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A Short History of Post-battle Lives

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Major General Nathanael Greene

(Commander of the Army of the Southern Department)

Greene left his camp on Troublesome Creek on March 18 and began a
pursuit of Cornwallis. After Cornwallis crossed the Deep River at
Ramsey's Mill, Greene decided to take his army back to South Carolina
and then spent the last years of the Revolutionary War battling the
British and Loyalist garrisons there. At the end of the war in 1783,
Greene decided to remain an adopted Southerner. Properties in North and
South Carolina were given him, but he settled on a large plantation
given him by the people of Georgia (Mulberry Grove near Savannah), The
last years of his life were marred by the large debts personally
guaranteed to contractors of supplies while he was commander of the Army
of the Southern Department, 1780-83. He sold most of his property for
cash, but the debt problems plagued him until his death of complications
of possible sunstroke in June 1786. Greene was first buried on his
plantation, but in 1902 his remains were removed and placed under a
monument to him in Savannah. His wife, Catherine Littlefield Greene,
continued to live at Mulberry Grove with her five children. She was
ultimately successful in clearing the general's name by getting Congress
to appropriate funds to settle the debt. After the general's death Mrs.
Green, a competent businesswoman, worked to make an income for her
family. One of the agricultural products she saw as having a future was
cotton, but its practical use was hampered by the laborious task of
removing it seeds from the boll. A young New England teacher she had
hired for her children conceived the idea for a machine to easily remove
these troublesome seeds. Eli Whitney's "cotton gin", first made and used
at Mulberry Grove in the 1790s, would revolutionize southern
agriculture. But the subsequent demand for more cotton and for more
African slave labor to harvest it paved the way for the troubles that
would erupt in civil war in 1861.

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Lieutenant General Charles, Earl Cornwallis

(Commander of the British Army in the South)

Lord Cornwallis's victory at Guilford Courthouse was really a defeat in
terms of lost men and objectives. After a long, hard march to
Wilmington, North Carolina, he decided to leave the Carolinas and march
north to Virginia hoping to defeat Greene by cutting him off from his
northern supplies and re-enforcements. His defeat in October 1781 at
Yorktown by George Washington did little damage to what would become a
long, outstanding career of service to the king. Exchanged for the
diplomat Henry Laurens, Cornwallis returned to England. A widower since
the middle of the war Cornwallis entered the world of government
administration. In 1786 he went to India and served as Governor-General.
While there in 1793 he was made a Marquis. In 1797 he returned to the
British Isles to become Governor-General and Commander in Chief in
Ireland. Both of these respected administrations were marked by a number
of legal and civil service reforms. Being high born and intelligent
served him well in military as well as public life. Above all he was
humane, fair and capable, traits which gained him the respect of many
people. A sickly and aged Cornwallis was recalled to India where he died
in October 1805.

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Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton

(Commander of the British Legion)

Twenty-six year old Tarleton, pained by his wounds received at New
Garden on March 15, led his mounted forces in screening the march to
Wilmington, North Carolina, after Guilford Courthouse. Accompanying
Cornwallis into Virginia he was present at the surrender at Yorktown in
October 1781. Unlike his fellow officers his sullied reputation as a
remorseless fighter has made many enemies in the American army. After he
came close to being murdered while a prisoner, he decided to stick close
to the protection of Washington's French allies. As with the other
captured British officers he was eventually paroled to England in 1782.
Arriving home he lived the life of a British gentleman, had his portrait
painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and displayed a noted fondness for the
ladies. In 1790 he was elected a Member of Parliament where he once
punctuated a remark by showing the missing fingers of the hand scarred
by a wound suffered at the New Garden skirmish. Despite the ill will he
engendered during the war his history of the Southern Campaign of the
American Revolution, published in 1786 and revised in 1787, has become a
valuable primary resource to historians. Tarleton returned to the army
in 1790 and rose to the rank of full general in 1812, but fought no more
battles. He was created a baronet in 1815. He died an old man in 1833.

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Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee

(Commander of "Lee's Legion")

"Light-horse Harry" continued with Greene's army in the South Carolina
campaigns of the summer of 1781. He visited Washington's army at
Yorktown in the fall of 1781 and was present at the surrender in
October. He returned to Greene's army. He left on a leave of absence in
February 1782 and, at the end of the war, was honorably discharged.
After the war he married his cousin and settled into her home
"Stratford" in his home state of Virigina. He entered politics as a
Federalist and served in Congress from 1785 to 1788. In 1790 his first
wife died. He was elected governor of Virginia and served from 1792 to
1795. In 1794 Washington gave him a command in the Whiskey Rebellion in
Pennsylvania. After a return to Congress in 1799 his life took a
downturn. He remarried and moved to Alexandria, Virginia. Lee was not an
able manager of money and served a sentence in debtor's prison. Here he
wrote his memoirs of the war. In 1807 Lee's famous son, Robert E. Lee,
was born. Lee, as many in the Federalist Party did, opposed the War of
1812. He was severly beaten and mutilated by an angry mob in Baltimore
while defending a fellow Federalist's press. He went to the West Indies
to convalesce, but on return to the United States in 1818 he died in
Georgia at the home of Nathanael Greene's widow on Cumberland Island.
Buried there for many years, his remains were moved in 1913 to be with
his son's at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

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Colonel William Washington

(Commander of Third Continental Dragoons)

A third cousin to George Washington, William (or Billy, as many close
friends and relatives called him) Washington dashed off the field of
Guilford after his cavalry attack had been beaten back by the fire of
the British artillery. At Troublesome Creek Ironworks, Greene's army
began to recover from the battle and more of the "missing" militia came
into camp. As soon as Cornwallis left the field and headed south,
Washington's dragoons went in pursuit. After Greene decided to give up
the pursuit, Washington and his men accompanied the army back into South
Carolina. He fought at Hobkirk's Hill and was later wounded and captured
by the British at Eutaw Springs in September 1781. He spent the
remainder of the war in captivity at Charleston. Here, he met a Miss
Elliot, fell in love and married her. Settling in Charleston after the
war, Washington served in the South Carolina legislature, but turned
down the chance to become a candidate for Governor simply because he
"could not make a speech." From 1798 to 1800 he served as a brigadier
general in the army. His post-war portrait by the artist C.W. Peale
bears out a description of a man "possessed of a stout frame, being six
feet in height, broad, strong, and corpulent." He died in 1810.

