Morgan and his Riflemen; Wm. and Mary Qrtly., Vol. 23, No. 2, 1914 Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net *********************************************************************** Morgan and His Riflemen William Waller Edwards William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Oct., 1914), pp. 73-105. WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY HISTORICAL MAGAZINE VOL. XXIII OCTOBER, 1914. NO. 2 MORGAN AND HIS RIFLEMEN By WILLIAM WALLER EDWARDS First Lieutenant of Cavalry If we carefully simmer down the theories and precepts of logistics, strategy and tactics, stirring occasionally, in accordance with the infallible recipe of actual experience, two very elementary general principles will continually arise to the surface. The first is, that in every successful army the rank and file must show them- selves fully competent under all adverse conditions of weather, of route, of shelter, raiment and food, to march against the enemy whithersoever their presence may be necessary. For only in this way does the opportunity come to make ef- fective the second principle which, equally essential, is sometimes called the final test of a soldier. It is that he must be able to outshoot his adversary whenever he meets him. Excellence in these two cardinal military virtues dis- tinguished the American rifle companies of the Revolution. Within a few months after the first shots had been fired by the minute men at Lexington, the Continental Congress passed a "resolve" (June 14, 1775) "That six companies of expert riflemen be immediately raised, two in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company as soon as completed shall march and join the army near Boston". All of these companies except that of Captain Daniel Morgan have since marched with unhampered step straight into the Page 74. depths of oblivion. Six hundred good English miles of rough trail lay between the flourishing seaport of Boston and the little village of Winchester, Frederick County, Virginia, where Morgan raised his first company of rangers. In the regrettably brief sketch of his military career, which he was persuaded to attempt in later life, he says: "I was appointed a captain by Congress on the 22d of June, 1775, to raise a company of riflemen and march with haste to Boston. In a few days I raised ninety-six men, and set out for Boston reached that place, in twenty one days from the time, I marched, bad weather included, nor did I leave a man behind." What a glow of pride emanates from the last line! And what wonder, when we consider that this notable march was made with practically green troops? The adjective should, however, be used advisedly and only in its most restricted military sense, because this same company we shall presently follow in another expedition far more arduous, comprising of hardships sufficient to strain their powers of endurance almost to the breaking point, yet sufficient also to further demonstrate their marching ability, as an organization of the best seasoned soldiers in the country. These green troops were borderers and woodsmen, with whom "training for field service" was interwoven with every incident of their daily lives. The western border of Virginia presented a different aspect from that of the sumptuous manor houses and smiling baronial estates lying along the Potomac and James. Beyond the Blue Ridge the traveler might steer an uncertain course for miles through a forest of primeval oaks and wide spreading elms, the haunt of savages and wild beasts, before he caught a glimpse between the tree trunks of a friendly log cabin. Stooping under the rough hewn lintel of the door, he per- ceived as he entered a collection of flint-lock weapons, spotlessly clean and bright, couched on a row of buckhorn prongs over the wide fireplace. They were the Lares and Penates of the household. On the farther peg was a cow's horn of ample curvature, that hoarded the precious powder, and nearby a buckskin pouch in which were stowed bullets fresh from the mold, strips of tow for wadding, Page 75. and spare flints collected in rambles along the neighboring streamlet. When a boy was given a rifle a certain number of bullets were counted into his hand and he was expected to bring back as many deer or wild turkeys. He was sent into the woods with the spare equipment of flint and steel and tomahawk and knife, and expected to build a hunter's lean-to camp of spruce branches, and subsist himself for days until he had "laid in" a supply of game. Or he was put on picket duty to give warning against the ever present danger of an Indian attack, while his father and brothers performed the necessary labor of breaking the ground to sow seed; and in addition he was assigned his particular loophole in the block house, which from the time he was old enough to hold a rifle to his shoulder, he was called upon to man whenever the alarm bell summoned him. From such seasoned material did Morgan build his company. The arrival of these knights of the wilderness with their buckskin hauberks and Indian battle axes, the first troops on Continental establishment, occasioned a little stir of excitement among the New England militia which composed the beseiging army at Cambridge, many of whom were shopkeepers, not overly accustomed to practice with firearms. They marveled greatly at the Virginians' display of markmanship. A military journal of the day narrates incidentally that "while marching at quick step they could hit a mark seven inches in diameter at two hundred and fifty yards." A Boston historian has added marvelously to their fame by ascribing a similar feat to each member of the company at the double quick. When Captain Morgan reported to General Washington, these two were the only Southern leaders yet arrived upon the scene of action. Each had been trained in the same rough school of frontier warfare. Washington was of the aristocracy, while Morgan could claim no such prestige, being of obscure plebian Page 76. birth. As a youth, he had run away through the woods from his father's clearing on the Jersey shore of the Delaware - an honest-faced, overgrown Welsh boy, strong limbed and industrious. He performed the first task he obtained - that of "grubbing" a piece of Virginia land - so satisfactorily that from that time he did not lack for employment. He was given work as a wagoner by the overseer of Nathaniel Burwell, who owned a plantation in the Valley, and in this capacity he delivered supplies to the market towns until by this thrift he was enabled to buy a wagon and team of his own. His roving nature needed no very remunerative offers of General Braddock to induce him to enter the service of the English army in the humble capacity of teamster on its march against Fort Duquesne. While Washington, as Braddock's aide, at the front of the column was inspiring the demoralized English regulars who could see nothing to shoot at but rocks and trees, Morgan, in rear, was bringing up supplies which they were to leave behind in their disgraceful flight. "We will know better next time how to fight them," was the feeble utterance of the dying Braddock. How little did his successors profit by his mistaken tactics, or by his last admonitory words! Braddock died in vain, for the foolish formation he employed for wilderness warfare still continued to live and flourish. Morgan's wagon was one of the train which drove over his unmarked grave in the wilderness to conceal all trace of it from desecrating savage hands. The young backwoodsman, ere his return, felt a touch of English discipline, the scars of which he carried to his grave. For a breach of orders a British officer struck him with the flat of his sword, and the high spirited Morgan promptly stretched him senseless on the ground with one blow of his clenched fist. The punishment he was ordered to receive was five hundred lashes on his bare back, but the drummer of the company who was charged with administering the whipping miscounted, in his hurry to get through with it and the offended always con- tended that he was indebted to King George one lash. During the two decades between the defeat of Braddock and Page 77. Lord Dunmore's war, Morgan took more than his individual share in the internecine strife along the borderland of the Blue Ridge. In the wanton campaign, in- augurated by Lord Dunmore, the last colonial governor of the Old Dominion, against Chief Logan, he received the only wound