page_title: Cornwallis in North America
section_title: North Carolina
hierarchical_section_title: Cornwallis in North America / American War of Independence / North Carolina
caption_attribution_description: English: Guilford Court House Battleground 1781 During American War of Independence
context_page_description: Charles, Earl Cornwallis was a military officer who served in the British Army during the American War of Independence. He is best known for surrendering his army after the 1781 Siege of Yorktown, an act that ended major hostilities in North America and led directly to peace negotiations and the eventual end of the war.
  Born into an aristocratic family with a history of public service, Cornwallis was politically opposed to the war, but agreed to serve when it became clear that Britain would require a significant military presence in the Thirteen Colonies. First arriving in May 1776, he participated in the Battle of Sullivan's Island, before joining the main army under General William Howe. He played a notable role in the partially successful New York and New Jersey campaign when George Washington successfully eluded him after the Battle of the Assunpink Creek and inflicted a decisive defeat on troops left at his rear in the Battle of Princeton.
  Cornwallis was also involved in the Philadelphia campaign, leading a wing of Howe's army, before he became one of the leading figures of the British "southern strategy" to gain control of the southern colonies.
context_section_description: Cornwallis, buoyed by the victory at Camden, then prepared to advance north into North Carolina while militia activity, led by Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion, continued to harass the troops he left in South Carolina.  He detached Patrick Ferguson, his inspector of militia, to raise a company of militia in the hills of North and South Carolina and cover his left flank.  Ferguson was zealous in execution of this assignment, raising nearly 1,100 men.  However, he angered many colonists by issuing threats to "lay their country waste with fire and sword" if they continued their opposition, and a Patriot militia arose to oppose him.  While Ferguson recruited, Cornwallis moved his army to Charlotte, North Carolina, skirmishing with Patriot forces left there to harass his advance.  Ferguson's Loyalists and the Patriot militia, led by a coalition of commanders, clashed at Kings Mountain in early October, two weeks after Cornwallis arrived in Charlotte.  The battle was a disaster: Ferguson was killed, and nearly his entire force was killed or captured.  Kings Mountain was only about 35 miles (56 km) from Charlotte, within Cornwallis's range to assist.  The defeat, combined with other failures to raise Loyalist militia and ongoing Patriot activity in South Carolina, prompted Cornwallis to retreat to Winnsboro, South Carolina, where he set up a winter camp.  Attempts to capture either Marion or Sumter were repeatedly frustrated.  To reinforce his army, he ordered Major General Alexander Leslie, stationed at Portsmouth, Virginia, to abandon that outpost and join him in South Carolina.
  The British camp at Winnsboro was not particularly comfortable, and the men were often sick, living in crude accommodations not unlike those that Washington's men had erected at Valley Forge in 1777.  The army suffered from a general lack of supplies, but wagons and horses were in particularly short supply, and the earl discovered that his quartermasters were profiteering on the provisioning of those items.  The methods by which horses were acquired also served to alienate their Loyalist friends, since the quartermasters were sometimes indiscriminate, seizing horses from Patriots and Loyalists alike.  His supply lines were also continually harassed, particularly by Francis Marion.  In November he ordered Tarleton out to capture Marion; the two commanders successfully maneuvered themselves out of entrapments laid by the other.  Tarleton eventually returned to Cornwallis, reporting that Marion's force had been broken up; several days later, Marion resumed his guerrilla war.
  The arrival in North Carolina of a new Continental Army under Major General Nathanael Greene in December meant that the army would need to begin campaigning again.  Although General Clinton had dispatched Brigadier General Benedict Arnold to Virginia to threaten Greene's supply lines, Cornwallis needed to deal with the wily general.  Greene had detached Brigadier General Daniel Morgan with a light infantry corps to cause trouble in the highlands of South Carolina.  Cornwallis sent Tarleton with a sizable force to chase down Morgan.  In a tactically brilliant battle at Hannah's Cowpens on January 17, 1781, Morgan decisively defeated Tarleton, capturing most of his force.  News of the battle so upset the earl that he was reported to snap a sword.  He wrote that "[T]he late affair has almost broke my heart", and vowed to recover the prisoners Morgan had taken.  Immediately giving chase, he was unable to gain on Morgan, who, although burdened with prisoners, was not burdened by a large baggage train.  Cornwallis, in a move calculated to force his army to be able to move faster, ordered most of his baggage train destroyed on January 24.  Starting with the personal effects of himself and his officers, he ordered the burning of everything except a minimal set of supplies.  Cornwallis's second in command, Charles O'Hara, commented that the move "must ever do the greatest honor to Lord Cornwallis' military reputation".
  This move inaugurated what has been called "race to the Dan".  The Dan Riv
caption: Map showing the battlefield of the Battle of Guilford Court House
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