Triumph in Defeat: Guilford Courthouse
The Continentals inflicted massive British casualties, securing strategic victory amid tactical defeat and setting the stage for Yorktown.
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Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina, was the site of the culminating battle in Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene’s campaign against Maj. Gen. Charles, 2nd Earl Cornwallis. Although Greene lost the battle, Cornwallis’s forces were so depleted that he marched his army to the coast and from there moved to Virginia. Before the end of the year, Cornwallis would surrender his army at Yorktown.
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Major Operations in the South, 1781
After the British defeat at Cowpens, Cornwallis set his army in motion to destroy the smaller American force under Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan. Morgan withdrew, reuniting with the remainder of the patriot army under General Greene in early February. Cornwallis continued his pursuit through terrible winter weather but failed to catch the Americans before they escaped across the rain-swollen Dan River into southern Virginia. There, Greene received reinforcements and supplies, mended his equipment, and gave his troops time to recuperate. In early March, he moved his 4,400-strong force to Guilford Court House in North Carolina to engage the British. General Cornwallis obliged, bringing more than 2,000 soldiers to challenge Greene.
(Left: Major General Nathanael Greene - Right: Cavalry under Continental Lieutenant Colonel Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee III skirmish with the British in the prelude to the Battle of Guilford Courthouse
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American militia firing at the British infantry from behind a split rail fence during the Battle of Guilford Courthouse
Greene adopted a deployment like the one that Morgan had used at Cowpens two months earlier. He placed his North Carolina militiamen in his front along a tree line. From here, they could fire on enemy soldiers advancing over open ground and then retire before the enemy closed. A quarter mile to the east, Greene deployed more Virginia militiamen in wooded terrain, counting on the trees to provide cover and break up enemy ranks. Veteran Continentals served as his third line, taking position on a low hill in a clearing. Cornwallis maintained an aggressive posture, marching his soldiers 12 miles during the morning to reach the battlefield and immediately deploying them to attack.
"I never saw such fighting since God made me. The Americans fought like demons."
"Tarleton" Map of the battle, so-called because it appeared in Banastre Tarleton's 1787 "A History of the Campaign of 1780-1"
The British held the field and therefore claimed victory, but it was an empty one. Although the Americans had lost 79 killed and 185 wounded, they inflicted more than 500 casualties on Cornwallis’s much smaller army. The British general marched to Wilmington on the North Carolina coast to rest and reequip his troops.
Convinced that he could defeat Greene’s army best by targeting its logistical support base in Virginia, Cornwallis next embarked on a campaign in that state. Greene now had a free hand to pursue operations against the remaining British garrisons in South Carolina.
For the Americans, Guilford Court House was a tactical defeat that proved to be a strategic success. Cornwallis' pyrrhic victory set the stage for his ultimate undoing at Yorktown in October 1781.