he ever got in his life. While out with a small scouting party, he was shot in the head from ambush,and though blinded from the gush of blood, he clug with grim tenacity to the neck of his faithful filly until she carried him safely beyond the range of his Indian pursuers. Custom, prior to the Revolution, among the backwoods community where he lived, made the Welsh lad a frequenter of taverns, a tippler and a gamester, and ex- cess of spirit and energy developed him into a formidable border pugilist. Battletown was the name given to the scene of his many stirring encounters, which have become woven into local tradition. His fight with Big Bill Davis, a ruffian among border folk, was won not so much by strength as by good judgement and the mental attitude of never knowing when he was beaten, a prime character- istic of a successful leader of men, which his after military career showed him to possess to the highest degree. He reformed, married and became a plain and rather blunt backwoods farmer, concealing beneath his rough exterior a kindly heart, admiring courage above all things, devoting himself to the cultivation of some land he had acquired by hard labor and as a reward for military services in various Indian uprisings. Up to the time he was twenty years old, he could not write so that anybody but himself could read the writing. To overcome his illiteracy he studied by candle light at home under his wife's tutelage. This was the life from which the shots at Lexington roused Morgan, and firing his martial spirit, sent him to Boston at the head of his company of riflemen. From contemporanious accounts, the American army at Boston must have felt toward Sir William Howe somewhat as the Lilliputian host did toward the sleeping Gulliver, whom they tied down with pack thread. When the English military giant in the present instance did not awake, Morgan's men grew decidedly restless. They pined for more exciting occupation than Page 78. that of handling pick and shovel in digging parallels and approaches. In the circumscribed surroundings of a beseiger's camp, they found a poor substitute for the unbounded freedom INSERT MAP. to which they had been accustomed. When an expedition to Quebec was broached and it became known for a certainty that two rifle companies would be needed, the rivalry was so keen Page 79. that lots had to be cast to determin which they should be, and great was the rejoicing among Morgan's men when the lucky number fell to their share. The idea of an invasion into Canada was first exploited in a letter from Schuyler to Washington, though shortly afterwards Arnold seems also to have suggested it. The route which Schuyler proposed - from Ticonderoga up the Sorel, past Saint John's to Montreal, and thence down the Saint Lawrence - was, however, a far easier one that that selected by Arnold through the Maine wilder- ness. Washington approving of the plan, decided to let each expedition set out, the one under Schuyler, the other under Arnold, the two to meet at Quebec. With Arnold's column, Morgan led. That the attack upon the fortressed city flashed in the pan was in no way their fault, nor does it detract from a record of nerve and endurance on the part of the American soldier, which has scarcely ever been equalled. The expedition wears an air of romance, and it has been called "chivalric". Except that it came so near to being successful, it might very properly have been termed foolhardy. The scheme was built upon a false hypoth- esis; it was supposed that the Canadians would give their aid, but the volatile French there were indifferent to our cause. Indpendence meant nothing to them. Wolfe had decided on the Plains of Abraham that Canada should belong to England, and they were content that it was so. It is an incongruity nevertheless, which still is rather surprising, that through the apathy of the French we lost Canada at Quebec, and throught the enthusiasm of the French we gained our inde- pendence at Yorktown. In order to find out the true state of feeling of the inhabitants of Canada towards us, a hardly little band of eight hundred men strapped on their knapsacks and braved an unbroken wilderness to storm a walled city as strong as a feudal castle. Pushing their bateaux against the turbid current of the Kennebec, they started in September of the year 1775. Through the two months following while the brief northern Indian summer disappeared amid the chill snows of November, they val- iantly toiled forward on their unknown way, now in the water Page 80. to their waists, now losing their bearings and following some tributary stream for days before discovering their mistake; portaging their boats and baggage across thick woods, where the thorns and brambles slashed their clothing to shreds and were left crimson with their blood; through deep ravines which saw not the sunlight. They shot the rapids of the Chaudiere, where the treacherous rocks gored their water-logged craft, and scattered their provisions on the seething tide. From one of the overturned boats, Morgan, barely escaping death, succeeded by main strength in dragging ashore with him the money chest which Arnold had consigned to his care. They were always thinking that their troubles were nearly over and always finding fresh difficulties along their route, greater than those they had already overcome. There were some of the band, as was to be expected, who gave up hope and returned, but the proportion was comparatively snall. At length it became as hazardous to turn back as to go forward. The riflemen, by their hunter's skill, brough in an occasional moose or deer, and so temporarily replenished their rapidly diminishing larder, but the time soon arrived when, on reaching a deserted Indian encampment, which were few in that inhospitable region, they attacked the few remnants of food they found scatterd about, with the voracity of famished wolves. The soggy flour, all that remained of their provisions, was divided equally, and yielded five pints to each, and after that was gone they boiled their moose skin moccasins and greedily drank the gruel. Arnold, with a few men, paddled ahead in birch canoes, and the distant lowing of some Canadian cattle which he purchased and sent back, was the most welcome sound his starving forces had ever listened to. By mean of these cattle alone, which they devoured raw on the spot, was this gaunt and hungry crew of adven- turers able to reach the Saint Lawrence. At last across the river, there loomed before them the rocky summits of Quebec the goal they had hungered to reach. Stopping only long enough to collect canoes for their transit, they crossed the river one dark night, passing between a fleet of English gun- Page 81. boats, landed at the foot of Wolfe's Cove and scaled the heights as he had done to the Plains of Abraham. The advanced party of riflemen then took possession of a large frame house a short distance off from the edge of the cliff, which being tenantless, offered them a convenient and necessary shelter. Morgan's enthusiasm, upon driving in the enemy's pickets, made him favor very strongly an immediate entrance into the town. The plan had much to commend it. With their small numbers, surprise was an essential element to their success. The suddenness of their appearance had created a small panic in the garrison, while the Americans were inspired by the gain they had already achieved and were anxious to press forward. Arnold, on the other hand, who had visited Quebec previously to sell horses and had formed a regard for the strength of its battlements, was emphatically opposed to taking unnecessary chances without knowing more definitely what garrison there was before him. His other subordintes wavered and were divided in their opinions. Morgan's rough eloquence had almost carried his point, when the moon came out - it had hitherto been very dark - and lit up a pathway across the river, and the boom of a shot from a British boat reverberating among the cliffs betokened that one of Arnold's canoes had been discovered and fired on, with the result that the sleeping townspeople were probably alarmed. All thoughts, therefore, of taking the town that night were perforce abruptly dis- missed, especially as they had left behind them their scaling ladders and must now await a more favorable opportunity to bring them across. It was thereupon agreed to await the arrival of Montgomery, who had taken the place of