On 17 January 1781 Brigadier General Daniel Morgan defeated2 a British force under Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, in one of the most skillful American victories of the Revolution. Knowing his militia would not stand for long, Morgan planned for it: he had them fire a few volleys and fall back, drawing the British into a trap, then hit them with his regulars and cavalry from front and flanks. Tarleton's feared command was destroyed in minutes, a blow that helped turn the war in the South.
By early 1781 the British seemed to be winning in the American South. Their most aggressive cavalry commander, Banastre Tarleton, was hunting an American force under the frontier fighter Daniel Morgan. Morgan chose to stand at an open grazing ground called the Cowpens, and turned the weakness of his army into the trap that destroyed his pursuer.
Part of The greatest battles of the American Revolution · Before: The Battle of Kings Mountain · Next: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse
The war in the South
After years of war the fighting had shifted to the American South, where the British held the upper hand. Their swiftest striker was Banastre Tarleton, a cavalry commander feared for his ruthlessness1. Sent to destroy an American detachment, he pursued Daniel Morgan, a tough Virginia frontiersman and one of the best tacticians of the Revolution.
Morgan's plan
Morgan knew his militia were unreliable in a stand-up fight, so he built his plan around it. He placed skirmishers and militia in lines out front with orders to fire two or three volleys and then withdraw2, deliberately drawing the British forward, while his tougher Continental regulars waited on a low rise behind, with cavalry hidden in reserve2.
The double envelopment
It worked almost perfectly. Seeing the militia fall back, Tarleton's men charged in disorder, straight into the steady fire of the Continentals. At the moment of contact Howard's Continentals charged the front with the bayonet3, while the re-formed militia and William Washington's cavalry swept around the flanks1. Caught front and flanks, Tarleton's command disintegrated.
A turning point
Cowpens was a small battle with large consequences. It wiped out a large part of the British light forces in the South and forced Lord Cornwallis into a costly pursuit that wore his army down4. That chain of events led, later in 1781, to the trap at Yorktown5 and the end of the war. Morgan's plan is still studied as a model of using terrain and troops to their exact strengths.
