📚 American Revolutionary War (1775–1783),
Recommended Reading

On October 7, 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain utilized guerilla techniques – American Over Mountain Men wearing buckskin and hunting shirts and armed with hunting rifles attacked Loyalist troops from behind trees, resulting in an overwhelming Patriot victory. In January of the next year, the Battle of Cowpens saw a different strategy but a similar outcome: with brilliant military precision, Continental Regulars, dragoons, and Patriot militia executed the war’s only successful double envelopment maneuver to defeat the British. Using firsthand accounts and careful analysis of the best classic and modern scholarship on the subject, historian Robert Brown demonstrates how the combination of both battles facilitated the downfall of General Charles Cornwallis and led to the Patriot victory in America.

The battle of Cowpens was a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War in the South and stands as perhaps the finest American tactical demonstration of the entire war. On 17 January 1781, Daniel Morgan’s force of Continental troops and militia routed British regulars and Loyalists under the command of Banastre Tarleton. The victory at Cowpens helped put the British army on the road to the Yorktown surrender and, ultimately, cleared the way for American independence. Here, Lawrence Babits provides a brand-new interpretation of this pivotal South Carolina battle. Whereas previous accounts relied on often inaccurate histories and a small sampling of participant narratives, Babits uses veterans’ sworn pension statements, long-forgotten published accounts, and a thorough knowledge of weaponry, tactics, and the art of moving men across the landscape. He identifies where individuals were on the battlefield, when they were there, and what they saw — creating an absorbing common soldier’s version of the conflict. His minute-by-minute account of the fighting explains what happened and why and, in the process, refutes much of the mythology that has clouded our picture of the battle. Babits put the events at Cowpens into a sequence that makes sense given the landscape, the drill manual, the time frame, and participants’ accounts. He presents an accurate accounting of the numbers involved and the battle’s length.

By 1780, the British strategy of subduing the South by mobilizing Loyalist forces appeared to be working following the capture of Charleston and the destruction of General Gates’ Grand Army at Camden. Major Patrick Ferguson was appointed to raise forces and soon amassed a small army of more than 4,000 men, with which the South Carolina backcountry was cowed. It appeared Britain had a firm grip on South Carolina and Georgia, prompting a move into North Carolina. Ferguson, commanding only a fraction of his Loyalists, was given the job of screening the advance of the main British army under Cornwallis, but his actions in the backcountry caught the attention of the fiercely independent “Overmountain Men.” Roused into action by a handful of charismatic leaders, the Overmountain Men joined forces with Patriot militia and set off to find the Loyalists. After a grueling march of more than 300 miles, they caught up to them at Kings Mountain and annihilated Ferguson’s command. With detailed maps, diagrams, and illustrations, this well-researched book by expert author David Smith dives into Britain’s plans for the area, the events that drove the Overmountain Men to band together and the final battle that saw the Loyalists defeated.