Schuyler, when the latter was forced by sickness to relinquish the command. Montgomery had taken and garrisoned Montreal, after which he had only a force of a couple of hundred men and a few small cannon with which to push on to Quebec, but small though it was, its arrival was as lustily cheered as if it had been a great army. Arnold had made a parade of his tattered forces before the walls, and sent flags of truce which were treated with disgusted contempt. He had also sent arrows ensheathed in enticing mes- Page 82. sages into the streets, hoping that he might lure the French Canadians into his fold; but to no avail. Montgomery's first act was to dispatch a flag of truce and demand surrender, but his message received the same cavalier treatment that had been bestowed upon Arnold's. Winter was upon them, and it became evident that if they were to occupy the comfortable quarters in Quebec upon which they gazed with wistful eyes, an immediate and decisive attack was imperative. There were three methods by which, under ordinary conditions, an attack might be made: One was by digging parallels and approaches. This he could not do in the frozen ground, and, indeed, it would have been found difficult even in summer, owing to heir lack of suitable tools. Another was by completely sur- rounding the place and cutting off the enemy's supplies and reinforcements; but this method was equally out of the question, for the American force was in- adequate and the avenues of approach too numerous to be guarded. Much as Montgomery should have liked to prevent him, Carleton had already slipped in and, a host in himself, his assumption of command within the beleaguered town had gone far to restore order out of chaos. The third alternative was to attempt an assault. The British long range defence guns were rendering the crude American emplacements untenable. Morgan's sharpshooters crept up daily with grim perseverance behind rocks and hillocks to pick off the most exposed of Carleton's sentinels on the walls. The young commander-in-chief of the Americans carefully weighed his chances, and decided that the assault offered the greatest chance of victory, and the enlistment of many of his men would expire with the old year, it was not to be delayed. The lower town being projected between two rivers was shaped like a heel, and like that of Archlles the one vulnerable spot, and the night of the first snow storm the blow was to be struck in that quarter. On New Year's eve, 1776, two columns prepared to move. That led by Montgomery, and composed of New York troops, moved silently along the Saint Lawrence around Cape Diamond; Arnold's men along the Saint Charles, to attack the town at its northwestern extremity. The ice thrown up from Page 83. the river afforded but a narrow, uncertain path, over which they slid and stumbled in Indian file. Morgan's riflemen were again in the lead, carrying the necessary scaling ladders and armed with espontoons or spears in addition to their long rifles, which they protected from the dampness as best they could beneath the skirts of their hunting frocks. Bravely bringing up the rear was their only piece of ordnance - how pathetically inadequate it seems! - a cannon dragged upon a sled by Captain Lamb's artillery company. It was soon deeply buried in a hill of snow and had to be abandoned. At the first barricade that jutted half across their way - the rock of Sault us Matelot - Arnold received a musket ball in the leg and was borne to the rear. His field officers reflected credit on their disinterested judgment by electing Captain Morgan on the spot to fill his place, because he had seen service while they had not. Observing that the men behind him were huddled together and made a fine target for the enemy at point blank range, he urged them forward with a voice that rose clear and distinct above the northeast gale. For fear the business might not be executed with spirit, he seized a scaling ladder at the next bar- rier and was the first to climb to the top of the wall, only to fall stunned by the concussion of a cannon which, aimed a trifle high, was fired over his head. The second gun flashed, and before the third could be touched off he was on his feet, and with face begrimed with the powder of the first discharge, he had alighted upon the muzzle, lost his footing and fallen underneath it, where his followers warded of a circle of British bayonets aimed at his breast. The guard being quickly overpowered, the backwoodsmen and their indomitable leader, panting from their exertions, reached the gate in the centre of the town, where they were to meet Montgomery. They had, many of them, discarded their own weapons, useless from contact with the snow, and replenished the loss with those of sixty prisoners taken on the way. They found the gate unbarred and the people fleeing before them like frightened sheep. The combatative blood of Morgan was a fever heat, but the counsel of his brother offi- Page 84. cers - those whom he had superceded in command - warned him that to advance further at that time would be to both disobey orders and sin against discretion. It would not only destroy Montgomery's plan of the attack, but they would be compelled to leave their prisoners unguarded in their rear. Montgomery was at that very moment lying where his aide, the stripling Aaron Burr, had left him in his winding sheet of snow, and the officer upon whose hesitating shoulders the mantle of command had fallen, did not possess the stamina called for by the critical moment, succeeding the sudden blinding repulse, to rally his bewildered and disheartened men. Had the enthusiasm of the riflemen been general, the failure, which most of our historians dislike to dwell upon, would not have been so abject as to need their charity. Had he known of the defeat and death of his gallant commander in time, Morgan might possibly have captured the lower town unaided! His men were never properly supported. The New England troops in his rear had lost their way in the dark streets, made still more opaque by the fast flying flakes. In disguise he went up to the edge of the upper town, accompanied by only an interpreter, and convincing himself that there was small resistance and anything was better than inaction in the bitter cold which cut through their buckskin garments like a knife, he returned and, snatching a rifle from a soldier near him, called for volunteers to go forward. Their moccasined feet crunched the snow with rhythmic tread. But the opportunity had flown. Every church bell in the town had rung an alarm. Lights twinkled above them from all the windows as they passed. They were waylaid in the shadows below. Here scaling a barrier, there attacking a house, they pushed onward, until they could go no farther. They were isolated, surrounded and alone. Two hundred of Arnold's party had been captured; the rest had either retreated or sought refuge against the cold in the houses from which neither Morgan's entreaties or the British bullets could dislodge them. The enemy were now reinforced twofold. It became with the Americans a clear case of each man for himself. They saw their chief - a bearded giant in stature and strength, weighing two hundred pounds and stand- Page 85. ing six feet in his moccasins - backed against a wall like a lion at bay, and for a time defying capture. In sheer vexation of spirit, he is said to have wept like a child. A priest stepped up and took his sword while he stood vowing that no one else in the crowd about him should take it from his grasp. A British officer, who visited the convent prison where the Americans were subsequently confied, spoke the truth in saying that Daniel Morgan had done all that lay within the reach of human endeavor. He came as an emissary from Carleton to see the Virginian captive, who had been one of his comrades in Pontiac's War, to give him not only praise, but friendly advice. "As the Continental cause is hopeless," he counseled, "Accept a colonelcy in the English service." How typical of his ardent and unreckoned patriotism was Morgan's abrupt reply! "Do not insult me again," he defiantly growled, "in my present helpless condition". Finding that his prisoners would not purchase freedom at that price, the clemency of Governor Carleton yielded to a petition, and striking off their chains - the consequence of a fruitless effort to escape - he sent them home on parole until exchanged; while Arnold, as