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This section will help you meet the
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following objectives:
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8.2.02 Describe the contributions
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of
key personalities from the
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Revolutionary War era.
8.2.03 Examine the role of North
The British Invade
the Carolinas
Carolina in the Revolutionary War.
8.2.04 Examine the reasons for the
colonists’ victory, the impact of
military successes and failures, the
role of foreign interventions, and ongoing domestic issues.
Above: Gen. Robert Howe was
North Carolina’s highest-ranking
Continental officer during the
Revolutionary War. He commanded
the Southern Department for
almost two years.
172
As you read, look for:
• the fighting that took place in the Carolinas
• the end of the War for Independence
• vocabulary term Overmountain Men
North Carolinians did not always earn praise during the southern phase
of the War for Independence. Robert Howe of Brunswick had been made
the ranking American general in the Carolinas by the Continental Congress. Howe, however, lost Savannah, Georgia, to the British in late 1778.
He was replaced. During early 1779, General John Ashe of Wilmington
was unable to retake Augusta, Georgia, from the British. After a long
struggle, the southern American army was trapped in Charles Town, South
Carolina, and surrendered in May 1780, including almost all the North
Carolina Continentals.
A second southern army was raised in a month, including militia called
out from across North Carolina and commanded by former Governor
Caswell. That army marched into South Carolina and collided head on
with one commanded by Lord Charles Cornwallis, one of Great Britain’s
most experienced generals. The Americans were routed at Camden on
August 16, 1780. Most of the North Carolina troops fled after the first
shots were fired. Some ran all the way back into North Carolina, more
than fifty miles.
The American defeat at Camden meant that South Carolina was in
the control of the British and that North Carolina was open to invasion.
North Carolinians Defend Their Homeland
Faced with an enemy at their doorsteps, North Carolinians gathered
their courage and their resources and fought back. Even before the battle
at Camden, Whigs along the Catawba River had attacked a large contingent of Tories gathered to go join Cornwallis. On June 20, 1780, more
than a thousand Tories were defeated at Ramsour’s Mill, at the site of
present-day Lincolnton.
After Camden, Cornwallis split his army into two, sending Tories into
the North Carolina mountains to force the settlers there to join with the
Chapter 5: The Struggle for Independence
British. He then took the main army into Charlotte. Both intrusions (invasions) into North Carolina proved to be disastrous for the British.
At Charlotte, William R. Davie held up the British for hours, then retreated to Salisbury. Cornwallis stayed in Charlotte for a month, but the
people of Mecklenburg County did not treat him well. The Scots-Irish
made as much trouble for the invaders as possible. One Whig militia
captain even burned down his own farm rather than let the British use
it. Once, several hundred British soldiers were sent to forage, which meant
they took whatever they wanted from nearby farms. The residents in the
neighborhood started firing at the soldiers from hiding places in the woods.
One wounded British soldier knocked over a beehive in a barnyard. The
angry swarm chased the British all the way back to Charlotte. Ever since,
Mecklenburg County has had a reputation as the “hornet’s nest” of the
Revolution. One officer serving with Cornwallis called Charlotte the most
“rebellious country” in all America.
Meanwhile, the Tories sent to the mountains were wiped out. When
the settlers there were told to come fight for the British or suffer the consequences, they chose to make their own consequences. Overmountain
Men, as they came to be called, crossed the Blue Ridge and trapped the
Tories on October 7, 1780, at the Battle of Kings Mountain. Patrick
Ferguson, the Tory commander, had bunched his thousand troops at the
top of a ridge on the border between North and South Carolina and dared
anyone to dislodge him. The Overmountain Men surprised the Tories,
Map 17
The Revolutionary
War in
the Carolinas
Map Skill: Which battle
took place closest to where
you live?
Section 3: The British Invade the Carolinas
173
Above: Patrick Ferguson, the
British commander at Kings Mountain, was shot off his horse as he
tried to escape the Overmountain
Men’s trap. Several North Carolinians claimed to have fired the fatal
shot, including a son of Henry
Weidner, the backcountry pioneer,
who was using his father’s rifle.
The Battle at Kings
Mountain has been called
the turning point of the
war in the South.
174
killed Ferguson, and took the survivors off as prisoners. The loss at Kings
Mountain forced Cornwallis to retreat into South Carolina.
