Guilford Courthouse, 1781: The Pyrrhic Victory That Led to Yorktown

On the afternoon of March 15, 1781, North Carolina militiamen crouched behind a rail fence at the edge of a cleared field and watched British infantry come toward them across open ground. The Americans had been told to fire two rounds before falling back, and many of them knew they would be under bayonets soon after. Behind them, in the woods and on a ridge near the small county seat of Guilford Courthouse, two more lines waited.

The fight that followed lasted about ninety minutes. By its end the British held the ground, the Americans were in retreat, and Lord Cornwallis had lost so many men that he could no longer campaign in the Carolina interior.

A war that turned south

After years of stalemate in the North, British commanders looked to the South in 1778 and 1779. They believed that Loyalist support was strong there and that the region could be won back piece by piece. Savannah fell in 1778, and Charleston surrendered with its entire American garrison in May 1780.

That August, Cornwallis crushed Horatio Gates's army at Camden, South Carolina. Then the pattern began to shift. Backcountry militia destroyed a Loyalist force at Kings Mountain in October 1780, and Daniel Morgan's mixed army of Continentals and militia defeated Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens on January 17, 1781.

Greene and the chase across North Carolina

Nathanael Greene took command of the Southern Army in December 1780. He inherited a small, poorly supplied force, and he understood that he could not risk it in a single decisive fight. He divided it, a move that kept his men fed and Cornwallis guessing.

After Cowpens, Cornwallis burned much of his baggage and chased Morgan and Greene north through North Carolina. Greene's army crossed the Dan River into Virginia in mid-February, and the British could not follow. Cornwallis fell back to Hillsborough. Greene, reinforced with militia and Continentals, crossed back into North Carolina in late February and spent several weeks avoiding battle until the odds looked better.

The battle on March 15

Greene chose his ground near Guilford Courthouse, in what is now Greensboro. He had about 4,400 men, most of them militia. Cornwallis had about 1,900, but they were seasoned regulars, and he marched them out from their camp at New Garden to attack.

Greene arranged his army in three lines, a layout borrowed from Morgan's plan at Cowpens. North Carolina militia held the front line behind the fence. Virginia militia stood in the woods behind them, and Continental regiments from Virginia and Maryland held the ridge at the rear. The first line fired and fell back, as it had been told to. The second line fought harder and was gradually driven in.

The third line decided the day. A Maryland regiment broke, but the 1st Maryland, led by Colonel John Eager Howard, counterattacked, and William Washington's cavalry rode into the fight. In the confusion, Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire grapeshot into the tangle of men, which hit his own soldiers as well as the Americans. Historians generally accept that this happened, and it checked the American advance. Greene, unwilling to risk his Continentals, ordered a retreat and left behind four cannon.

The cost of holding the field

British reports counted 93 killed, around 400 wounded and 26 missing, more than a quarter of the force Cornwallis took into the fight. Greene's army lost fewer men in killed and wounded, but more than a thousand militia were listed as missing, and most of them seem simply to have gone home. The Continentals, who were harder to replace, came out of the battle mostly intact.

The British army was in poor shape. Its wounded needed care, supplies were short, and the Loyalist recruits Cornwallis had hoped for had not appeared in large numbers. He marched to Wilmington on the coast, arriving in early April. The remark often attributed to Charles James Fox in Parliament, that another such victory would destroy the British army, reflects how the result was judged in London.

The road to Yorktown

At Wilmington, Cornwallis decided to move into Virginia. He reasoned that the Carolinas could not be held while Virginia supplied the American army. His superior, Sir Henry Clinton, did not approve, because Cornwallis had acted without waiting for orders. Cornwallis reached Petersburg in May.

Greene, meanwhile, turned south and began to retake the Carolina and Georgia interior. He lost the battles at Hobkirk's Hill in April and Eutaw Springs in September, but each time he kept the British pinned to a few coastal posts. Cornwallis went on to Yorktown, where French and American forces trapped him. He surrendered on October 19, 1781.

Guilford Courthouse did not end the war, and it did not guarantee the outcome. It did take the British army out of the Carolina interior and set Cornwallis on the march that ended at Yorktown. Today the battlefield is preserved as Guilford Courthouse National Military Park.