Battle of Cowpens

In January 1781 Banastre Tarleton, perhaps the most feared British cavalry commander in the South, caught up with Daniel Morgan's small American force at a frontier pasture known as the Cowpens. Morgan chose to fight with the Broad River a few miles behind him, so that his militia had nowhere to run, and asked them only for two volleys before falling back behind the Continental line. Tarleton's men charged the retreating militia, ran into steady Continental fire, and were then struck in the flanks by American cavalry and the re-formed militia. In less than an hour most of Tarleton's force was killed or captured, though he escaped. The loss of his light troops weakened Cornwallis's army on the road that ended at Yorktown later that year.

Morgan's layered defence made Cowpens a fixture of American officer education, and staff rides to the field remain common. Historians debate how much of the result was plan and how much accident, since a misunderstood order among the Continentals produced the apparent retreat that drew the British on. The battle also figures in the long argument over the militia's value in the Revolution, because Morgan's plan was built on accepting their limits rather than denying them. The field was set aside as a national battlefield site in 1929 and has been restored toward the open, grazed woodland of 1781.