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Colonel Otho H. Williams

(Adjutant-General of the Army of the Southern Department)

Williams, a Marylander, continued to serve as Greene's Adjutant General.
Greene gave him the assignment of compiling the statistics of the battle
of Guilford Courthouse which he issued on March 16. Williams' figures
showed that the American army suffered many "missing", but emerged from
the fight much better than the victorious British who had suffered about
28% casualities. Williams marched with the army back to South Carolina
and fought at Hobkirk's Hill and Eutaw Springs in the summer of 1781. In
1782 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. In 1783 he
retired from the army and became Collector of the Port of Baltimore,
Maryland. In 1792 he was offered the rank of second-in-command of the
Army, but turned it down due to ill health and a desire to take care of
his family. He did accept the post of Collector for the Port of
Baltimore, a position he held until July 1794 when at the age of 45 he
died while traveling to a mineral springs for his health.

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Captain Robert Kirkwood

(Company commander in the Delaware Regiment)

Kirkwood led his small unit of tough Delaware soldiers into South
Carolina to fight at Hobkirk's Hill and Eutaw Springs in the summer of
1781. Always admired for their bravery and ablility, Kirkwood's regiment
was one of Greene's best units, always able to stand their ground and
fight it out with the best British units. Kirkwood and his men were sent
home in late 1781 after 6 years of continuous service. After surviving
some of the fiercest battles of the Revolution, Kirwood died the
soldier's death -- he was killed at the hands of the Indians in 1781 in
a battle in Ohio. Hnery Lee eulogized the brave captain and fellow
battle participant, "...he died as he lived, the brave, meritorious,
unrewarded, Kirkwood."

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Lieutenant Colonel John Eager Howard

(Officer in the Maryland Brigade)

The well-educated Howard attained a sterling military record in the
Southern Campaign. After the war Congress voted him a gold medal for his
valor at the battle of Cowpens in January 1781. After Guilford
Courthouse Howard remained with Greene in the 1781 summer campaign in
South Carolina. In addition to Congress Howard received the praise of
his commander, Greene, who ranked him "as good an officer as the world
affords...(m)y own obligations to him are great -- the public's still
more so." In 1788 Howard entered politics by being elected delegate to
the United States Congress. He was Governor of Maryland from 1788 to
1791 and U.S. Senator from 1796 to 1803. He turned down the offer to be
Secretary of War in 1795. He became a Federalist leader and was one of
their candidates for Vice-President in their unsuccessful campain in
1816. A wealthy man, Howard owned much of the land that is now
Baltimore. His name is metioned in the song, "Maryland, My Maryland." He
died in 1827.

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Brigadier General Charles O'Hara

(Commander of the Brigade of Guards)

Commanding the elite Brigade of Guards, O'Hara was wounded at Guilford
Courthouse and his younger brother Augustus was killed serving as an
artillery officer in the same battle. After Guilford Courthouse O'Hara,
recovering from his wounds, led the Guards into Virginia with
Cornwallis. At Yorktown in October 1781 Cornwallis appointed O'Hara as
his surrogate to surrender his sword to the combined French and American
army under General George Washington. Offering the sword first to the
French commander, he was politely directed to the Americans. O'Hara was
exchanged in February 1782 and returned to England to receive a
promotion to Major General. In 1792 he became Lt. Governor of Gibraltar,
the British stronghold in Spain. He was again captured in war by the
French at Toulon in 1793. Held in Luxembourg he was exchanged for the
French general Rochambeau (ironically who had helped Washington capture
O'Hara in 1781) in 1795. He became Governor of Gibraltar and a full
general in 1798. He died, suffering from his many war wounds, in 1802.
He willed his huge fortune to two lady friends and their children.

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A Final Note

Most of the officers and soldiers who survived the battle of Guilford
Courthouse became witnesses of the final days of the American Revolution
and the following events surrounding the creation of a new country --
the United States. Many of them took an active role in these events.
Captured British soldiers were exchanged or paroled to England while
some stayed in America choosing to begin new lives. Many veterans,
disabled by wounds received in the battle of Guilford Courthouse, or in
other encounters, carried everyday memories of the battle and the war.
Widows of slain soldiers, as well as their children, were forced to
carry on their lives as best as possible. Many, troubled by financial
woes, received some compensation. Most of the soldiers' states, short on
money, offered them bounties of land in the new territories instead.
Taking advantage of this "payment" for their service, they traveled west
into what is now Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, or the northwest
territories of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois expanding the boundaries of
the new country. In 1818, Congress passed the first of several acts that
would pay veterans a small pension based upon need. Asked to prove their
service in the war many furnished us today a record of their wartime
activities. In 1836 another act of Congress extended payments to the
families of veterans. By that time most Revolutionary War veterans were
gone or far advanced in age. The last veteran of the war died in 1856.
Like veterans of all wars they hoped that their legacy of sacrifice
would last as long as indicated in the two lines of this song...

*"The Rising World shall sing of us a thousand years to Come*

*And tell our Children's Children the Wonders We have Done..."*

-from a song copied into a Revolutionary War oderly book