soon as he was able to hobble about on crutches, seized his desperate pen and wrote Washington that he could not expect to take Quebec with less than five thousand men. * * * * * * * A communication from Washington's headquarters offered Morgan upon his return the command of a rifle regiment, with the rank he had refused in the British service, so soon as he should be exchanged, but enjoined strict secrecy, alleging that did the British know what was on foot they would demand a field officer in exchange, and it would be difficult to muster an English captive officer wearing that insignia. His exchange having been effected without having to face the foreboded em- barrassment, he became a colonel of riflemen at the age of forty, and forthwith received an order to put his regiment in the field before the ink of his com- mission was thoroughly dry or the recruiting, even with the "turn he had for it," had been completed. Page 86. The loyalty of his men was displayed when those who had faced the snows of Quebec with him, unless incapacitated, joined his ranks to a man. They needed no persuasion nor did they require other recommendation. For the others, the principal requirements were that they could use their rifles - that they had gained some local celebrity at backwoods shooting matches, could snuff a candle or bark a squirrel in two out of three trials, and were equal to the Indians in woodcraft. There was no time wasted in equipping them. Each man brought his own long rifled flintlock, his powder horn and bullet pouch; also those weapons of last resort in frontier warfare, the long bladed knife and the keen edged tomahawk. Neither did their uniforms cost Congress a Continental dollar. Their linsey-woolsey hunting shirts were the product of their own spinning wheels and looms, and their buckskin leggins and moccasins, likewise home made, were smoke tanned after the manner of the Indians, and fringed to suit their individual tastes in the matter of adornment. The deficit in their numbers were soon made up from the army at large, as it had become the fashion in the American army for many of the regiments to have at least one rifle company. Washington at first sent Morgan's corps, five hundred strong, to Philadelphia; then changed the order and dispatched him northward to help Gates against Bur- goyne, whose Indians were raising visions in people's minds of the fate of Deerfield and Schenectady. In a letter to Colonel Morgan, Washington said: "The approach of the enemy in that quarter (the north) has made a further re- inforcement necessary, and I know of no corps so likely to check their progress, in proportion to its number, as that under your command", and to General Gates he wrote: "I have despatched Colonel Morgan and his corps of riflemen to your assistance . . . This corps I have great dependence on and have no doubt they will be exceedingly useful to you as a check given to the savages and keeping them within proper bounds, will prevent General Burgoyne from getting intel- ligence as formerly, and animate your other troops from a sense of their being more on an equality with the enemy." General Putnam was instructed to have sloops at Peekskill, ready to trans- Page 87. port them and provisions laid in that they might not wait a minute. Gates, upon their arrival, further increased their strength by draughting one subaltern, one sergeant, one corporal and fifteen picked men from each regiment of his command to serve with the rifle corps, which were to receive orders only from the com- mander-in-chief. It was not against the Indians however that they were destined to employ their own peculiar tactics. At the battle of Freeman's Farm, after driving in the Canadian pickets, we see them arrayed against the flower of Burgoyne's army. The country there upon his right flank was thick and rugged, and the frontiers- men, veritable wood folk, soon faded into the sombreness of the forest and be- came indistinguishable from the tree trunks. "Tempted by the firing", says Wilkinson in his memoirs, "I found a pretext to visit the scene of strife . . . I crossed an angle of the field, leaped a fence and just before me on a ridge saw Lieut.-Colonel Butler with three men, all treed. From him I learned they had caught a Scotch prize; that having forced the picket, they had closed with the British line, had been instantly routed and from the suddenness of the shock and the nature of the gound, were broken and scattered in all directions. Re- turning to the camp to report to the General, my ears were saluted with an un- common noise, when I approached and perceived Colonel Morgan, attended by two men only, and who with a turkey call was collecting his dispersed troops". A wing bone of a wild turkey for a bugle! The Colonel himself sounding the call! In doing so, he was employing the decoy notes which Indians sometimes used to temp settlers to their doom. To the ears it was intended to reach, the sound would convey as much meaning as the rattle of a drum, while to those of their adversaries it only blended with the other queer noises of the woods. What more effective means of assembly could he have possibly devised? Byrgoyne, bewildered like Braddock by an unseen foe, also ordered the thickest portion of the woodland from whence the shots were coming fast and furiously, to be cleared with the bayonet. Although his order was obeyed with more alacrity Page 88. than Braddock's, the foe they reckoned with was not now an array of breech- clouted savages led by a few audacious Frenchmen, as at Duquesne. The riflemen returned like a swarm of mosquitoes and stung more angrily than before. A brigade was sent to their assistance, and then four more regiments, and as the shadows lengthened, the rifle corps tenaciously held their ground in spite of the frantic efforts of the British to advance, while eleven thousand American troops remained in camp by Gates' orders as idle onlookers. Several days afterwards Lieutenant John Hardin of Morgan's regiment, in making a reconnaissance around the British rear, shot an Indian on the summit of a high ridge. Hidden away in his shot pouch was a carefully folded scrap of paper ad- dressed to Brigadier-General Powell at Ticonderoga. "We have had a very smart and honorable action", it said, "and are now encamped in front of the field, which must demonstrate our victory." It was the most that Burgoyne could boast of! On the day of the battle of Bemis Heights, when Wilkinson dismounted at General Gates' tent to report the British advancing against their works, Gates took but a moment to review in his mind's eye the troops upon which he must depend for the crucial test, and he expressed the only order he gave that day in a single concise sentence: "Well then," he said, "order out Morgan to begin the game." The advice of Morgan, previously given, that both British flanks should be attacked simultaneously, was prompted as usual by a frontiersman's instinct of the advantages of cover. Hardly a vestige of this region along the upper reaches of the Hudson was forestless except where it was made so by the keen edge of the pioneer's axe. A green sea of verdure inundated the long white serpentine line of British tents at either extremity, and again the riflemen disappeared into its depths, partially emerging therefrom upon a sparsely wooded ridge, where, wtih powder charges carefully measured and rammed home and flints picked and adjusted, they lay down and listened for the distant firing of Learned's brigade, which was to be the signal for attack. Again they struck the British right and were greeted by a "ter- Page 89. rible discharge of musket balls and grape which made havoc with the trees over their heads." "The enemy had great numbers of marksmen," remarked General Burgoyne, "armed with rifle barreled pieces. They hovered on our flank and were very expert in securing themselves and shifting their ground." Never was there a rift in the smoke clouds from the British guns that officers did not fall in this portion of Burgoyne's line. General Phillips' aide, in delivering a mes- sage to the commander-in-chief, fell from his richly caparisoned saddle, which was probably mistaken for that of Burgoyne himeself, who, though several balls went through his hat and clothing, passed through the rain unscathed. General Frazier's iron grey horse was grazed by a bullet which cut the crupper, and another severed a lock of his mane. Unheeding