Woodcuts of the gold medal Congress awarded Morgan for his victory at Cowpens. The original medal is lost.
Morgan’s fine stone house, which he named “Saratoga,” still stands near Winchester, Virginia.
The War in the South
NORTH CAROLINA New Bern Edenton Brunswick Gilbert Town SOUTH CAROLINA Georgetown GEORGIA Augusta Moores Creek 27 Feb 1776 Sullivans Island 28 June 1776 Kettle Creek 14 Feb 1779 Brier Creek 3 March 1779 Lenuds Ferry 6 May 1780 Waxhaws 29 May 1780 Williamson Plantation 12 July 1780 Kings Mountain 7 Oct 1780 Ninety Six Besieged by Greene May-June 1781; evacuated by the British July 1781 Hobkirks Hill 25 Apr 1781 Charleston Captured by the British 12 May 1780 Eutaw Springs 8 Sept 1781 Fort Watson HIGH HILLS OF SANTEE Cornwallis routs Gates at Camden and advances into North Carolina Camden Hanging Rock 6 Aug 1780 Camden 16 Aug 1780 Fishing Creek 18 Aug 1780 Great Savannah 20 Aug 1780 Charlotte Greene divides his army sending Morgan to the west and the main army into winter quarters at Cheraw Hills. 20-26 Dec 1780 Cheraw Hills Greene’s winter quarters 1780-1781 Grindal Shoals Morgan’s camp 25 Dec 1780 to 14 Jan 1781 Cornwallis turns back after Ferguson’s defeat at Kings Mountain and goes into winter quarters at Winnsborough. Winnsborough Cornwallis’s winter quarters 1780-1781 Tarleton Musgroves Mill 18 Aug 1780 Fishdam Ford 9 Nov 1780 Blackstocks 20 Nov 1780 Hammonds Store 28 Dec 1780 Easterwood Shoals Cowpens 17 Jan 1781 Hamiltons Ford Cornwallis pursues Morgan. Morgan’s line of retreat after Cownpens. Green River Road Island Ford Beatties Ford Island Ford Ramsour’s Mill Cornwallis burns his baggage. 24 Jan 1781 Salisbury Salem Guilford Courthouse Cheraw Hills Coxs Mill Greene races for the Dan River with Cornwallis in pursuit. Boyds Ferry Greene crosses the Dan River and is resupplied and reinforced. 13 Feb 1781 Cornwallis halts south of the Dan River. Hillsborough Guilford Courthouse 15 March 1781 Ramseys Mill Greene breaks off pursuit of Cornwallis after Guilford. Cross Creek Elizabethtown Cornwallis retreats to Wilmington Wilmington Cornwallis marches into Virginia April-May 1781 Halifax Petersburg Richmond Williamsburg Yorktown Cornwallis surrenders 19 Oct 1781
The lower South became the decisive theatre of the Revolutionary War. After the struggle settled into stalemate in the north, the British mounted their second campaign to conquer the region. British expeditionary forces captured Savannah in late 1778 and Charleston in May 1780. By late in that summer, most of South Carolina was pacified, and a powerful British army under Cornwallis was poised to sweep across the Carolinas into Virginia.
This map traces the marches of Cornwallis (red) and his wily adversary Nathanael Greene (blue). The campaign opened at Charleston in August 1780 when Cornwallis marched north to confront Gen. Horatio Gates moving south with a Continental army. It ended at Yorktown in October 1781 with Cornwallis’s surrender of the main British army in America. In between were 18 months of some of the hardest campaigning and most savage fighting of the war.
On this 14th of January, 1781, a great many people in South Carolina and North Carolina were badly in need of the reassurance that Daniel Morgan communicated. The year just completed had been a series of military and political disasters, with only a few flickering glimpses of hope for the Americans who had rebelled against George III and his Parliament in 1776. In 1780 the British had adopted a new strategy. Leaving enough troops to pin down George Washington’s main American army near New York, the British had sent another army south to besiege Charleston. On May 12, 1780, the city and its defending army, under the command of a Massachusetts general named Benjamin Lincoln, surrendered. Two hundred and forty-five regular officers and 2,326 enlisted men became captives along with an equal number of South Carolina militia; thousands of muskets, dozens of cannon, and tons of irreplaceable gunpowder and other supplies were also lost.
