John Eager Howard
Few field officers served the Continental Army with greater skill or devotion to duty than John Eager Howard. When the revolution broke out, he was 23, the son of a landed Maryland family, brought up in an atmosphere of ease and comfort. He saw his first hostile fire as a captain of militia at White Plains (1776). The next year, as a major in the regulars, he helped lead the 4th Maryland at Germantown. In the Southern Campaign of 1780-81, regiments he led fought with great courage at Camden, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Hobkirks Hill, and Eutaw Springs. Nathanael Greene considered Howard “as good an officer as the world affords.” After the war, ‘Light-Horse Harry’ Lee described Howard as “always to be found where the battle raged, pressing into close action to wrestle with fixed bayonet.”
The silver medal awarded by Congress to Howard for service at Cowpens.
Belvidere, the elegant estate that John Eager Howard built after the Revolution, stood in what is now downtown Baltimore. It was torn down a century ago and the land is now occupied by row houses.
Behind the infantry and artillery rode the cavalry of the British Legion and a 50-man troop of the 17th Light Dragoons, giving Tarleton about 350 horsemen. In scabbards dangling from straps over their shoulders were the fearsome sabers that could lop off a man’s arm with a single stroke. The Legion cavalry were, relatively speaking, amateurs, with only their courage and belief in their cause to animate them. The 17th Dragoons were regulars to the core, intensely proud of their long tradition. On their brass helmets they wore a death’s head and below it a scroll with the words “or glory.” They and their officers were somewhat disdainful of the British Legion.
A helmet of the 17th Light Dragoons, c. 1780.