the warning, his Scotch rider received a mortal wound, and his fall "was a death blow to his corps." The huddled artillery horses were shot in their traces and the cannoneers at their posts. The brunt of the defense here on Burgoyne's right fell on Balcarras' Light Infantry, who fought in compact, conspicuous masses, and were prone to fire by volley. The brunt of the attack was borne throughout the day by the Light In- fantry of Morgan, whose loose lines were diametrically opposed to European methods, but whose every soldier, believing the fate of the country rested upon him alone, required a certain amount of elbow room to fight it out his own way. The British, scorning to take shelter, were at first posted in front of their own intrenched lines. They were towards evening compelled to quit their ground, and Lord Balcarras was put to the humiliation of attempting to repel an on- slaught by Morgan and his men upon his own camp - one of the few instances that day in which the British line was actually pierced. "If there can be any person," magnanimously asserts General Burhoyne in his review of the evidence taken before the British House of Commons, "who, consider- ing that circumstance and the positive proof of the subsequent obstinacy in the attack on the post of Lord Balcarras, . . . continue to doubt that the Americans possess the quality and faculty of fighting (call it by Page 90. whatever term you please), they are of a prejudice that it would be very absurd longer to contend with." Washington learned of these things not from Gates, but in a letter from General Putnam. Gates sent his Adjutant-General Wilkinson to report to Congress at Yorktown, where it had been reconvened after evacuating Philadelphia upon the approach of Sir William Howe. In his voluminous report Gates gave neither Morgan nor Arnold the credit they deserved. Through an indiscreet remark let fall by Wilkinson on his slow journey to Yorktown, it had already become known that Gates was planning to displace Washington and to rise upon the ruin of his reputation. His attempt to convert Morgan, however, showed that he misjudged the character of the man completely. His argument was as vain as the force of the wind against some forest oak. "Under no other commander than General Washington," was Morgan's indignant reply, "will I ever serve." A coolness arose between them, and from a banquet given in the tent of Gates to General Burgoyne and his officers, Morgan was conspicuously absent. A health was proposed to General Washington on that occasion, but it was not by the host, and it must have been drunk by him with a very poor grace. As for Morgan's patriotism and loyalty, Washington amply repaid it by the most steadfast confidence. After the battle of Freeman's Farm he had written Gates that if he were so fortunate as to have forced General Burgoyne to return to Ticonderoga, he must send Morgan back to him, as he was in great need of his services. Gates' laconic reply was that he could not think, under the circum- stances (while the two armies sat glaring at each other), of sparing the corps General Burgoyne was most afraid of. After Saratoga, however, there was no excuse for his failure to comply with Washington's continued request; and yet Morgan was not sent until Alexander Hamilton was despatched with peremptory orders that his march was not to be further hindered. In the fighting around Philadelphia, the rifle corps rendered as signal service as they had done during the retreat across the Page 91. Jerseys previous to their journey north. "I never saw men," says La Fayette, "so merry, so spirited and so desirous to go on to the enemy, whatever force they might have". It had been originally planned by Washington to have them do reconnoissance duty, and they were to have been furnished with espontoons or pikes like those they had used at Quebec, the present need of them being to ward against unexpected attack of the mounted troops to which their duties would likely expose them. These weapons, sharing the fate of other munitions of war destined for the Americans, were unconscionably slow in arriving, and in an order to Morgan instructions were philosophically added that in the meantime he was to keep out of the cavalry's way. Morgan complains bitterly, in one of his letters, of the broken down horses which had been attached to his command, most of which could not be goaded into a gallop, and as a terse argument in favor of obtaining better ones, gave ex- pression of the military aphorism that "cavalry are the eyes of the infantry." Before the battle of Monmouth the British laid a trap for Morgan primed with what they considered an irrestible bait. They sent into his camp a pretended deserter who described in glowing terms a most wonderful opportunity to surprise them. The man's tale was plausible; the surprise harmonized with Morgan's methods. He listened with apparent eagerness and seemed to acquiesce in the proposal. He began at once to prepare his men for the attack, and when all was quite ready the Briton slipped back to his own lines to assure them that their plot was successful. Preparations for an annihilating reception were made for Morgan's "surprise," but instead of the designated spot, the crack of his rifles was heard at another distant and entirely unexpected quarter, and the poor spy was left hanging to the branches of the nearest tree as a punishment for his presumed treachery. Sir William Howe had spent a pleasant winter in Philadelphia, but the city being of no strategic value as a base, it was abandoned at the beginning of summer and the British army Page 92. retraced their steps towards New York, while the Continental Congress again sat in Liberty Hall. Congress treated Morgan as it had treated others who had given their best to their country. His services were not recognized. He was passed over without receiving the pormotion which his valor and patriotism plainly merited. Weakened in body because of the terrific hardships he had encountered on the way to Quebec, and sick in mind from seeing others less worthy advanced over his head, he journeyed to Philadelphia to submit to Congress the resignation of his com- mission. Despite his carrying with him an eulogistic letter from Washington, his resignation was promptly accepted, and Morgan retired to the Shenandoah farm he had named Saratoga in honor of the field he had helped to glorify and on which had been fought "the battle of the husbandmen." In the case of Morgan the transition from soldier to husbandman and from husbandman to soldier was neither a sudden nor striking one. Stark had resigned under somewhat similar circumstances, but Morgan was more magnanimous than Stark. With ever a keen interest and insight in military matters, when he ob- served that affairs in the South, whither his old commander, Gates, had been sent, began to wear a gloomy aspect, he decided his pride must be subservient to his patriotism. He at first held out against going back into the service with his old rank of Colonel, but the news of Gates overwhelming defeat at Camden silenced forever all personal considerations, and in the fall of 1780 he set out for North Carolina, where General Nathaniel Greene was striving to re- cuperate the army which the selfish ambition of Gates had so nearly ruined. A "resolve" of Congress that Colonel Daniel Morgan be and hereby is appointed to the rank of Brigadier-General in the army of the United States out traveled him, and was waiting to greet him at Camp Hillsboro where he joined. Greene had two thousand men, of whom but eight hundred were regulars, and the Board of War had hampered him amazingly in not supplying wagons to transport his camp equipage and stores. Cornwallis' army in the South showed on its returns Page 93. that it was three thousand two hundred and twenty-four strong. It was still encamped in the vicinity of Camden, with Ferguson at Ninety-Six and Tarleton at Winnsboro protecting his base of supplies at Charleston. Greene's utlimate plan was to prevent, or at least delay, Cornwallis' threatened invasion of North Carolina and his entrace into Virginia until an army could be assembled there to oppose him. Marching from Hillsboro to Charlotte, Greene split his forces. He took the main body himself to a camp of repose opposite Cheraw on the upper Pedee - a difficult place to approach - where he proposed to improve the discipline and spirits of his men, and he sent