The Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 15, 1781 was the hinge on which the entire Southern Campaign turned. Nathanael Greene led roughly 4,400 men — a mix of Continental regulars and state militia — against Lord Cornwallis's 1,900 battle-hardened British regulars on a wooded hillside in the North Carolina backcountry. Greene lost the field. Cornwallis held it. And yet within seven months Cornwallis surrendered his entire army at Yorktown, and the war was effectively over.
PEOPLE
General Lord Charles Cornwallis
British General, Southern Army Commander, Lieutenant General
Major General Nathanael Greene
Continental Army General, Southern Department Commander
Brigadier General Otho Holland Williams
Continental Army General, Maryland Line Commander, Adjutant General
Lieutenant Colonel James Webster
British Infantry Commander, Regiment Commander
KEY EVENTS
STORIES
HISTORICAL VOICE
The Victor Who Lost
Greene knew before the guns fired what the battle was supposed to accomplish. Not a victory — he wasn't going to beat Cornwallis's regulars in a straight fight. He was going to make Cornwallis pay a p...
MODERN VOICE
You Have to Walk It
People come here having read about the battle with a picture of an open field — ranks of soldiers, volleys at close range, the kind of thing you see in paintings. Then they walk the trail and they lo...