Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

CORNWALLIS ’ S INVASION OF NORTH CAROLINA , 1780

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Hanger’s cavalry was forced to retreat. Shortly thereafter, with British Light Infantry approaching on the American flanks, as well as the Legion Cavalry reforming, Davie ordered a retreat. Prevailing upon the Legion’s intrepidity in previous engagements, Cornwallis approached them and uttered, ‘Legion, remember you have everything to lose but nothing to gain’. 83 The subsequent Legion charge dislodged the remaining American Militia from the centre of town. Previous historiography of the battle has traditionally ended here. It was, however, just the beginning of the action that day. Captain Joseph Graham’s men of Charlotte formed the reserve protecting Davie’s Light Cavalry retreat northwards. For several kilometres and a period of several hours, Graham’s men fought delaying actions at creek crossings and thickets where they could fire their rifles from behind cover. Unknown to Hanger and the Legion, they were only 6.5 kilometres from Sumner and Davidson’s column. Davie, just south of Davidson, heard the firing and planned another ambuscade, sending 100 cavalry to his right to flank the British. Hanger had also sent out a detachment to flank the Americans at the same place. Due to the closeness of the woods, hand-to-hand fighting ensued. Graham was severely wounded, suffering ‘nine wounds, three with ball and six with sabre, and (was) left on the ground for dead’. 84 This last engagement caused the American rear guard finally to retreat in disorder. The British Legion retired 10 kilometres back to Charlotte. British accounts of the battle do not contradict American accounts. Stedman described only ‘slight resistance from the Militia’, although he appears not to have taken part in the pursuit north of the town. 85 Hanger, wounded in the action, wrote that ‘it was a trifling insignificant skirmish’. 86 Cornwallis’s letters of that day refer only to the battle in passing, clearly more interested in enemy Militia uprisings and Loyalist Militia problems to the west and east. One point on which both sides agree is the brutality of the cavalry combat; Cornwallis described that 14 of the enemy as being ‘cut up’ . 87 T he Americans noted five killed and six wounded. Cornwallis remained in Charlotte for 16 days, roughly half the total time his force spent advancing from and retreating back into South Carolina. On the very day he entered Charlotte, several hundred ‘over-mountain men’ set out from Sycamore Shoals to engage Ferguson’s detachment, which had been skirmishing with American militia in the western parts of North and South Carolina. While British soldiers were building their ‘bush huts’ and John Robert Shaw turned from soldier to ‘baker for the guard’, men from places they barely knew existed were on their way to fight a battle that would be the ‘first link in a chain of evils that

83 Stedman, American War , II, p. 216. 84 Graham, General Joseph Graham, pp. 255-256. 85 Stedman, American War , II, p. 216. 86 Hanger, An Address to the Army, p. 58. 87 Tarleton, A History of the Campaigns, p. 159 .