The light troops of both armies had skirmished daily. Cornwallis issued a proclamation giving a limit within which the people must return to their allegiance to the Crown. On the sixth of March a skirmish occurred at Wetzell’s Mills, which brought nearly the entire army of Cornwallis into action. On the eighth, Colonel Carrington and Frederick Cornwallis, acting as commissioners for the two opposing armies, agreed upon terms for an exchange of prisoners. Cornwallis had been in the habit of paroling militia, wherever found, and carrying them on his list, as if captured in battle. In the adjustment made, Greene obtained a few officers who would have been otherwise idle during the campaign; but the arrangement had no other immediate value.
The position of the two armies is worthy of notice, because of its relations to succeeding events in Virginia. For several weeks Cornwallis had made special endeavor to control all upper fords. On the twenty-seventh of February he crossed the river Haw and fixed his camp on the Alamance, one of its tributaries. Greene adopted a line nearly parallel with that of his adversary, and advanced to the heights between Reedy Fork and Troublesome Creek, having his divided headquarters near the Speedwell Iron Works and Boyd’s Mills, on two streams. Greene had gained the choice of position, entirely reversing the old relations of the armies. There were no British troops in his rear, or on his eastern flank, and none to endanger his communications with Virginia. He could give battle; retire as he advanced, or move into Virginia, by the same upper fords which Cornwallis had once so carefully occupied. At this time, the army of Cornwallis was also in great need of clothing, medicines, and all other essential supplies. The strain of so many unequal marches and skirmishes, through woods, thickets, and swamps, and across innumerable small streams, with no recompense in victories won, was very severe. He therefore pitched his camp between the Haw and Deep rivers, where the roads from Salisbury, Guilford and Hillsborough unite, and thus controlled the road to Wilmington, his only proximate base of supply.
Troops had already commenced reporting to General Greene, and he decided to offer battle. The command consisted of only fourteen hundred and ninety regular infantry, one hundred and sixty-one cavalry, and twenty-seven hundred and fifty-four militia. The army of Cornwallis, which on the first of January numbered three thousand two hundred and twenty-four men, had fallen off, by March 1st, nearly one-third; and there was reason for Greene’s hope that, in case his militia held firmly to positions assigned them, victory might be realized. He felt the enemy with Lee’s and Campbell’s cavalry; disposed his troops in admirable form; and failed at last, only through the weakness of his raw troops. For the purposes of this narrative, only the result need be stated. The American army retired to the iron-works on Troublesome Creek, a distance of twelve miles, to rally forces and prepare for future action. “It is certain,” says Colonel Lee, “that if Greene had known the condition of the British forces, he need not have retreated, and the American victory would have been complete.” Tarleton, who was wounded in the action, after stating that “the British army lost one-third of its number in killed and wounded, during the two hours of battle,” said that “this victory was the pledge of ultimate defeat.”
Greene, writing to Washington, said: “The enemy gained his cause, but is ruined by the success of it.” Fox, in the British House of Commons, said: “Another such victory would ruin the British army.” Pitt called it “the precursor of ruin to British supremacy at the South.” The casualties of the American army were, nominally, including missing, thirteen hundred and eleven; but so many of the missing immediately rallied, that the Virginia Brigade, after two days, reported as present for duty, seven hundred and fifty-two; and the Maryland Brigade mustered five hundred and fifty, showing a loss in action of only one hundred and eighty-eight men, instead of two hundred and sixty-one, reported on the seventeenth. Of one militia brigade, five hundred and fifty-two were missing. The British casualties were five hundred and forty-four, and of the general officers, only Cornwallis and Leslie escaped without wounds.
Cornwallis, after providing for the wounded as well as possible, and leaving under a flag of truce those who could not march, immediately crossed the deep river as if moving to Salisbury; then recrossed it, lower down, and entered Wilmington on the seventh of April, with only fourteen hundred and forty-five men. He wrote to Lord Rawdon, that “Greene would probably invade South Carolina”; but the messenger failed to get through to Charleston. Greene was delayed after the battle, to send back to his supply-train for ammunition, lead and bullet-moulds; but he followed so closely after, that he reached Ramsour’s Mills the twenty-eighth, the very day on which Cornwallis had bridged the river and pushed on to Wilmington.
The effect of this withdrawal of Cornwallis was of great value to the American cause, and cleared away obstructions to a broader range of operations for the army of the North. Subsequently, on the twenty-fifth of April Greene met Rawdon, at Hobkirk Hill, in an action sometimes called the Second Battle of Camden, as it was fought near that town, in which the American casualties were two hundred and seventy-one, and the British casualties were two hundred and fifty-eight. Greene, after the action, withdrew to Rugeley’s Mills, and Rawdon to Camden. Stedman says: “The victory at Hobkirk Hill, like that at Guilford Court-House, produced no consequences beneficial to the British army.” On the seventeenth of the subsequent September, Greene fought with Stewart, Rawdon’s successor, the Battle of Eutaw Springs, the final battle at the South. In this battle the American casualties were four hundred and eight, and the British casualties were six hundred and ninety-three. In dismissing these operations in the Southern Department, a single extract from Tarleton’s history of the war is of interest: “The troops engaged during the greater part of the time were totally destitute of bread, and the country afforded no vegetable as a substitute. Salt at length failed, and their only resources were water and the wild cattle which they found in the woods. In the last expedition, fifty men perished through mere fatigue.... We must not, however, confine the praise entirely to the British troops. The same justice requires that the Americans should not be deprived of their share of this fatal glory.... On the whole, the campaign terminated in their favor, General Greene having recovered the far greater part of Georgia, and the two Carolinas.”
This same Nathaniel Greene led the Kentish Guards to Boston on the morning after the Battle of Lexington, in 1775, and his early announcement of the principles upon which the war should be conducted to ensure final success, had been verified. He had vindicated the confidence of Washington in every line of duty, and in his Southern campaign cleared the way for the crowning triumph of the American Commander-in-Chief, at Yorktown.
CHAPTER XXXII.
LAFAYETTE IN PURSUIT OF ARNOLD.—THE END IN SIGHT.—ARNOLD IN THE BRITISH ARMY.
The diversion of thought from Washington’s immediate surroundings will find its compensation in the development of his plan for the capture of Benedict Arnold. Its execution had been intrusted to General Lafayette, who was already assembling his command at Peekskill, on the Hudson.
The superiority of the British fleet before Newport having been reduced by the storm of January 22nd, Monsieur Destouches, successor to Admiral de Ternay, deceased, consented to send one ship-of-the-line and two frigates to prevent Arnold’s escape by sea. The Count de Rochambeau deemed it unnecessary and inexpedient to send troops, because the movement was to be so rapid in its execution. He assumed that the Continental forces in Virginia were adequate for operations under Lafayette. Letters from Washington, however, suggesting the detail of a considerable land force, did not reach him until after M. de Tully had sailed; or the entire French fleet, with a strong military contingent, would have joined the expedition. The three ships under the command of Monsieur de Tully sailed on the ninth of February; captured the British frigate Romulus in Linn Haven Bay, two privateers, and eight other prizes; but upon arrival at Elizabeth River, Virginia, finding that the depth of water would not allow the passage up the river of his larger ships, he returned to Newport.