Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

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ARMY HISTORICAL RESEARCH

Militia had been posted in a plantation owned by one of Davie’s officers, Captain James Wahab. Davie reached their camp as the sun was rising, saw his enemy forming to march, and quickly devised a plan of attack. Splitting his forces, he attacked simultaneously from the front and flanks. 76 The effect was complete surprise and a rout of the British troops assembled in the road, who put up no resistance and ‘fled with full speed’. In just a few minutes, British forces sustained about ‘fifteen or twenty dead on the field and had about forty wounded, only one man of the Americans was wounded and that by mistake’. 77 Davie’s men brought off 96 horses and 120 stands of arms, travelling 96 kilometres out and back in 24 hours. 78 On 24 September, Cornwallis marched to the North Carolina border, halting 40 kilometres from Charlotte. At 3:00 a.m. that day, General Sumner, south of Charlotte, was notified of the British advance and made an immediate retreat north ‘to prevent, if possible, coming to a General Action’. 79 By the morning of 26 September, the British column was just 3 kilometres south of Charlotte. The “town” of Charlotte until this point had been largely immune from the hostilities of the war. Despite only comprising 20 houses and a county courthouse, it was an important strategic crossroads situated on the Great Wagon Road that ran northwards into Virginia and southwards to Georgia. The town was also the nexus of several roads, which ran westwards to the important fords across the Catawba River. The inhabitants of Charlotte were already known by the British for their hostility to the Crown. Lieutenant-Colonel Turnbull referred to the Presbyterian ‘Irish’ residents of Mecklenburg and Rowan Counties as ‘the Greatest Skum of Creation’. 80 In June, when Colonel Rawdon was near the North Carolina border, he felt compelled to issue a proclamation to the citizens of Mecklenburg urging them peaceably to tend to their farms and not disturb the friends of the (British) government . 81 Given the relative surprise of the final advance to Charlotte, Davie was under explicit orders to skirmish with the British and cover the retreat of Sumner and Davidson. 82 Upon reaching the town in mid-morning, Cornwallis had formed his men into battle lines 100 metres apart and started the advance on the town. Davie’s 150 dismounted American Militiamen were formed in three lines at the centre of town in the main cross-street, facing south/southwest towards the enemy. The town was situated on elevated ground and no infantry patrol was sent out to probe it before the British Legion cavalry advanced. In consequence they found themselves in an ambuscade. Major George Hanger led the British Legion that day as Tarleton was ill. Caught in a cone of fire from the three American lines, 76 B.P. Robinson, Revolutionary War Sketches of William R. Davie (Raleigh: North Carolina State University Graphics, 1976), p. 22 77 Ibid., p. 23. 78 Ibid. 79 Sumner to Gates, 25 Sept. 1780, CSRNC , XIV, p. 651. 80 Turnbull to Cornwallis, 6 July 1780, in Michael Scoggins, The Day it Rained Militia: Huck’s Defeat and the Revolution in the South Carolina Backcountry, May-July 1780 (Charleston: History Press, 2005), p. 196. 81 Scoggins, The Day it Rained Militia , p. 72. 82 Davidson to Gates, 26 Sept. 1780, CSRNC , XIV, p. 655.