off a smaller force under Morgan to occupy the country between the Broad River and the Pacolet. Greene hoped that he would induce Cornwallis to divide his army. "He cannot leave Morgan behind him and come at me", reasoned Greene, "or his posts of Ninety-Six and Augusta would be exposed. And he cannot chase Morgan far or prosecute his views upon Virginia while I am here with the whole country here before me." The post of Ninety-Six was an important one in the line protecting Charleston, while Greene, from his position on Cornwallis' flank was threatening Charleston itself. If his lordship had been quick enough he might have destroyed with his united force each of his adversary's, which were but a half to a third of his own; but encumbered with heavy baggage, he disregarded the primary principle which Napoleon worked out so brilliantly in his campaign of 1796, and did what Greene wanted him to do - divided his command. In apportioning his forces, he detached the dashing Tarleton with his famous legion of light infantry and dragoons, to move westward in the direction of Broad River while he himself halted to await reinforcements from Charleston before beginning his advancement northward. The force of General Morgan at this time consisted of a corps of light in- fantry, Lieut.-Colonel Washington's regiment of dragoons, and a detachment of militia which was to be increased by volunteers in the vicinity and those which had lately served under Sumter. Morgan's orders were quite broad, and Page 94. yet left not much leeway to his judgment and discretion. He was to give protection to the part of hte country whither he INSERT MAP. was sent, and "spirit up the people". If the enemy should move in force towards Greene's army on the Pedee, he was to move in such a direction as would enable him to join forces with him if necessary or fall back upon the enemy's flank or rear. Page 95. "It is not my wish that you should come to action," was the exact and un- mistakable phraseology of Greene's instructions, "unless you have a manifest superiority and moral certainty of succeeding. Put nothing to the hazard; a retreat may be disagreeable, but not disgraceful. I shall be perfectly satisfied if you keep clear of a misfortune; for though I wish you laurels, I am unwilling to expose the common cause to give you an opportunity to acquire them." The activities of the Cherokee Indians along the southern border prevented Morgan from being joined by any considerable number of militia, and that which he did acquire was far from being dependable. They were untrained levees from the countryside round about, living on small farms or "clearings"; half of them had no flints for the firearms. They were not amenable to much discipline. Be- cause they had volunteered they felt that they reserved the right to leave when they pleased, and there was no saying when the notion would take them. It was not Morgan's wish to retreat, for if he did they would probably desert him. Victory or an advance was the only thing which could possibly keep them pinned within his ranks, and toward the latter course his ardent nature leaned. Futhermore, if he remained in one place, he would be beset by another trouble - that of subsistence. The country between the Catawba and the Broad had been swept clean. There was no forage for his horses; the storehouses yielded but a small supply of Indian meal to be converted into the palatable ash cake, and even the lean and half wild cattle of the pine lands and savannahs, which furnished but poor sustenance, were becoming few and difficult to get. In a letter from the banks of the Pacolet on the subject, Morgan says, "This country has been so exhausted that the supplies for my detachment, which have been precarious and scant since my arrival, in a few days will be unattainable, so that a movement will be unavoidable," to which Greene replied from his wilderness camp on the Pedee: "This is no Egypt," but could offer nothing more substantial than sympathy. The Tores were interfering with Morgan's foraging parties, which Page 96. were compelled to make wider detours as provisions became more scant. Bands of Tory pillagers were constantly annoying the Whigs - perchance shaking their patriotism with ruffian threats or beguiling promises. In order to teach all skulking loyalists in the neighborhood to keep their heads down, Morgan sent Colonel William Washington to make a raid on a body of them known to be gathering between Ninety-Six and Winnsboro. Washington, a distant cousin of the Commander-in-chief, whose resource had been demonstrated when he captured a British fort by mounting a blackened pine log on wheels, and with it threatening and compelling the surrender of the terrified garrison, was so intent upon the capture or destruction of the Tory band, that when they retreated, having gotten wind of his approach, he pursued them far within the British lines. After a hard chase, he came up with them at a place called Hammond's Store, charged them through a wood in front and flank and completely demolished them. General Morgan was so enthusiastic over the result that he immediately requisitioned General Greene for two hundred swords and began seeking horses for his riflemen and light infantry in contem- plation of a movement with his whole command on a similar though larger ex- pedition into Georgia. The stockade of Ninety-Six had no ditch or abattis, and as Governor Rutledge had told him that though the place seemed formidable to country people, the taking of it with regular troops should prove no very difficult matter, he thought he might do this on the way, provided no time were wasted in the accom- plishment. To the end that he might economize time to the utmost, he planned to rid himself completely of wagon transportation and ordered one hundred pack saddles made to take their place. Whithersoever he might go, whether to annoy the enemy or provide for his own safety in flight, he held it to be incompatible with the nature of light troops to be encumbered with baggage. In disclosing this project to General Greene, he writes: "I have asked Colonel Davidson and Colonel Pickens whether we Page 97. could secure a safe retreat if pushed by a superior force. They tell me it can be easily effected by passing up the Savannah and crossing over the heads of rivers along the Indian line." A postscript to the letter enjoins strict secrecy as "essentially necessary to the soul of enterprise." But Greene, in commenting upon the proposed expedition, was far from being enthusiastic. He did not think it warrantable, owing to the critical situation of the army, and though he gave permission to attempt the caputre of Ninety-Six, the stipulation was that it should be by surprise, as any other method would, in his opinion, be like beating their heads against a stone wall. The weekly express bearing Greene's answer did not have time to return before the movement of the British drove all such thoughts completely out of Morgan's mind. Phillips had landed in Virginia with an army of twenty-five hundred men from New York, and Marion's crafty and sleepless scouting parties had brought information that General Leslie was on his way to join Cornwallis from Charles- ton. Tarleton was already in motion, and the dislodgment of Morgan was un- doubtedly his object. A short, friendly and informal note from Cornwallis to Tarleton will best reveal his intentions: "WINNSBOROUGH, Jan. 2, 1781. "Dear Tarleton: I sent Haldane last night to desire you would pass Broad river with the legion and the first battalion of the 71st as soon as possible. If Morgan is still at Williams's or anywhere within your reach I should wish you to push him to the utmost. I have not heard except from McArthur of his having cannon and would not believe it unless he has it from very good authority. It is however possible, and Ninety-Six is of so much consequence that no time is to be lost. "Yours sincerely, "CORNWALLIS." Page 98. When Tarleton, in accordance with the spirit of his instructions, after passing Broad River, arrived at Grindall's Shoals on the Pacolet, where he ex- pected to find the unsuspecting Morgan, he was surprised to discover the en- campment deserted so recently that the ashes of his fires were scarcely cold. Obsessed with the idea that Morgan was fleeing before him, he pushed forward without a halt, travelling all of the night over swampy roads, where his jaded horses were fetlock deep