A Devil of a Whipping

The Battle of Cowpens

Lawrence E. Babits

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780807849262, 9780807824344
• eBook ISBN: 9780807887660
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

The battle of Cowpens was a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War in the South and stands as perhaps the finest American tactical demonstration of the entire war. On 17 January 1781, Daniel Morgan’s force of Continental troops and militia routed British regulars and Loyalists under the command of Banastre Tarleton. The victory at Cowpens helped put the British army on the road to the Yorktown surrender and, ultimately, cleared the way for American independence.
Here, Lawrence Babits provides a brand-new interpretation of this pivotal South Carolina battle. Whereas previous accounts relied on often inaccurate histories and a small sampling of participant narratives, Babits uses veterans' sworn pension statements, long-forgotten published accounts, and a thorough knowledge of weaponry, tactics, and the art of moving men across the landscape. He identifies where individuals were on the battlefield, when they were there, and what they saw — creating an absorbing common soldier’s version of the conflict. His minute-by-minute account of the fighting explains what happened and why and, in the process, refutes much of the mythology that has clouded our picture of the battle.
Babits put the events at Cowpens into a sequence that makes sense given the landscape, the drill manual, the time frame, and participants' accounts. He presents an accurate accounting of the numbers involved and the battle’s length. Using veterans' statements and an analysis of wounds, he shows how actions by North Carolina militia and American cavalry affected the battle at critical times. And, by fitting together clues from a number of incomplete and disparate narratives, he answers questions the participants themselves could not, such as why South Carolina militiamen ran toward dragoons they feared and what caused the “mistaken order” on the Continental right flank.

1: Tactics

The art of disciplining armies, and ranging them into forms . . .
—George Smith, An Universal Military Dictionary

Battlefield military operations are called tactics. Tactics are dictated by the weapons and troops available. At Cowpens, the British used infantry, cavalry, and artillery; the Americans, infantry and cavalry. Any soldier, whether infantry, cavalry, or artillery, had specific weapons dictating his employment in battle.¹

American Continentals and British infantry were armed with smoothbore muskets which also took a bayonet. American militia carried a variety of rifles as well as some muskets, probably with few bayonets. Some Scottish Highlanders in the British army were armed with broadswords at times. Cavalrymen, or dragoons, were armed with short muskets called carbines, but they relied primarily on pistols and sabers. Artillerymen carried muskets in addition to working their cannon. Officers and noncommissioned officers carried swords. Some company-level officers carried short spears called spontoons, which symbolized their rank.

In the eighteenth century, regular, or line, infantry relied on two primary weapons: the musket and the bayonet. During the Revolution, muskets were called firelocks because they generated their own fire, hence the later term firearm. A musket was a single-shot smoothbore; the barrel had no grooves on its inside surface.

A musket was fired by a spring-loaded mechanism called the lock. The spring drove the cock holding a piece of flint forward. When the flint struck a piece of metal called the hammer, sparks dropped into the pan and ignited the priming charge. Fire from the priming charge flashed through a hole in the barrel and set off the main charge, forcing the ball out of the barrel toward the target.

A soldier in either army loaded his musket from a paper-wrapped cartridge. The soldier tore the cartridge open and shook a little powder into the pan alongside the barrel. The remaining powder was then poured down the barrel. Next, the ball was placed in the barrel and forced down onto the powder by the ramrod. The bullet was smaller than the barrel. The difference in respective diameters created a space between the bullet and the inside of the barrel called windage. The British .75 caliber ball was actually about .70 inch in diameter; the American .69 was about .63 inch.² The entire loading process was very structured and designed to eliminate error. The American manual exercise was simpler than the British, largely because Baron Frederick Wilhelm Von Steuben recognized that a reduction in complexity would shorten the time needed to introduce the system into the Continental army.³

FIGURE 1. Nomenclature of Musket

Source: Peterkin, Exercise of Arms, 47.

