Battle of Guilford Courthouse

Battle of Guilford Courthouse, battle in the American Revolution fought in South Carolina on March 15, 1781, a battlefield loss but strategic victory for the Americans in North Carolina over the British, who soon afterward were obliged to abandon control of the Carolinas.

After the American victory at the Battle of Cowpens (January 17, 1781), the American commander, General Nathanael Greene, united both wings of his 4,400-man southern army at Guilford Courthouse, near what is now Greensboro, North Carolina. There General Charles Cornwallis, with a force of about 2,400 British veterans, caught up with the Americans, and a battle ensued. Greene arranged his force in three battle lines with cavalry and riflemen on each flank, but kept no reserve. North Carolina militia and two cannon were in the first line, and Virginia militia in the second line, both with orders to fire, retreat, and reform; battle-tested regulars of the Continental Army manned the third line. Greene’s force also contained at least 45 Black freemen, who fought with

Cornwallis’s troops, including a small detachment of loyalists, deployed immediately, light artillery in the center, grenadiers and Germans on the flanks. At about 1:30 p.m. they fired at the first American line and received a heavy volley in return. As ordered, the militia withdrew, but to Greene’s dismay most of the North Carolinians left the battlefield. The British continued forward into thick woods where they encountered Greene’s second line and a longer and much tougher fight, but the British regulars finally forced the Americans back. Separate fights took place on the flanks and units were drawn away from the center. The British left pushed against the main American line and was sharply repulsed. However, in the center, Cornwallis’s troops fought the Americans in a fierce hand-to-hand melee. Counterattacks by American cavalry led by a hero of Cowpens, Lieutenant Colonel William Washington. along with Light Horse Harry Lee’s Virginia Legion and other Continentals stopped an assault by a guards regiment but were unable to break the determined British. In the end, British artillery fire—which killed many of Cornwallis’s own troops while breaking up the American line—and a charge by Cornwallis’s reserve cavalry carried the day. American casualties were light; British casualties were heavy. Wishing to avoid another defeat such as the one suffered by General Horatio Gates at Camden, South Carolina, the previous August, Greene withdrew his forces intact.

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Declining to pursue the Americans into the backcountry, Cornwallis temporarily retired to Hillsboro, North Carolina. Acknowledging his failure to destroy patriot resistance in the South and having lost a quarter of his army at Guilford Courthouse alone, Cornwallis abandoned the heart of the state and his so-called southern strategy a few weeks later and marched to the coast at Wilmington to recruit and refit his command, which then moved on to Virginia and defeat at Yorktown Greene’s forces in turn moved on to eliminate the few remaining British and loyalist units remaining in the Carolinas.

The site of the battle is now preserved as Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, one of two such parks devoted to the Revolutionary War.

Losses: American, 70–80 dead, 183 wounded, 1,046 missing (mainly militia who dispersed after the battle); British, 93 dead, 413 wounded, 26 missing.