Statue of Nathaniel Greene, hero of Guilford Courthouse

Photo by Jason Crockett

In 1781, Guilford Courthouse was an out-of-the-way county seat in rural North Carolina, but the events that brought the two armies to this tiny town had begun four years earlier. Impressed by the American victory at Saratoga in 1777, France pledged to help the rebels in their struggle for independence from Britain. With fighting in the North at a stalemate, the British quickly changed their strategy to focus on subduing the southern colonies. The redcoats easily captured Savannah and Charleston before moving into the interior of the South, where they hoped loyalist factions would aid their cause. After another American defeat at the Battle of Camden in the summer of 1780, George Washington appointed Nathaniel Greene as the new commander of the southern armies. Raised as a Quaker, Greene started the war as a private and was soon promoted to general because of his military prowess. His leadership quickly began to change the tide.

Greene boldly divided his fractured and ill-equipped army, forcing Cornwallis to do the same. After American forces routed 1,200 British troops at the Battle of Cowpens in early 1781, Cornwallis became determined to crush Greene. At this point, neither army was at full strength. Both were short on supplies, and Cornwallis now had only about 2,000 men compared with the 4,000 at Greene’s command. Cornwallis pursued Greene through the North Carolina countryside, but the Americans avoided a large battle. Finally, after weeks of skirmishes, Greene decided to face Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, where he set up a series of three defensive lines. The land was thick and wooded, which favored the defenders, and the British had to complete an exhausting 12-mile march to meet the Americans. However, many of Greene’s troops were undisciplined militiamen who had a tendency to abandon their positions once the fighting started. Sure enough, the British quickly broke through the Americans’ first line. Heavy combat led the second line to fall back as well, and when his left flank collapsed, Greene ordered the remainder of his troops to retreat.

After the battle, Cornwallis gradually realized that his victory had come at a terrible cost. More than 500 of his soldiers were killed or wounded, and the remaining men were exhausted. The Americans, in contrast, lost only six percent of their army to casualties, and even the militiamen who had fled during the early fighting were expected to eventually return to the ranks. Greene might have lost the battle, but the result helped his overall strategy succeed. Unable to continue his pursuit of the Americans, Cornwallis made his way to the coast to regroup and care for his sick and wounded men. Greene, meanwhile, secured the interior of the South, leaving the British pinned with their backs to the sea. Support for the war in London now began to wane. When news of the battle reached the British capital, Charles James Fox, a member of Parliament, lamented, “another such victory would ruin the British Army.”

In fact, there was no need for another such victory. On October 16, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered to a combined American and French army at Yorktown. Although there were still many redcoats in America, with more than 20,000 in New York alone, the tide had turned after Guilford Courthouse. Britain agreed to recognize the independence of the thirteen colonies by signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, thus changing the course of world history. Today, the Guilford Courthouse battlefield lies within the city limits of Greensboro, a city named for the general who lost the battle that helped win the war. Nathaniel Greene settled in Georgia after the revolution, content to stay out of the limelight surrounding the early days of the new United States. He died in 1786, remembered by those with whom he served as one of America’s best soldiers. Even today, he is perhaps the only one in American history whose biggest success came from a loss.

http://www.nps.gov/guco/