the coming winter to “mediate a peace.” If so, “God send it—we want one.”

Greene reached what was left of Gates's army in Charlotte a month later, having stopped on his long journey to visit the Maryland and Virginia assemblies and beg their support. Though they promised what help they could find, it was clear that not much would be forthcoming, since both state treasuries were so impoverished “they could not furnish forage” for Greene's horses.

Bitterly, he wrote a friend that along the way he had seen people “engaged in pursuit of pleasure, almost regardless of their danger, public credit lost, and every man excusing himself from giving the least aid to Government, from an apprehension that they would get no return for any advance.”

Greene, who was to end the war with a military reputation second only to Washington's, was born near Warwick, Rhode Island, in 1742. One of six sons of a well-to-do Quaker preacher who owned an ironworks, Nathanael lost his mother when he was eleven. He grew up working on the family farm, schooled by an itinerant tutor, but only briefly, because his father was prejudiced against book learning. Not until he was seventeen or eighteen did he discover the world of books, and from then on he was seldom without one. In 1770 his father died, and he and his brothers continued to operate the ironworks, which became one of the state's largest businesses.

The onrush of events in the worsening quarrel between Britain and its colonies soon tested Greene's belief in the pacifist teachings of the Society of Friends, and he was read out of the church for failure to conform to its principles. Recently married to Catherine Littlefield, known as Kitty, he organized a military unit called the Kentish Guards, but was not elected an officer because he walked with a pronounced limp from a stiff knee, which some thought unbefitting for a military man. Greene was sensitive about his affliction, which had been with him since childhood, but he swallowed his pride and settled for the rank of private at a time, ironically, when the state assembly chose him to serve on a committee that was revising the military laws of the province. He traveled frequently to Boston, where he spent hours watching the redcoats drilling on the Common, examining the British fortification of Boston Neck, and whiling away what leisure time he had in Henry Knox's London Bookstore, purchasing military manuals and discussing military science with the proprietor, who would become Washington's artillerist and Greene's lifelong friend.

Greene was a husky man of above-average height, whose portrait by Charles Willson Peale shows his friendly face, a broad, high forehead, somewhat narrow, penetrating eyes, a thin nose, and large, sensuous mouth. The Quaker's knowledge of military matters and his perceptive, analytical mind impressed everyone with whom he came in contact, and Rhode Island selected him to command its armed force, giving him the rank of brigadier general. During the 1775–76 siege of Boston he played a valuable role in organizing the raw troops, and when George Washington arrived to take over the newly christened Continental Army, he and Greene hit it off at once. Washington considered Greene's soldiers the best officered of all those around Boston; certainly they had the highest morale, and many officers, including Henry Knox, regarded Greene as nothing short of a military genius.

In less than a year, he was in charge of the troops on Long Island, a key to the defense of New York, and Washington's aide Alexander Hamilton observed that the commander in chief's discerning eye “marked him out as the object of his confidence.… He gained it, and he preserved it, amidst all the checkered varieties of military vicissitude.” In assigning him to the southern command, Washington knew that Greene would be up against just about every vicissitude a military man could face, but he was utterly confident in him, knowing that he was a good manager of men, extremely intelligent, patient, resourceful, and without question the best man for the onerous task ahead.

Greene reached Charlotte and Gates's former command, only to find a ghost of an army with “the appearance of the troops … wretched beyond description,” suffering—as the army did everywhere—from an appalling lack of food and clothing. Gates had lost the confidence of his officers; the troops were undisciplined and were so accustomed to plundering as to be a terror to the local inhabitants. Summing up the deficiencies in a letter to Joseph Reed, a former aide to Washington, Greene said, “The wants of this army are so numerous and various that the shortest way of telling you is to inform you that we have nothing.…” He was doing everything in his power to bring order to the army, “but it is all an up-hill business.” As in the North, the militia here, “like the locusts of Egypt, have eaten up everything, and the expense has been so enormous that it has ruined the currency of the State.”

