By Jarred Marlowe
In the winter of 1781, the fate of the American Revolution in the South came down to a footrace. British General Charles Cornwallis had spent months trying to destroy the Continental Army under General Nathanael Greene. By January, he thought he had his chance. Greene was outnumbered, undersupplied and operating deep in hostile territory. Cornwallis stripped his army of its heavy baggage and pushed hard, determined to run Greene down before he could escape.
Greene did not panic. He ran.
What followed became known as the Race to the Dan. Greene divided his force to confuse the British and keep them off balance, then drove his men hard toward the Dan River on the Virginia border. The goal was to cross before Cornwallis could catch him. If the British reached the river first, or caught Greene on the southern bank, the Continental Army in the South was finished.
Greene made it. His army crossed the Dan on February 14, 1781, just ahead of the British advance. Cornwallis reached the riverbank and stopped. He had no boats and no way to follow. He turned his army south and declared victory in North Carolina, but he had nothing to show for the chase. His men were exhausted, his supply lines stretched thin and his army was smaller than when the campaign began.
Greene was not finished. He recrossed the Dan, gathered reinforcements and began looking for the right moment and the right ground to fight. He found both at Guilford Courthouse.
On March 15, 1781, Greene positioned his army on a wooded ridge near the courthouse in what is now Greensboro, North Carolina. He arranged his troops in three lines, borrowing a tactic Daniel Morgan had used to devastating effect at Cowpens two months earlier. Militia held the front lines with orders to fire and fall back. Continental regulars anchored the rear.
Cornwallis attacked across open ground and paid for it. The fighting was brutal and close. The British broke through the first two lines but ran into determined resistance from Greene’s Continentals at the third. At one point Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire into a melee where British and American soldiers were fighting hand to hand, accepting casualties among his own men to stop the American advance.
Cornwallis held the field at the end of the day. By the traditional measure, he won. But the cost was catastrophic. He lost roughly a quarter of his force killed or wounded. Charles James Fox, speaking in the British Parliament, captured the reality plainly. He called it a victory that the country could not afford another of.
Cornwallis limped to Wilmington to resupply, then turned north into Virginia, setting in motion the chain of events that ended at Yorktown seven months later. Greene had not beaten Cornwallis. He had broken him.
Henry County had its own connection to this campaign, though it did not unfold the way local tradition sometimes suggests. Militia from the county were called up and began moving toward Guilford Courthouse in response to Greene’s need for reinforcements. The men assembled and marched, but the battle came and went before they arrived. They never reached the field in time.
It is not a story of failure. Mobilizing militia in the backcountry in the middle of winter, on short notice and across difficult roads, was no small thing. The men who answered that call were willing. The distance and the pace of events worked against them.
Our county’s name does not appear on the battle rolls at Guilford Courthouse, but the effort was real. That is worth remembering too.
Jarred Marlowe is a local resident and historian. He is a member of the Col. George Waller Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, the Blue & Gray Education Society, and the committee chair for the Martinsville-Henry County 250 Committee. He may be reached at marloweja15@gmail.com.