The standard British musket was the Short Land, New Pattern musket, often called the Brown Bess. It fired a .75 caliber ball about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Some American militiamen carried British-style muskets, but the American Continentals were armed with French muskets which fired a .69 caliber ball.⁴

Today, muskets have a reputation for being notoriously inaccurate, in part because Tarleton’s second in command, Major George Hanger, wrote a critical statement about common soldiers’ muskets.⁵ Hanger is often cited without clarification, and his observation has become something of a truism. The reputation for inaccuracy is not entirely warranted. In 1781, muskets were state-of-the-art weaponry in large-scale use throughout the Western world. Hanger, in a much less cited observation, pointed out that practice was essential for accuracy.⁶

A well-drilled musketman, given practice and encouraged to shoot rapidly, could deliver fast and accurate fire. Even with undersized bullets it is possible, without ramming, to hit a man-sized target eighty yards away with five out of six shots in one minute.⁷ Although special troops called rangers fired this way, regular infantry did not. Since regular infantry rarely practiced firing at targets, the question of musket accuracy should be directed at the shooter rather than the weapon.

Both sides increased musket lethality, if not accuracy, by issuing buck and ball cartridges containing one large ball and at least three smaller (.30 caliber) balls. Washington ordered that “buckshot are to be put into all cartridges which shall hereafter be made” in 1777. One sixty-man Continental company could launch at least 240 projectiles with a single volley. Buckshot could deliver a fatal wound, especially at ranges within fifty yards where volley fire was most commonly used.⁸

American militiamen carried either muskets or rifles. When they had muskets, militiamen commonly used multiple balls and buckshot, but rifles are different in ways that affect loading speed and tactics. Rifle barrels have twisting slanted grooves cut into their interior surface. The grooves cause the bullet to spin in flight and increase accuracy. Evolving firearms technology occurring on the eighteenth-century American frontier resulted in a distinctive American rifle. American rifles were lengthened to allow full burning of the powder charge and to increase accuracy. The bore was reduced to save on ball weight, but by increasing the powder charge, the impact of a heavier ball was maintained. The stock was thinner than European rifles, resulting in the famous “long rifle,” “Pennsylvania Rifle,” or “Kentucky Rifle.”

Rifles used at Cowpens fit a generalized pattern with “a barrel length usually over 40 inches, a bore averaging .40 to .60 caliber (with seven or eight grooves); a long thin stock extending to the muzzle . . . and a patch box.”⁹ The rifles weighed about six pounds, give or take a few ounces, with balls as “small as thirty-six to the pound, or about” .50 caliber. American rifles used about as much powder as “is contained in a woman’s thimble.”¹⁰

Unlike muskets that had a bayonet-locking lug on the front of the barrel by which men might aim, rifles were equipped with front and rear sights. The American rifle had “one rear sight. . . not more than two-sixteenth of an inch in height above the barrel.” Tarleton’s second in command, George Hanger, later wrote that American riflemen “thought they were generally sure of splitting a man’s head at two hundred yards.” Hanger “also asked several whether they could hit a man at four hundred yards,—they have replied certainly, or shoot very near him, by only aiming at the top of his head.”¹¹

Eighteenth-century rifles had several drawbacks. They were, first and foremost, slower to load at a time when speed of fire was paramount. Rifles loaded slower because the powder charge was not premeasured and the ball was “patched.” After powder was poured down the barrel, a piece of greased cloth was placed over the muzzle opening. The ball was pressed into the cloth and forced into the barrel. Excess cloth was then cut away before ramming the ball home. The greased cloth surrounding the ball caught the rifling, which made the ball spin and increased accuracy. The patch also acted as a gas seal that created greater muzzle velocity, increasing range and striking power. Experienced riflemen could fire one shot every fifteen seconds on a good day.

American rifles were individual personal weapons with a wide range of bore sizes. The range of bores created problems for supply officers; consequently, they issued riflemen lead bars to make bullets, using molds made for their individual weapons. One-pound lead bars were provided to riflemen marching through Salisbury during the Cowpens campaign.¹²

American riflemen had a fearsome reputation for accuracy. “An expert rifleman . . . can hit the head of a man at 200 yards. I am certain, that, provided an American rifleman were to get a perfect aim at 300 yards at me, standing still, he most undoubtedly would hit me, unless it was a very windy day.”¹³ This reputation may not be justified in combat. At a skirmish near Weitzell’s Mill, North Carolina, American riflemen fired thirty-three shots downhill at a mounted man less than fifty yards away and missed both man and horse.¹⁴