It was especially discouraging to note that in a state so large the powers of government were so weak that everybody did pretty much as they pleased. Greene believed the strength and resources of the region were greatly overrated, and observed that large numbers of the inhabitants were moving away, with the army forced to exist on charity and daily collections, mostly consisting of Indian meal and beef. Politically, the people were divided, with Whigs and Tories pursuing each other with “savage fury.” By contrast with the backcountry people, who were bold and daring, those in the tidewater region were sickly and, unfortunately, made indifferent militia. Greene noted that Daniel Morgan was in the area of the Broad River “with a little flying army,” while Colonel William Washington was not far from Morgan and had just defeated a party of Tories. He had plans for both those officers, and as for his own position, Greene described it as “a camp of repose, for the purpose of repairing our wagons, recruiting our horses, and disciplining the troops.”

On December 20 Greene made the risky decision to divide his small army, ignoring the military axiom that splitting an inferior force when faced with a superior one is to hazard having the enemy destroy one and then turn on the other. Yet Greene, as always, had thought through his dilemma and his options. In no way could he stand up to Cornwallis in a pitched battle, nor did he dare give the enemy or the Carolinians—or his own troops, for that matter—the impression that he was retreating. By sending his left wing west of the Catawba River, he would improve his chances of provisioning both wings of his army while their presence would protect and encourage the local folk.

The man to whom he gave command of the left wing, composed of his light infantry, was as close to being a legend as the Continental Army possessed. Daniel Morgan, who had spent most of his forty-five years on the rugged Virginia frontier as a farmer and teamster, drawing freight between the isolated mountain communities, was a six-foot, two-hundred-pound, barrel-chested giant, with a big smile on his friendly face and a famous temper. He carried a personal grudge against the king of England that went back to the French and Indian War, when he made the mistake of hitting a British officer who had slapped him with the flat of his sword. For this he was sentenced to receive 500 lashes on his broad, muscled back, and he liked to boast that the redcoats still owed him one, for he bore only 499 stripes—someone had miscounted. In addition to those scars, he had lost all his teeth on one side when an Indian bullet went through his neck and mouth, leaving an ugly scooped-out scar.

The old wagoner had been with General Edward Braddock's doomed expedition in 1755, along with a host of other now-famous individuals such as George Washington, General Thomas Gage, Greene's first cousin Daniel Boone, and others. He was a born leader and was his Virginia county's unanimous choice to lead their riflemen to Boston in 1775, after which he fought with Arnold in the attack on Quebec and was taken prisoner and later exchanged. In 1777 he was detached with his corps of riflemen to join Gates and was instrumental in the defeat of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Like Benedict Arnold, Morgan resented being passed over, denied the rank he felt he had earned, and was so crippled by arthritis and sciatica that he returned home to Virginia. But he could remain there no longer when he learned of Cornwallis's devastating victory over Gates at Camden. Belatedly, Congress made him a brigadier general, and now he was preparing for the battle of his life.

When Cornwallis had recovered from his fever and heard that Morgan was threatening his post at Ninety-Six, he immediately detached Colonel Banastre Tarleton with 750 men and a pair of three-pounders to push Morgan “to the utmost,” forcing him to fight or withdraw. Both Greene and Morgan got wind of this, and the former sent a message to the old wagoner: “Colonel Tarleton is said to be on his way to pay you a visit. I doubt not but he will have a decent reception and a proper dismission.”

The infamous Banastre Tarleton, a stocky redhead whose very name was anathema to southern patriots, came from a wealthy Liverpool family and was educated there and at Oxford, after which a cornet's commission was purchased for him in the king's Dragoon Guards in 1775. His unsavory reputation grew in 1780 after a series of victories that earned him the names “Bloody Tarleton” and “Butcher” for his savage attacks. When the hard-driving Tarleton came close enough to Morgan to ferret out his movements, he realized that the American was in no position to menace Ninety-Six and ordered his lieutenant to forward his baggage—“but no women”—while notifying Cornwallis that he planned to destroy Morgan or drive him in the direction of Kings Mountain. That way, if Morgan escaped, Cornwallis would have an opportunity to head him off.