Fox and Pitt on American Affairs

Greene remained in Virginia only long enough to rest and recruit his army, when he recrossed the Dan (February 23) with the intention of frustrating the efforts of Cornwallis to embody the Loyalists of North Carolina into military corps. The gallant Colonel Henry Lee, with his legion, was with Greene. At the head of his cavalry he scoured the country around the headwaters of the Haw and Deep rivers, where, by force and stratagem, he foiled Tarleton, who was recruiting among the Tories there. On the 2d of March he deceived Colonel Pyle, who was at the head of three hundred Loyalists, and near the Allamance Creek attacked, defeated, and dispersed his men. Tarleton, who was near, fled in alarm to Hillsborough, and the disheartened Tories returned to their homes. "I am among timid friends and adjoining inveterate rebels," Cornwallis wrote.

General Greene, in the meantime, had moved cautiously forward, and on the first of March found himself in command of almost five thousand effective troops. Feeling strong enough to cope with the earl, he sought an opportunity to fight him. The earl, too, was anxious to attack Greene, and on the 15th of March they met and contended fiercely near Guilford Court-House, not far from the present Greensborough, in Guilford county, North Carolina. Greene had encamped within eight miles of the earl on the evening of the 14th. The latter had been trying to bring on an engagement with the Americans, and on the morning of the 15th, he moved against Greene. The latter was prepared to receive his enemy. His main camp was upon a large hill surrounded by smaller ones, and all were covered with a forest of magnificent old trees, and thick underwood. Greene had sixteen hundred and fifty of the best veteran Continental troops, and two thousand militia; Cornwallis had nineteen hundred of the finest British veterans.

Greene disposed his army in three positions-the first at the edge of the woods on the greater hill; the second in the forest three hundred yards in the rear, and the third a little more than a fourth of a mile in the rear of the second. The first was composed of North Carolina militia, not quite eleven hundred in number and mostly raw recruits, commanded by Generals Butler and Eaton. They had two 6-pounders, with Washington's cavalry on the right wing and Lee's legion, with Campbell's militia, on the left wing. Their position was a very advantageous one. At a little past noon the British appeared on their front in full force, and under cover of cannon-firing, they delivered a volley of musketry as they approached the Americans, and then, with a shout, rushed forward with their bayonets. The American militia fled after firing one or two volleys, when the victors, without halting, pressed on and attacked the second line composed of Virginia militia under Generals Stevens and Lawson. These were used to forest warfare and made a stout resistance for awhile, when they, too, fell back upon the regulars of the third line. Thus far the fight had been carried on by the British with their right, which was commanded by General Leslie; now Colonel Webster, who commanded the left, pressed forward with his division, in the face of a terrible fire of musketry and grape-shot. Greene commanded the Americans in person; and nearly the whole of the two armies were now in conflict. The battle lasted about two hours, when Greene, ignorant of the heavy losses of his enemy, ordered a retreat, leaving his cannon and the field to the British.

This was one of the sharpest battles of the war, and was disastrous to both armies. The Americans lost about four hundred killed and wounded, and a thousand who deserted to their homes; the loss of the British was about six hundred. Among their mortally wounded was Colonel Webster. "Another such victory," said Charles James Fox in the House of Commons, "will ruin the British army." Fox moved (June 12) to recommend the ministers to conclude a peace, at once, with the Americans. On the same day, William Pitt, son of the great Chatham, and then only twenty-two years of age, spoke of the war against the Americans as a "most accursed" one, "wicked, barbarous, cruel, and unnatural; conceived in injustice, it was brought forth and nurtured in folly," he said; "its footsteps are marked with slaughter and devastation, while it meditates destruction to the miserable people who are the devoted objects of the resentments which produced it." Fox said: "America is lost, irrevocably lost to the country. We can lose nothing by a vote declaring America independent."

The battle at Guilford put an end to British domination in North Carolina. The forces of Cornwallis were too much shattered for him to maintain the advantage he had gained; so after issuing a proclamation, in which he boasted of his victory, called the Tories to rally to his standard and offered pardon to the "rebels," he moved, with his whole army, toward Wilmington, near the sea-board, while Greene retreated to the Reedy Fork. To these commanders might have been appropriately applied the line of a Scotch ballad:

"They baith did fight; they baith did beat; they baith did run awa."

When Greene heard of the earl's retreat, he pursued him as far as the Deep River, whence he turned back and moved toward Camden with a determination to strike a blow for the recovery of South Carolina.