Guilford Courthouse

The Crucible at Guilford Courthouse: A Victory That Lost the War

On the morning of March 15, 1781, roughly 4,400 American troops under Major General Nathanael Greene arranged themselves in three staggered lines across rolling, wooded terrain near a modest backcountry courthouse in piedmont North Carolina. Adopting a tactic utilized by Daniel Morgan at the Battle of Cowpens, Greene formed his roughly 4,500 men into three lines. The first line was held by North Carolina militia. In the second line Greene positioned militia from Virginia. Continental Regulars composed Greene's third and most formidable line. The concept, known as a defense in depth, was for the first two lines to exhaust the enemy's advance and inflict as many casualties as possible in the hopes of delivering a decisive blow at the third line.

Greene had four six-pounders and about 100 artillerymen under Captain Anthony Singleton.

On the right and left flanks of the first line, Greene posted veteran Virginia and North Carolina riflemen, as well as Continental dragoons and infantry led by William Washington and Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee. Marquis De Bretigny, a French nobleman, led a small detachment of North Carolina militia dragoons attached to Washington's force. Greene's force also included at least 45 Black freemen who served among the American ranks.

The third line — Greene's main line of resistance — waited approximately 550 yards to the rear of the second line, in the clearing where the courthouse commanded a large boot-shaped field. Here stood slightly over 1,400 Continentals from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The Virginia Brigade was commanded by Brigadier General Isaac Huger and included the 4th and 5th Virginia Regiments. The Maryland Brigade was commanded by Colonel Otho Holland Williams, with Colonel John Gunby leading the 1st Maryland — which also included Captain Peter Jacquett's Delaware Company — and Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Ford commanding the 2nd Maryland. Captain Samuel Finley's two remaining six-pounders were placed between the Virginia and Maryland fronts.

Facing them, advancing up the New Garden Road with the cold discipline born of years of professional soldiering, came fewer than 2,000 British regulars under General Lord Charles Cornwallis. Cornwallis divided his force into two wings on either side of the New Garden Road: the left wing was commanded by Colonel James Webster of the 33rd Foot, and the right wing by Major General Alexander Leslie, with Banastre Tarleton's Legion held in the rear as a reserve force. What unfolded over the next two and a half hours would become one of the most paradoxical engagements of the American Revolution — a clear British tactical victory that proved so ruinous to the victors that it effectively sealed the fate of the war in the South and set Cornwallis on the road to Yorktown. The Battle of Guilford Courthouse was not the largest or longest battle of the Revolution, but it may have been the most consequential engagement that the Americans technically lost. Fought on March 15, 1781, the battle at Guilford Courthouse was the largest, most hotly-contested action of the Revolutionary War's climactic Southern Campaign.

The first shots of the day were exchanged before the armies even formed for battle. Greene had sent Lee's Legion and William Campbell's Virginia riflemen to reconnoiter Cornwallis's camp. At roughly 4 a.m., Lee's men and Tarleton's dragoons made contact near the Quaker New Garden Meeting House, about four miles west of the courthouse. In this early morning skirmish, Tarleton suffered a musket wound to his right hand, costing him two fingers. The action then shifted to the main battlefield, where a twenty-minute artillery duel between Singleton's American six-pounders and three British six-pounders under Lieutenant John McLeod opened the general engagement, though losses on both sides were minimal.

Forming his men on both sides of the Great Salisbury Road, Cornwallis sent his infantry forward at approximately 1:30 p.m. When the British came within roughly 140 to 150 yards of Greene's first line, the North Carolina militia opened fire from behind a split-rail fence. However, few militiamen managed more than two shots before most threw down their weapons and fled the field. As the British pushed past the shattered first line and into the dense woods beyond, they encountered the Virginia militia in the second line, which held its ground and fought tenaciously for approximately thirty minutes before it, too, was forced to give way. One American later recalled that, after his regiment fired a volley, the British "appeared like the stalks of wheat after the harvest man passed over them with his cradle."

As the depleted and disjointed British formations finally reached Greene's third line, they faced the fiercest resistance of the day. Colonel Webster led the 33rd Foot, the Guards Light Infantry, and the Jägers in an uphill attack against the Continental left; they were repulsed, and Webster himself was mortally wounded — he would die a fortnight later. On the other end of the line, the British 2nd Battalion of Guards managed to turn the 2nd Maryland's flank, forcing the inexperienced regiment to break, and overran Captain Finley's two six-pounders. But the 1st Maryland turned to engage the Guards, and Lieutenant Colonel William Washington's dragoons charged through their rear twice, followed by a 1st Maryland bayonet charge. Colonel Gunby was wounded during the fighting and replaced by the cool, intrepid Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard. In this desperate hand-to-hand melee, Cornwallis made what remains one of the most controversial decisions of the war: he ordered Lieutenant McLeod to fire grapeshot directly into the mass of struggling men — British and American alike. The grape killed soldiers on both sides indiscriminately, but it broke up the American counterattack and saved the Guards from destruction. At approximately 3:30 p.m., Greene — unwilling to risk the total destruction of his irreplaceable Continentals — ordered his army to withdraw under covering fire by the 4th Virginians.

In a letter to Samuel Huntington, the president of Congress, Greene described the engagement as "long, obstinate and bloody." He retreated down the Reedy Creek Road to Troublesome Ironworks (also known as Speedwell Furnace), on Troublesome Creek some fifteen miles to the north, where he set up camp and defensive earthworks. The battered British army did not pursue. Cornwallis was left in possession of the field, but his army was a wreck. British casualties totaled 93 killed, 413 wounded, and 26 missing — more than a quarter of his entire force. The Foot Guards battalions, considered among the finest troops in the entire British army, suffered a staggering fifty-six percent casualties, including nearly all of their officers. Brigadier General Charles O'Hara was wounded, as was Tarleton. American losses were 79 killed, 185 wounded, and 1,046 missing — though the majority of the "missing" were North Carolina militiamen who simply went home after the battle. Greene lost only about six percent of his force, and his vital core of Continental regulars remained practically intact.

That night, torrential rain fell on the battlefield. The British, who had no tents and no food, lay down exhausted among hundreds of unburied dead and dying. Fifty of the wounded died before sunrise. Cornwallis declared victory but remained at Guilford only two days before beginning a painful withdrawal. When word of the battle reached London, British Whig Parliamentarian Charles James Fox told the House of Commons what many already suspected — declaring, in an echo of Plutarch's famous account of King Pyrrhus, that "another such victory would ruin the British army."

To understand what happened at Guilford Courthouse, one must trace a chain of events stretching back months. After the catastrophic American defeat at Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780, the Continental Congress turned to Nathanael Greene — George Washington's most trusted subordinate — to salvage the southern war. Greene arrived in Charlotte