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Updated: June 4, 2025
The troops had had no food during the day and had marched several miles before they came into action. Nearly 50 of the wounded died during the night. Decisive as the victory was, its consequences were slight. Lord Cornwallis was crippled by his heavy loss, following that which the force had suffered at the Cowpens. The two battles had diminished the strength of his little force by fully half.
An account of one of the soldiers, Benj. Some horses gave out, but their riders, like the thirty or forty footmen who had followed from the Cowpens, struggled onwards and were in time for the battle. These deer hunters were now with the oncoming backwoodsmen, and declared that they knew the ground well.
At this moment he and his men were saluted with a heavy fire from the enemy, and they were compelled to retire in confusion. In this attempt Elijah Clarke was shot through the thigh. Later he was in South Carolina, at Blackstocks, and at The Cowpens.
Thus he makes the war with the Cherokees take place in 1777, instead of '76. His explanation of Tarleton's defeat at the Cowpens must be accepted with much reserve. At King's Mountain he says the Americans had fifteen hundred men, instead of twenty-five hundred, of which Allaire speaks.
Riding all day they reached the Cowpens when the sun had already set, a few minutes after the arrival of the Flint Hill militia under Lacey, Hill, and Williams. The tired troops were speedily engaged in skinning beeves for their supper, roasting them by the blazing camp-fires; and fifty acres of corn, belonging to the rich tory who owned the Cowpens, materially helped the meal.
As to its being a baby-like performance, it is one in which some of the greatest, as well as best men, have indulged. Washington was a man of prayer. So was General Daniel Morgan that grand revolutionary officer who whipped Tarleton so completely at the battle of the Cowpens. There was Macdonough also, who gained that splendid victory over the British on Lake Champlain in the war of 1812-14.
Morgan, well trained in the school of Washington and Greene, and wishing just then to avoid a decisive battle, skillfully fell back until he found a spot in which to fight after his own fashion. His choice was at a place where cattle were rounded up and branded, known as Cowpens. A broad, deep river, which lay in the rear, cut off all hope of retreat.
Ashe, Colonel Tarleton knows better than to insult a lady in my presence." The victory of the Cowpens gave great joy to the friends of liberty throughout the whole country. Congress received information of it on the 8th of February following, and on the 9th of March voted an award of a gold medal to Morgan; a silver medal to Howard and Washington; a sword to Col.
We drilled our men, marched hither and thither, and criticised our leaders over the winter camp-fires, envying the men who, under Williams, Marion, and Morgan, were keeping my Lord Cornwallis uncomfortably busy in the Carolinas. By the end of January we knew with joy of the thrashing Tarleton got at the Cowpens, and at last, in April, of the fight at Guilford.
At the time, many outsiders supposed that all the militia who were at the Cowpens fought in the battle; but this is not asserted by any one who knew the facts. General J. Watts DePeyster, in the Mag. of Am. Hist. for 1880, "The Affair at King's Mountain," gives the extreme tory view. He puts the number of the Americans at from thirteen hundred to nineteen hundred.
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