COWPENS, BATTLE OF

COWPENS, BATTLE OF (17 January 1781), one of the most brilliant American victories in the Revolution. In December 1780, Gen. Nathanael Greene, commander of the American army in the South, sent Gen. Daniel Morgan with 600 men to threaten the British post at Ninety-Six, South Carolina. Lord Charles Cornwallis sent Col. Banastre Tarleton against Morgan while he himself marched northward, there by hoping to get between the two wings of the American army. Morgan, reinforced with several hundred more men, marched northward rapidly with Tarleton's army in pursuit. On 17 January, Morgan took position on the slope of a hill at Cowpens, South Carolina (formerly a cattle roundup center) and arranged his army in three lines. Morgan had 940 men, Tarleton 1,150. As the British approached, the first two lines of Morgan's army, as they had been instructed, fired and fell back. The British thought they had won an easy victory and advanced in disorder, only to be met by a deadly fire and bayonet attack from a third line of troops from Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia. At the same time the cavalry struck them on the right flank and the re-formed militia on the left. Finding themselves surrounded they surrendered. The British losses were 600 prisoners and over 200 killed and wounded; the American losses were 72 killed and wounded. On 4 March 1929, the one-acre battleground was designated a national battlefield site.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fleming, Thomas. "The Cowpens." The Quarterly Journal of Military History 1, no. 4 (1989): 56–67.

Higginbotham, Don. Daniel Morgan, Revolutionary Rifleman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961.

Treacy, M. F. Prelude to Yorktown. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963.

Hugh T.Lefler/a. r.

See alsoEutaw Springs, Battle of ; Revolution, American: Military History ; Southern Campaigns .