Chapter 33: Cowpens

That day, the 16th of January it was, I looked up the date, we found Tarleton's bunch only about five or six miles away and coming on pretty fast. Captain Foster said the army would be leaving Thicketty Creek and that Dan Morgan was looking for a place to stop running. He planned to stand and fight.

I hurried back with my information while Reedy stayed to shadow the British and Tories. He never came back so I guessed he must have made a mistake somewhere. Morgan had camped near a low hill at one end of a big, open meadow, maybe five hundred yards square. Captain Foster told me it was called Hannah's Cowpens, and it did look like a nice pasture, but I sure would not have picked it as a place to fight a battle. Which is why I am a private, Foster is a captain and Dan Morgan is a general. It is a good thing I can shoot pretty good, or they would probably have made me a cook's assistant. I was a corporal a few times during the war but never could hold on to the stripes.

We spent the day checking our weapons and listening to officers talk about the plans for the fight to come. I was happy to hear that my outfit was going to be out front with the Georgia and North Carolina boys who had good rifles. Our job was to pick off officers and scatter the horse soldiers. Nothing in the war, except a few women, gave me more pleasure that watching some man in a fancy uniform with a lot of gold braid on his red coat throw up his arms and fall off his horse. Emptying saddles, we called it.

Arabella, the other women and the wagons were scattered back behind a low line of hills, and she said she was not interested in any bed romping since Ben and me were both going to be in a good fight the next day and needed our rest. In the morning I had breakfast with them, shook Ben's hand, kissed Arabella quickly before she could protest, and then joined my company. We scattered out on the far side of the field where there was a treeline at the edge of the pasture.

It was very quiet, and I had time to look back and see another line of riflemen digging in a hundred yards or so behind us and then a third and heavier line well behind them, almost to the hillside. I could not see where William Washington's small cavalry group was hiding, but I knew they were ready.

We heard them coming before we saw them that morning, horsemen crashing through the dry underbrush and, believe it or not, bagpipes. Rifles cracked on both sides of me, but I never saw a target worth shooting at. A few riderless horse wandered through our lines, and while the men who had fired were still reloading, here came another small group of dragoons, swinging curved swords and howling like the proverbial banshees. I picked out the one with the fanciest uniform I could see and put a ball in his head at about seventy yards. I hated to wait that long, but they were weaving and dodging in and out of trees making long shots difficult.

I reloaded carefully as a horseman galloped past. I glanced up as I rammed the ball home in time to see him wheel and start back toward me. I primed quickly and shot him off his horse at about twenty yards. He was lying on the ground, kicking, when I ran past him as we withdrew to the next line and filled in wherever we could. I had time to notice that I had hit him just above where his white belts crossed, just about where I aimed.

Out of the woods came Tarleton's main force, a mass of mixed infantry in a long, double line with cavalry units on each end. With the infantry appeared two small cannons on legs, grasshoppers they were called, three-pounders. Without even a pause to get organized, the whole British line advanced at the double.

General Pickens commanded the second line, composed, I assume, mostly of his local militiamen, and militia had a pretty bad reputation in this war, a reputation for running when the fight got hot. Pickens waited and we waited as the British line got bigger and bigger, closer and closer. I could have fired three times when we finally let loose the first volley. I could not only see the whites of their eyes, I could tell what they had for breakfast.

I ducked and reloaded since there was nothing to see but powder smoke. When the second "Present!" command came, I was almost ready and all the musket men were. At the command to "Fire!" I jumped up and cut loose along with the rest. The next command was "Withdraw," and we all shuffled off to the left flank of Morgan's main line where the Marylanders under Howard waited for their opportunity. We moved as fast as we could without running.

I had a chance to look back as we retreated. The first row of Redcoat bodies was about thirty paces from where we had stood and the second scattered row of downed men, many of whom were still writhing and crying for their mommas, was less that ten paces from where we fired the second volley that still rung on my ears. A lot of the British casualties were men wearing epaulets, officers, and that made me feel good.

