Two great battles, the first at Freeman's Farm, the second at Saratoga, sealed Burgoyne's fate. In each battle, the sharpshooters did signal service. Before their deadly rifles, the British officers, clad in scarlet uniforms, fell with frightful rapidity. They were a terror to the Hessians. As Morgan would often say in high glee, "The very sight of my riflemen was always enough for the Hessian pickets. They would scamper into their lines as if the devil drove them, shouting in all the English they knew, 'Rebel in de bush! rebel in de bush!'"
After the surrender, when Burgoyne was introduced to Morgan, he took him warmly by the hand and said, "Sir, you command the finest regiment in the world."
For over a year and a half after Saratoga, Morgan and his riflemen were attached to Washington's army, and saw hard service. Their incessant attacks on the enemy's outposts, and their numberless picket skirmishes, are all lost to history, and are now forgotten.
Just before the battle of Monmouth, a painful disease, known as sciatica, brought on by constant exposure and hardship, disabled Morgan. Sick and discouraged because he had seen officers who were favorites with Congress promoted over his head, he, like Greene, Stark, and Schuyler, now left the army for a time.
But after Gates was defeated at Camden, the fighting blood of the old Virginian was greatly stirred. He declared that no man should have any personal feeling when his country was in peril. So he hurried down South, and took, under Gates, his old place as colonel.
| General Daniel Morgan |
After the battle at King's Mountain, Congress very wisely made Morgan a brigadier general.
The glorious and ever-memorable victory at Cowpens made him more famous than ever before. Hitherto he had fought in battles that other men had planned. Now he had a chance to plan and to fight as he pleased. It was not a great battle so far as numbers were concerned, but "in point of tactics," says John Fiske, the historian, "it was the most brilliant battle of the war for independence."
After leading eleven hundred men into the northeast part of South Carolina, to cut off Cornwallis from the seacoast, General Greene gave Morgan the command of about a thousand men, with orders to march to the southwest, and threaten the inland posts and their garrisons. Cornwallis, the English earl, scarcely knew which way to turn; but he followed Greene's example, and, dividing his army, sent Colonel Tarleton to crush Morgan.