Nothing stirred Banastre Tarleton’s blood more than a retreating enemy. British soldiers, famed for their tenacity in war, have often been compared to the bulldog. But Tarleton was more like the bloodhound. A fleeing foe meant the chance of an easy victory. It was not only instinct, it was part of his training as a cavalryman.
“Patrols and spies were immediately dispatched to observe the Americans,” Tarleton later recalled. The British Legion dragoons were ordered to follow Morgan until dark. Then the job was turned over to “other emissaries”—loyalists. Tarleton had about 50 with him to act as scouts and spies. Early that evening, January 16, probably around the time that Morgan was deciding to fight at Cowpens, a party of loyalists brought in a militia colonel who had wandered out of the American line of march, perhaps in search of forage for his horse. Threatened with instant hanging, the man talked. He told Tarleton that Morgan hoped to stop at Cowpens and gather more militia. But the captive said that Morgan then intended to get across the Broad River, where he thought he would be safe.
The information whetted Tarleton’s appetite. It seemed obvious to him that he should “hang upon General Morgan’s rear” to cut off any militia reinforcements that might show up. If Morgan tried to cross the Broad, Tarleton would be in a position to “perplex his design,” as he put it—a stuffy way of saying he could cut him to pieces. Around midnight, other loyalist scouts brought in a rumor of more American reinforcements on their way—a “corps of mountaineers.” This sent a chill through the British, even through Tarleton. It sounded like the return of the mountain men who had helped destroy the loyalist army at Kings Mountain. It became more and more obvious to Tarleton that he should attack Morgan as soon as possible.
About three in the morning of the 17th of January, Tarleton called in his sentries and ordered his drummers to rouse his men. Leaving 35 baggage wagons and 70 Negro slaves with a 100-man guard commanded by a lieutenant, he marched his sleepy men down the rutted Green River Road, the same route Morgan had followed the previous day. The British found the marching hard in the dark. The ground, Tarleton later wrote, was “broken, and much intersected by creeks and ravines.” Ahead of the column and on both flanks scouts prowled the woods to prevent an ambush.
Describing the march, Tarleton also gave a precise description of his army. Three companies of light infantry, supported by the infantry of the British Legion, formed his vanguard. The light infantry were all crack troops, most of whom had been fighting in America since the beginning of the war. One company was from the 16th Regiment and had participated in some of the swift, surprise attacks for which light infantry was designed. They had been part of the British force that killed and wounded 150 Americans in a night assault at Paoli, Pa., in the fall of 1777. The light company of the 71st Regiment had a similar record, having also been part of the light infantry brigade that the British organized early in the war.
Music made the soldier’s life more tolerable on the march and in camp. But the most important use was in battle. Both the drum and the fife conveyed signals and orders over the din and confusion far better than the human voice. This iron fife is an original 18th-century instrument. The drum, according to tradition, was carried in the war.
With these regulars marched another company of light infantry whose memories were not so grand—the green-coated men of the Prince of Wales Loyal American Volunteers. Northern loyalists, they had been in the war since 1777. They had seen little fighting until they sailed south in 1780. After the fall of Charleston, Cornwallis had divided them into detachments and used them to garrison small posts, with disastrous results. In August 1780 at Hanging Rock, Sumter had attacked one detachment, virtually annihilating it. The colonel of the regiment was cashiered for cowardice. Another detachment was mauled by Francis Marion at Great Savannah around the same time. It was hardly a brilliant record. But this company of light infantry, supposedly the boldest and best of the regiment, might be eager to seek revenge for their lost comrades.
Tarleton’s Legion
Tarleton gave the Carolinas a foretaste of modern war. His Legion was a fast-moving, hard-hitting combat team, accounted the best in the British army at that stage of the war. Its specialty was relentless pursuit followed by all-out attack. In Tarleton’s hands, the Legion became a weapon of terror directed at civilian and soldier alike. As in modern war, this tactic spawned as much partisan resistance as fear and was ultimately self-defeating.
The figures across these pages represent the main units of the cooly efficient battle machine that Tarleton led onto the field that winter day.