Battle of Guilford Courthouse

United States history [1781]

Battle of Guilford Courthouse, (March 15, 1781), in the American Revolution, a battlefield loss but strategic victory for the Americans in North Carolina over the British, who soon afterward were obliged to abandon control of the Carolinas.

After the Battle of Cowpens (January 17, 1781), the American commander Nathanael Greene united both wings of his 4,400-man southern army at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina. There Lord Cornwallis, with a force of 1,900 British veterans, caught up with the Americans, and a battle ensued. Greene arranged his force in three battle lines with cavalry and riflemen on each flank, but kept no reserve. His least dependable militia and two cannon were in the first line with orders to fire, retreat, and reform; veterans manned the third line. Cornwallis’s troops deployed immediately, light artillery in the center, grenadiers and Germans on the flanks. They fired at the first American line waiting behind a fence and received a heavy volley in return. As ordered, the militia withdrew, but to Greene’s dismay most left the battlefield. The British continued forward into thick woods where they encountered Greene’s second line and a longer and much tougher fight, but the British regulars finally forced the Americans back. Separate fights took place on the flanks and units were drawn away from the center. The British left pushed against the main American line and was sharply repulsed. However, in the center, Cornwallis’s troops fought the Americans in a fierce hand-to-hand melee. Counterattacks by American cavalry and Continentals were unable to break the determined British, whose artillery fire and a charge by Cornwallis’s reserve cavalry finally carried the day. American casualties were light; British casualties were heavy. Wishing to avoid another defeat such as the one suffered by General Horatio Gates at Camden, South Carolina, the previous August, Greene withdrew his forces intact.

Declining to pursue the Americans into the backcountry, Cornwallis temporarily retired to Hillsboro, North Carolina. Acknowledging his failure to destroy patriot resistance in the South, Cornwallis abandoned the heart of the state a few weeks later and marched to the coast at Wilmington to recruit and refit his command.

Losses: American, 70–80 dead, 183 wounded, 1,046 missing (mainly militia who dispersed after the battle); British, 93 dead, 413 wounded, 26 missing.

Raymond K. Bluhm

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United States history [1781]
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