We took a long drive one day
to visit another Revolutionary War battle site: Guilford
Courthouse National
Military Park
in Greensboro, North Carolina.
To put the battle in
context, here is a Revolutionary War timeline focusing on the Southern
Campaign.
19 Apr 1775
|
Lexington & Concord
MA
|
start of war
|
19 Nov 1775
|
Ninety Six SC
|
British defeat Patriots
|
28 Jun 1776
|
Charleston SC
|
unsuccessful attack by
British
|
29 Dec 1778
|
Savannah GA
|
British capture city
|
12 May 1780
|
Charleston SC
|
British capture city +
5,500 troops
|
29 May 1780
|
Waxhaws SC
|
British brutally defeat
Patriots
|
16 Aug 1780
|
Camden SC
|
British defeat Patriots
under Gates
|
19 Aug 1780
|
Musgrove Mill SC
|
Patriots defeat British
despite odds
|
7 Oct 1780
|
Kings Mountain SC
|
Patriots defeat British +
kill Major Ferguson
|
17 Jan 1781
|
Cowpens SC
|
Patriots defeat British
|
15 Mar 1781
|
Guilford Courthouse
NC
|
|
May-Jun 1781
|
Ninety Six SC
|
siege – Patriots unable to
capture fort
|
19 Oct 1781
|
Yorktown VA
|
British surrender, end of
war
|
We started at the Visitor Center and toured their little museum
with its showcases and display boards. Barbara liked comparing the varied
powder horns to her simple Revolutionary War powder horn.
 |
| Powder horns in the museum |
Instead of a topographic
light display like we’ve seen at other battlefields, Guilford Courthouse has a
computer animated video showing the fairly complicated battle progress. Then we saw a second
video showing reenactors, which was based off eyewitness accounts.
We learned that Cornwallis
(the British commander) had about 2000 men and Nathanael Greene (the Patriot
commander) had about 4500 men: some Continental regulars and some untrained
militia.
 |
| Leaders depicted on a display board in the museum |
Like the strategy used at
Cowpens, Greene set up 3 battle lines.
 |
| [map from Wikipedia] |
He put the militias in the
front 2 lines and his Continental troops in the rear. The first lines were
supposed to shoot and drop back to the third line, but many on the front lines
shot and scattered. The British pushed through the first 2 lines and continued
to fight.
In the end the Patriots
retreated, leaving the area and their canons to the British. So technically the
Brits won, but they paid a heavy toll as Cornwallis lost a quarter of his
troops. The park service brochure summed it up this way, “the one who kept the
field lost the war.” The loss of troops was another link in the chain of events
leading to Cornwallis’ eventual surrender at Yorktown.
After seeing the visitor
center, we drove their battlefield tour. This two mile road has 8 tour stops
and lots of monuments and “waysides” (explanatory signs). The terrain has
changed since the battle, but the waysides helped explain the battle.
 |
| Greene monument |
 |
| wayside on the Third Battle Line |
 |
| Regulars monument |
Guilford Courthouse has a
wide array of monuments – some directly related to the battle and some not. At
least one monument marking a battle position was later found to be incorrectly
located. There are quite a few monuments honoring individuals. The founders of
the park have monuments and there is even a monument to the North Carolina signers of the Declaration of
Independence who are buried here.
 |
Turner monument
honoring a
mom who rode from Maryland
to nurse her son
|
 |
Signers’ monument
|
We are thankful for these
parks that preserve and interpret history.