in mire, and his infantry with leaden steps felt their packs growing heavy as iron as the uncertain way lengthened into the darkness. Morgan, meantime, had halted at Hannah's Cowpens, a natural pasture for cattle, but twelve miles further up the river, where he suddenly decided to give battle. He was in the midst of a grove of tall pine trees - an ideal location for his riflemen - with the ground between them open and free from underbrush, so that his cavalry corps, which filled but little over one hundred saddles, could also maneuvre to great advantage. There was a slight slope toward a pair of hills in rear, or rather parallel ridges, the one in front being somewhat the higher and longer of the two. A further consideration of the geography of the spot shows that for a defensive position it was in one respect unique. Four miles in his rear swept the Broad River, forming a deep bow on his left. General Morgan has been criticised for placing himself with an unfordable river at his back, which in case of disaster did not offer him the least chance of retreat. He could easily have crossed Broad River. Tarleton was worried for fear he would, and had he done so and advanced to King's Mountain, where Shelby and Cleveland had captured Ferguson, and thwarted for the first time Cornwallis' advance, he would have found an excellent place for a stand. There he might have counted himself secure. His riflemen would have been supreme, and what was equally to the point, Tarleton's cavalry, which trebled his own, would upon the steep rocky slopes have been decidedly powerless. He may have considered the mountain, for its fame was familiar enough, but he chose the river instead premeditatedly, and counted upon its effect. Leonidas-like, he Page 99. wished no back door of escape. "I saved Tarleton the trouble," said he, "of sending cavalry around to my rear to cut off my militia from possible flight. I did not want them to think they could retreat if they wanted to. Men will fight best when they know they have to. If there had been a swamp handy, I have no doubt they would all have jumped into it." Militia were coming in at all hours of the night, until his numbers had risen to high water mark of eight hundred men, less than half being regulars. Around each glowing camp fire Morgan chatted pleasantly with successive groups, inspiring confindence by his sympathy and his soldierly admonitions, and courage by the manly optimism of his strong, courageous persnality. "The old wagoner", he bawled forth with rustic eloquence, using the familiar pseudonym by which he was most affectionately known, "the old wagoner will crack his whip over Ban Tarleton to-morrow," and as the fires burned low and the bronzed faces were hidden underneath the folds of their blankets, his men went to sleep with that certain conviction. An hour before daylight one of his scouts, a member of Washington's outposts guarding the Pacolet, returned and reported that Colonel Tarleton's column was within five miles of camp, but the message did not prevent the completion of a hearty breakfast, as another of Morgan's staunch principles was that men fight best on full stomachs. His dispositions for this, the crowning battle of his career; stamp him as an original genius in the art of war. The assumption that his plan, being an unusual one, was unwarranted, or that his ideas were crude or visionary, can hardly be retained. He was no dogmatic theorist. Cowpens was the masterly culmination of his whole military experience. His original ideas were not those of a tyro. They had been polished by participating in over fifty battles of the Revolution, eight of which had been general engagements. His fertility of resource he had brought with him from the backwoods, where it grew abundantly, and he had gradually evolved a philosophy of his own. He knew his men as he knew the woods. He knew that some of them were expertly familiar with the use of their long flint- Page 100. lock rifles. On these he depended to oppose Tarleton's bayonets. He had no artillery, as Cornwallis had surmised, but he relied again upon his riflemen, who had always most effectually supplied this defect. He was convinced of the efficiency of Washington's cavalry, but Tarleton's outnumbered them three to one; so in order to lessen the disparity, he mounted some of his men on the most suitable of draft horses, and putting crude swords into their hands placed them at Washington's disposal. His militia he put in the front rank, with orders to "hold up their heads, give the enemy three fires, and they were free." Their retreat was then marked out for them around the left flank of the line of regulars - Virginia riflemen and light infantry - which were stationed on the first eminence. These were to wait until the British had arrived within thirty yards, and then carefully aim and fire with the most telling effect. The cavalry, under Colonel Washing- ton, was perched behind the second hill, and like a hawk it was to pounce down upon Tarleton's cavalry as soon as the latter had disclosed its intentions. Screened from sight in the background of the ridge, many of the American horses were tied to the boughs of trees contentedly nibbling the bark, while they awaited the command of their expectant riders. Well in front of the militia were sixty picked marksmen posted behind trees. These men kept Tarleton from making much of a reconnaissance of the field in person, or of selecting a position for his artillery, but he examined it long enough to say afterwards that he could not have chosen a place more favorable to himself for an engagement. Morgan having gotten his men keyed up to the proper pitch, was glad to observe that Tarleton contemplated an immediate attack, before their ardor had had a chance to cool. The British, one thousand strong, formed at four hundred yards in two lines, the first tipped with dragoons, the legion cavalry in reserve. The dragoons charged the line of marksmen who were to resume their posts after the horsemen had retired, but the fire of the field pieces of the variety known as "grasshoppers" was too galling, and under it protection "Tarleton's infantry, depite Page 101. their march of the previous night, rushed forward impetuously, shouting as they came. The sun had scarcely risen, as the militia met them in a body; Within one hundred yards they opened a brisk fusillade, having held it up to that time. The advance of the British regulars slackened, and the militia were disposed to hold their ground, but remembering their directions, they retreated to within one hundred and fifty yards of the main line before they broke and fled. The English troops thought their unanimous retreat meant that the battle was won, and Tarleton put his reserve infantry in his first line. They dashed on- ward pell mell, until they were suddenly checked by the line of Continentals, whose presence had been unsuspected, having been entirely concealed behind the hill; the militia were meanwhile given the promised opportunity of reforming. Up to this stage, affairs had moved exactly as Morgan had anticipated. There was never a general, however great or small, who was enough of a prophet to foresee every wild contingency which is likely to leap from the smoke of con- flict. Fortunate is he, if on the spur of hte moment, he can turn it to meet his own purposes. The contingency in the present instance sprang from pefectly natural causes. Morgan's flanks were unsupported, and Tarleton's line, being longer, overlapped his materially; the consequence was that the flanks of the American line were soon in imminent danger of being turned. This was prevented on the left by an opportune charge of Washington's cavalry. Not so on the right! The pressure in that quarter, despite the reinforcement of the reformed militia, was be- coming more than the Continentals could bear. A change of front was ordered to avoid the fatality of an infilade. A misconception of the order arose, and word was passed along the line that a rearward movement had been directed to the next hill. Lieutenant-Colonel Howard of the regular light infantry, seeing his inability to correct the mistake, decided that the movement would be to better advantage than that originally conceived. The weather eye of Morgan at once detected a flaw in the wind, and as he saw the receding line, was filled with astonishment. Its steadiness and cohesion, however, reassured him. Grasping Page 102. the