The Race to the Dan
After the Battle of Cowpens, General Daniel Morgan began a rapid retreat north to put some distance between him and Lord Charles Cornwallis’s 2,500-battle hardened veterans who were coming their way. To gain time, General Nathanael Greene, the commander of the southern Continental Army, split his force, sending Colonel Otho Williams and a light corps on a different route, hoping to pull Cornwallis away from the slow-moving main army.
Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses the Race to the Dan, a series of brilliant maneuvers that had the Americans covering 200 miles on muddy, barely passable roads through almost uninhabited country and over four rivers, and why it still matters today.
Images courtesy of Brown University Library, The New York Public Library, National Portrait Gallery - Smithsonian Institution ,National Army Museum, Library of Congress, New York Historical Society Museum and Library, University of South Florida, Wikipedia.
The Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781, was a great victory for Daniel Morgan and his army of Continentals and militiamen. They had virtually annihilated Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s famed British Legion, but Morgan’s contingent was in a dangerous position, with a larger British force under Lord Charles Cornwallis only twenty-five miles away. The race was now on to get to a place of safety.