But they were still coming on with bayonets ready and the tail of our retreating line became disorganized as men started to run for cover. The British dragoons were hacking away at the stragglers, and I was trying to find a good target from beside a tree when Washington's cavalry appeared from behind the hill and drove the Redcoat horsemen off. That was one hell of a fight, more like a melee or something rather than an organized battle. I never even fired a shot. There was a lot of hacking and cursing going on.

While Pickens' Carolina militia and Captain Foster's men and the Georgians got themselves sorted out behind the biggest hill, the Marylanders, and the Virginia militiamen who were lined up with them, under Colonel Howard began trading volleys with the oncoming British. It was hot and heavy there for maybe ten minutes, and then Tarleton tried to force his Highlanders and cavalry around Morgan's right flank. Howard got his men turned that way somehow, even showing their backs to the enemy briefly so I guess it looked like they were retreating, and then at about thirty yards, they turned again to face the threat and delivered a crashing volley into the mob of charging Redcoats. It just blew the British away. The attacked crumbled. The retreat began.

Then it was our turn again and out we ran from behind the hill only to find that the Maryland Continentals had paused briefly to attach their bayonets and then had charged right at the disorganized British line. There were still plenty of good targets, but it got kind of confused there for a while as the British stumbled back, abandoning their wounded.

Washington's cavalry hit them from the other side just about then, and the careful retreat became a disorganized rout with men throwing their weapons away and running for the woods. Among the British it became every man for himself. We riflemen got out on the flanks where we could see better and picked off anyone who looked like a leader, but the cavalry and Howard's regulars were driving the British before them and the men of Pickens' militia were dealing with stragglers and applying the rules of "Tarleton's Quarter" to some of the wounded scattered about the field.

I saw officers running to get between their men and groups of British soldiers trying to surrender but about to be slaughtered. Myself, I emptied two more saddles and gutshot some poor young officer who probably did not last the night. Just before it quieted, I brought another down with a shot that had to have been a hundred and fifty yards. He turned a somersault when the ball hit him in the back of the neck and never moved after he hit the grass.

I also saw the British artillerymen men go down, still trying the man and protect their small guns, brave men but no match of American bayonets that day. Soon most of the British soldiers and Tory militia, including the proud Highlanders, were throwing down their weapons and asking, some rather doubtfully, for quarter. By the time the fight was over, and it hardly lasted an hour, we had about 500 healthy prisoners and more than 200 wounded ones.

While this was going on, back near the treeline Tarleton was rallying what dragoons he could, perhaps forty or fifty horsemen, and leading them from the field. The rest of his brave legion had run for it, trampling their own comrades at times. It was all he had left of more than a thousand men he had thrown, pell mell, into that savage fight. William Washington's cavalry got straightened out and pursued them.

Now this next I did not see. Ben told me, and I have no reason not to believe him since several other men who were there said pretty much the same thing. Tarleton and a few of his men, two or three junior officers, turned and charged back toward the American horsemen, and Tarleton and William Washington squared off in single combat, just like the good old days of fire-breathing dragons and knights in armor. They slashed and chopped at each other as their horse wheeled and crashed together, pretty evenly, until Washington's sword broke, leaving him with just a stub as Tarleton turned away. One of the British subalterns charged at Washington's back, swinging his saber and Ben either shot it out of his hand with his pistol or blocked the blow with his bugle. Take your pick. Ben said he did not have a pistol, but he did have a dented trumpet.

Tarleton turned back on Washington only to have his killing blow blocked by the big man's broken sword. The British leader pulled his pistol and at point-blank range fired, wounding the horse and hitting the big rider in the knee. Washington slashed the British leader's hand with his broken sword. Tarleton and his aides abandoned the melee and escaped.

When the butcher's bill was totaled up, the British and their Tory friends had lost 110 killed to the Americans' twelve, 229 wounded to about sixty of Morgan's men, and some 600 prisoners including two dozen officers who were sitting on the ground and looking worried and unhappy. One of the officers of the British 71st, who had handed his sword to Colonel Howard when he surrendered, called Tarleton a "rash, foolish boy," and said the defeat was long expected.