A lack of accuracy when shooting downhill had implications for the coming battle at Cowpens. Despite constant drill and practical experience, soldiers tended to shoot high when firing downhill. The error was called “over-shooting” in the nineteenth century when Lyman Draper collected veterans’ Revolutionary War accounts. “Long experience proves, that marksmen in a valley have the advantage of those on a hill, in firing at each other, which is probably owing to the terrestrial refraction. The forest-hunters, though apprised of this fact, often shoot too high when their object is below them.”¹⁵

At Musgrove’s Mill, South Carolina, low American casualties were attributed to the British overshooting Americans down-slope. Richard Thompson “observed the bullet marks on the trees—those of the British and Tories generally indicating aim above the heads of their antagonists, while those of the Whigs were from three to five feet above the ground.”¹⁶

Even on flat ground, some British units often fired high. Before Guilford Courthouse, Henry Lee noted, the British “fire was innocent, overshooting the cavalry entirely; whose caps and accoutrements were all struck with green twigs, cut by the British ball out of the large oaks in the meeting-house yard, under which the cavalry received the volley from the guards.”¹⁷ Since the Americans were mounted, the British fire must have been high indeed.

One British unit at Cowpens fired high before the battle. North Carolina militiaman Joseph Graham recalled the British Legion infantry fired, “their balls passing directly through the woods where our line was formed, and skinning saplings and making bark and twigs fly. . . . [T]he firing in Charlotte and beyond had generally passed over their [our] heads, but here it appeared to be horizontal.”¹⁸ Henry Lee accounted for differences between American and British accuracy because “we were trained to take aim and fire low, he was not so trained; and from this cause, or from the composition of his cartridge (too much powder for the lead), he always overshot.”¹⁹

Continental soldiers were “completed” to forty rounds and three flints as a standard load of ammunition. The night of 16 January, Morgan, knowing a battle was imminent, ordered militia riflemen to carry at least twenty-four rounds. Thus Morgan had an effective way of judging how much ammunition soldiers had. This was essential knowledge for evaluating a unit’s ability to conduct sustained firing.²⁰

Eighteenth-century muskets were augmented by using the bayonet, a triangular blade mounted on the musket barrel. Blades ranged from about seventeen inches long for the British Brown Bess to about fifteen inches for French models. American-made bayonets varied.²¹ Revolutionary War bayonets had a socket that fit over the barrel and were held in place by a stud two or three inches behind the muzzle.

Bayonets could not be used on Revolutionary War rifles. Since rifles were individually manufactured, they were not standardized as to outside barrel diameter and mass-produced bayonets would not fit them. Many Virginia and Carolina rifle barrels were slightly expanded at the muzzle. This “swamping” made it impossible to mount a socket bayonet. A plug bayonet could not be inserted into the barrel because it would damage the rifling and, once in place, the gun could not be fired. Finally, the rifle’s sight was not designed to lock a bayonet in place and would be damaged by the bayonet socket.

Riflemen solved the lack of a bayonet by carrying other blade weapons, the tomahawk and knife. Virginia private Christian Peters was a rifleman, “in all of which service he carried his own Rifle Tomahawk 8c Butcher knife.”²² There was no universal pattern to the “rifleman’s knife,” which ranged in blade length from about six inches to a foot. They were mounted with iron, brass, pewter, or silver with a grip of wood, horn, bone, or antler. The tomahawk was a light axe that served a variety of functions.²³

Finally, another infantry weapon was the spontoon. Basically a spear, in eighteenth-century armies it signified officer rank. British officers carried spontoons into battle at Hobkirk’s Hill, South Carolina, 25 May 1781, so it is likely they were used at Cowpens. At least one spontoon was used by a Maryland officer to polevault onto a British cannon.²⁴

In the eighteenth centur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1: Tactics
• 2: The Opponents
• 3: Prebattle Activities
• 4: The Stage Is Set
• 5: The Skirmish Line
• 6: The Militia Line
• 7: The Main Line
• 8: Cavalry Actions
• 9: The Aftermath
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index