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.

On the morning of January 17, 1781, General Daniel Morgan arrayed his Continentals and militiamen for battle in a South Carolina field known as Hannah’s Cowpens. Morgan placed his 1,400 men in three lines 150 yards apart. He instructed the front-rank militiamen to fire two volleys at the British and then retire to the rear and told the second line to do the same. The last line of defense was comprised of 450 battle-hardened Continental Army veterans from Delaware and Maryland, men that Morgan knew would stand their ground.

Daniel Morgan received a captain’s commission from the Continental Congress in June 1775, and soon raised a force of 96 skilled riflemen much like himself, hardy and fearless, and toughened by years of fighting with Native Americans. The merit of Morgan’s riflemen was quickly recognized, and they were selected to accompany Colonel Benedict Arnold on a mission to capture Quebec in British Canada.

Daniel Morgan, who rose to national prominence during the American Revolution, was born in New Jersey in 1736. At 17, after a fight with his father, young Daniel left home, settling in western Virginia. Daniel became a wagoner and, by age 20, was 6 feet 2 inches and a tower of strength. He had a cheerful nature and a natural intelligence. Following the French and Indian War, Morgan continued his work as a wagoner, became known as the toughest man in the county, and settled down to a peaceful married life in the beautiful foothills of western Virginia.

On October 14, 1780, General Nathanael Greene was appointed commander of the southern Continental Army by General George Washington and tasked with salvaging the desperate situation in the southern theater. Confronting Greene and his skeleton force was a British army of 3,200 trained, experienced men led by Lord Charles Cornwallis, arguably the best British general in North America.

In 1775, Rhode Island officials named Nathanael Greene commander of the state’s Army of Observation, making Greene the youngest general in the army. During the Siege of Boston, Greene’s brigade was recognized as the most disciplined and best equipped of the colonial militias, and Greene gained the notice and admiration of General George Washington.

Nathanael Greene was one of America’s greatest generals in the Revolutionary War, perhaps second only to George Washington. He was born on August 7, 1742, in Warwick, Rhode Island into a prosperous Quaker family. When his father died in 1770, Nathanael, despite having several older brothers, took over the family business. As relations with England worsened, Greene became more involved in colonial resistance to British authority.

In September 1780, Lord Charles Cornwallis ordered Major Patrick Ferguson to secure North Carolina. Ferguson, a very capable British officer, issued a proclamation to the Overmountain Men of the Watauga River Valley in present day Tennessee to “desist from their opposition to British arms” or he would “lay waste their country with fire and sword.” Isaac Shelby and John Sevier rallied 1,000 men in Sycamore Shoals and advanced through Yellow Mountain Gap to the east side of the Appalachians. Ferguson decided to confront the Tennesseans at King’s Mountain, just inside the South Carolina border. The fight raged for an hour, but Ferguson’s militia was no match for the Tennesseans.

On the morning of August 16, 1780, Lord Charles Cornwallis’s Redcoats and the Southern Continental Army under General Horatio Gates clashed near Camden, the site of a British supply depot. Gates led 3,000 men, but two-thirds were inexperienced militiamen, while Cornwallis had 2,200 seasoned British regulars at his command. The final result was catastrophic for the Americans; in essence, the Southern Continental Army ceased to exist. But this victory at Camden would be the high-water mark of the British southern campaign. Soon, the tide would turn, and the resilient Americans would gain the upper hand.

To restore a presence in the south following the fall of Charleston, Congress named General Horatio Gates, a weak but politically well-connected officer, as the new southern commander. Gates inherited a small but well-trained group of Continental soldiers that was starving and waiting for reinforcements and supplies to catch up when Gates took command.

The most intense period of the fight to control the South Carolina backcountry during the American Revolution lasted about five months, from July to November 1780. There were over twenty engagements between Loyalists and Patriots, most akin to armed brawls between small groups of mounted men than pitched battles. Since there was no real training, the men were simply expected to ride hard, shoot well, and show no mercy to the enemy.