The British Chase the American Army
With Cornwallis in retreat, the small group of American troops left in
Salisbury advanced to Charlotte. In the winter of 1780, their new commander, Nathanael Greene, arrived. Greene found the army almost starving to death. To find supplies, he split it in two, sending one division
west under General Daniel Morgan and taking the other east himself.
The British immediately went after Morgan, thinking that was the
weaker force. Morgan, however, was joined by several groups of militiamen. On January 17, 1781, he turned and made a valiant stand at
Hannah’s Cowpens, not far from Kings Mountain. On the open pastures
where drovers gathered cattle for shipment to market, Morgan gave the
British one of their biggest defeats of the war. The Americans captured
many British soldiers in the fight. Morgan, knowing that Cornwallis would
come after him, beat a hasty retreat toward Salisbury. Greene, too, retreated toward the Yadkin River, hoping to put his army back together
before it was too late.
Wet weather slowed Cornwallis so much that he burned his extra
baggage and pushed his troops faster. Morgan had barely gotten across
the Catawba River when the British destroyed General William Lee
Chapter 5: The Struggle for Independence
Davidson’s militia at Cowan’s Ford. So badly were the Americans scattered that General Greene spent an entire night, woefully alone, at the
rally point near Salisbury. The Americans barely escaped with their soldiers and their supplies across the Yadkin River; the British appeared on
the ridge above as the last boats made it across. Cornwallis then occupied, in turn, Salisbury, Salem, and Hillsborough, while Greene and the
Americans crossed the Dan River into Virginia to gain reinforcements
and supplies.
General Greene returned to North Carolina, outnumbering the British
two to one. He carefully chose a battleground similar to the one that had
worked at Cowpens. The two armies met on March 15, 1781, at Guilford
Courthouse (where Greensboro is today) and fought viciously for one
and one-half hours. Early on, the North Carolina militia panicked and
ran away, just as it had at Camden. Greene, however, had put more experienced troops from Virginia in a second line, and they stood their
ground. At one point, the fighting became the fiercest of the entire War
for Independence. Cornwallis, knowing his army was near total defeat,
actually ordered grapeshot (small metal balls and jagged fragments that
do great damage) to be fired into a spot where his own troops were mixed
up with the Americans. It worked, at great human cost. Greene chose to
pull back, and the British held the field.
Cornwallis lost one-fourth of his army, Greene about the same, if the
five hundred North Carolina militiamen who fled are counted. When the
result was announced back in London, one British official suggested that
The state’s first paper
mill was built in 1777 in
Hillsborough to reduce
the paper shortage
brought on by the war.
Below: Reenactors annually
“portray” the Battle of Guilford
Courthouse in Greensboro. The
author of this textbook “fought”
with the Scots Guards in the
original depiction in 1981, the
200th anniversary of the original
fight. Some reenactors always hold
a moment of silence at the spot
where Lord Cornwallis fired
cannon shot into his own troops.
Section 3: The British Invade the Carolinas
175
Above: This painting of the British
surrender at Yorktown hangs in the
rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. Few
North Carolinians were serving with
Washington at the time, but a whole
regiment of Tories commanded by
John Hamilton of Halifax was
surrendered by Lord Cornwallis.
When the British laid
down their arms at
Yorktown, a British
band supposedly played
“The World Turned
Upside Down.”
“another such victory would be the ruin of the British army.” The British
then limped across the Coastal Plain to Wilmington and, after resting,
marched straight north into Virginia. Cornwallis hoped to have better
luck in that richer state, but Washington trapped him in Yorktown, effectively ending the war.
Meanwhile, Greene moved the American army into South Carolina to
dislodge the British from a number of forts. North Carolina recruits did
somewhat redeem their state’s battlefield reputation with bravery at the
Battle of Eutaw Springs. By the end of 1782, the last British had left
Wilmington and Charles Town, ending the war in the South.
The two years of war left its mark on the North Carolina landscape.
Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Courthouse are national military
parks. General Greene had Greenville, Greensboro, and Greene County,
North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; and Greeneville, Tennessee
named for him. For most of the twentieth century, the professional athletic teams in Charlotte were named the Hornets, until the National Basketball Association moved the team to New Orleans in the 1990s.
It’s Your Turn
1. Why was Robert Howe replaced as the ranking general for the army
in the Carolinas?
2. Why was Mecklenburg County called a “hornet’s nest”?
3. Where did the War for Independence end?
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Chapter 5: The Struggle for Independence