situation, he rode to a spot which he selected for the line to halt. The militia having reformed and joined them, Lieutenant-Colonel Howard recognized the opportune time to order the regulars to face about at the present short pistol range of thirty yards, give a fortunate volley, and then charge with the bayonet. The British ran afoul of their own well-known "no flint" tactics at a moment when their breath was about spent. The dragoons had been cut to pieces by Washington. The infantry, given no time by Howard to rally, was soon reduced to a fleeing mob. The artillery was the last to yield. Surrounded by about fourteen of his officers, the Commander-in-chief attempted to assemble the fresh legion cavalry - which had remained in rear, taking no part in the action - to bear off the guns. Only a single troop responded. It was met and turned about by Washington, who had just flashed again into view from driving off some British dragoons of the front line, who had gained the American rear in pursuit of the militia. Washington's eagerness threw him so far ahead of his regiment that three of the retreating English officers wheeled and charged him. The one on the right was aiming to cut him down, when a Continental sergeant came up and by a blow disabled his sword arm; Washington was saved from the one on the left by a shot from a bugler's pistol, and he parried at the same time a vicious thrust from the one in the centre, who was none other than Ban Tarleton himself. The day had been lost beyond recovery by the British, and the three officers, failing in their object, follwed the disappearing horsemen, who were thinking only of their own safety and trampling down the infantry in their mad unreasoning flight. With splintered lance, Tarleton fled from the lists as precipitately as he had entered. The greatest generalship was shown by Morgan after the battle was won, in realizing the necessity for an immediate retreat. Cornwallis' camp, containing several thousand troops, was on the east side of Broad River, only thirty miles distant. Some of the fugitives reached there the same evening; all by the following morning. His lordship was sure that the rude soldier from whom Tarleton's legion had been compelled to ask quarter Page 103. would now march directly on Ninety-Six, and he delayed moving until Morgan had consequently gotten several days start of him in the other direction. Then, although Cornwallis, realizing his mistake, destroyed his baggage, setting a glorious example by first burning that pertaining to headquarters, he was un- able to overtake the more lightly equipped Americans; he arrived at the Catawba and the Yadkin just after they had crossed, and was delayed at each by sudden "rises" to which these streams were particularly liable. But the active military service of General Daniel Morgan was drawing rapidly to a close. A sciatic complaint, to which he had been subject since he left Quebec, combined with fever and ague of the southern swamps, incapacitated him for further usefulness. "If I could only ride about," he writes deploringly from the Yadkin, "but I am lying in a house in the outskirts of the town and must depend upon others." Greene, who had hurried over from his camp on the Pedee with a small escort as soon as the news of Tarleton's defeat reached him, assumed immediate command, while Morgan set out in a carriage for Guildford Court House where, after making arrangements for supplies, his weakened con- dition would not allow him to remain until the army came up. He was given a leave of absence for an indefinite period "until such time as the poor state of his health permitted him to rejoin." By easy stages he journeyed homeward, stopping often on the way. At one of his resting places he sent General Greene a letter which illustrates how ab- sorbed were his thoughts in the critical condition of the army he so reluctantly left behind. "I expect Cornwallis will push you until you are obliged to fight him, on which much will depend," runs a portion of the epistle; "you have from what I see a great number of militia. if they fight, you will beat Cornwallis; if not, he will beat you and perhaps cut your regulars to pieces, which will be losing all your hopes. I am informed that among the militia will be found a number of old soldiers. I think it would be advisable to put them in the ranks with the regulars. Select the riflemen also and fight them on the flanks, under enterprising officers who are Page 104. acquainted with that kind of fighting, and put the militia in the centre with some picked troops in their rear, with orders to shoot down the first man that runs. If anything will succeed, a disposition of this kind will. I hope you will not look on this as dictating, but as my opinion in a matter I am much concerned in." In the battle of Guildfort Court House, where the erratic course of Corn- wallis was checked a third time, the advice of the absent Morgan was followed implicitly by Greene, who, singularly free from jealousy, placed his trust in the experience and understanding of his subordinate in preference to his own. "It was an emanation," says Johnson, his biographer, "from the same bold and original genius which soared so far above ordinary views and measures on the day of Cowpens." * * * * * * * Allowing Morgan due credit as a leader the distinction gained by his men on the battlefield is directly attributable to their superior arms and mark- manship, their backwoods methods of fighting, and the woeful lack of the British in both these respects, they being too absurdly conservative at the time to profit by them. When Baron Steuben wrote at Valley Forge a book of drill regulations for the American army known as the "Blue Book," and which was in use for many years afterwards, he went contrary to what he had recently learned in the camp of the Great Frederick. He advocated the skirmish line, an open order formation for battle and he was inspired to this by the exploits of Morgan's riflemen. Originally grafted upon Indian methods which the Anglo-Saxon settler in- variably improved whenever he came in contact with them, these tactics are now as well known in Europe as in America, and have largely supplanted the close order formation which the British religiously clung to until Cornwallis sur- rendered at Yorktown. They had particularly in mind the backwoods riflemen when they used to speak deprecatingly of the colonists as a race of bush fighters. Page 105. What a misconception it was! It withered away when they saw them fight in the open at Bemis Heights, and felt their cold steel as they charged so un- expectedly at Cowpens. Still it was as sharpshooters - the pioneer sharp- shooters in fact of the world - that the corps of Morgan was always most greatly feared. "The Indians feared them like the devil," writes a British historian, and he might have added that Burgoyne's regulars shared the same feeling. Though crude, their flint-lock rifles of American manufacture, long of barrel and heavy to hold, were infinitely more accurate and reliable than the smooth bore English musket. Even most of Morgan's milita at the battle of Cowpens - border settlers from the mountain districts of western Georgia and the Carolinas - used rifled weapons, which were the best they could obtain for hunting, while the only English troops similarly armed, which came within Morgan's ken, were the German Jagers at Saratoga. From their dearly bought experience the English hastened to improve the rifle, and waited only about ten years - till 1794 - to adopt it for military use. The term rifleman is at present of no significance whatever; it may be applied without discrimination to all armies of the civilized world. The American backwoodsman in a century and a half has become practically an extinct species. We are transformed into a nation of urban dwellers. The woods have been cleared to make room for clusters of smoking factories, on which we have grown hopelessly dependent for the necessities and luxuries of life. The humble log cabin has faded away, and instead are sumptuous schools and colleges in whose curricula the scinece of shooting a rifle has somehow been crowded out. Let the rising generation not forget, however, that knowledge of its use is still, and must always remain, one of the essentials of good citizenship, our bulwark of defense, our reserve force in the event of an invasion, our best possible preservative of peace.