Several years before Lexington and Concord, farmers in western North Carolina had a rebellion of their own. This movement, called the Regulator Insurrection, represents the first time Royal officials used soldiers to suppress American colonists. When cheap land began attracting settlers to western North Carolina in the 1750s, speculators bought up large tracts that inflated land prices, forcing many farmers deep into debt. In 1766, the farmers organized and took their case to the colonial legislature but made no headway. When legal methods failed, a group calling themselves the Regulators adopted extralegal methods such as refusing to pay taxes, reclaiming confiscated property, and disrupting court proceedings.

Following the fall of Charleston, backcountry Loyalists rallied around the Union Jack. But more than wanting to defend King and Country, many simply wanted to settle old scores with their neighbors. The South Carolina backcountry, an area fifty miles inland from the coast to the mountains, was largely unsettled by European-Americans until the 1740s when large numbers of Scots-Irish began immigrating there. Bad blood began boiling at the close of the Cherokee Indian war in 1761, and fractured whatever harmony had existed in the backcountry. This episode was a prelude to the terrible backcountry brawl of the 1780s, one that would see some of the most bitter action of the American Revolution.

In February 1780, Sir Henry Clinton, commander of British forces in North America, and 8,500 Redcoats disembarked thirty miles south of Charleston, intent on capturing the Queen City of the South. Charleston was defended by 6,000 Americans led by General Benjamin Lincoln and included a fleet of ten ships under the command of Admiral Abraham Whipple. By mid-April, the city was surrounded, and, on May 12, 1780, Lincoln surrendered the city and his entire command.

In 1778, after three years of fighting their rebellious American colonists, the grand British Army had been stymied in the northern theater. At this point, Lord George Germaine, secretary of state for the American Department, decided to focus his efforts southward, having been repeatedly informed by exiled American Loyalists that Georgia and the two Carolinas were heavily populated by Loyalists simply waiting for assistance from the British Army. On December 29, a British force led by Colonel Archibald Campbell captured Savannah, effectively gaining control of Georgia.

Despite the Sullivan Expedition in 1779, which greatly weakened the Iroquois Confederacy, more heartache was in store. With the British southern campaign ramping up and with a virtually bankrupt Congress, the Continental Army could offer little assistance to the Mohawk Valley. Aware of this, in October 1780, Sir John Johnson led 1,000 men, many trained British regulars, on a sweeping raid and destroyed several hundred thousand bushels of wheat, slaughtered 3,000 head of livestock, and burned countless homes and farms, with over 300 civilians killed or taken captive. The following year, desperate to bring stability and security back to the Mohawk Valley, New York Governor George Clinton appointed Colonel Marinus Willett to lead the militia.

In spring of 1779, General George Washington developed a plan to strike deep into the heart of the Iroquois Nation. Washington recognized he must destroy the bases that the American Indians were using to launch their raids, or the depredations would never cease, and the settlers would never return to the Mohawk Valley. On August 26, General John Sullivan and his force of 4,000 men began their trek up the Susquehanna River from the Wyoming Valley into the Iroquois homeland, destroying any American Indian settlements they encountered.

In October 1778, following the Wyoming Valley Massacre, a contingent of Continental soldiers destroyed two prominent Indian towns. In retaliation, Walter Butler, a Loyalist Captain, led 500 Loyalists and Iroquois to the thriving town of Cherry Valley, New York, 60 miles west of Albany. When Butler’s Loyalist and Indian contingent fell on Cherry Valley in a swirling snowstorm at dawn on November 11, the garrison and villagers were caught completely off-guard. The butchery that followed was unprecedented, and Butler made little effort to control it.

When the American Revolution began, most of western New York, especially the Mohawk River Valley and the Finger Lakes region, was the dominion of the Iroquois Confederacy, comprised of six allied Indian tribes. The Confederacy’s greatest strength had always been their ability to stay united, which ended at the outset of the American Revolution when the Confederacy splintered apart with some tribes supporting the British and others the Americans. For the next eight years, raids and counterraids devastated much of western New York, resulting in a significant decrease in both the Native and European population.

When the American Revolution began, most of western New York, especially the Mohawk River Valley and the Finger Lakes region, was the dominion of the Iroquois Confederacy, comprised of six allied Indian tribes. The Confederacy’s greatest strength had always been their ability to stay united, which ended at the outset of the American Revolution when the Confederacy splintered apart with some tribes supporting the British and others the Americans. For the next eight years, raids and counterraids devastated much of western New York, resulting in a significant decrease in both the Native and European population.