Colonel William Washington

William Washington was born in 1752 in Stafford County, Virginia, a distant cousin of George Washington, and had been studying for the ministry before the Revolution redirected his energies entirely toward military service. He received a commission in a Virginia infantry regiment in 1776 and was wounded at the Battle of Long Island, an early introduction to the brutal cost of combat that did not diminish his determination to serve. He transferred to the cavalry arm, in which he found his vocation, and by the campaigns of 1780 had established himself as one of the Continental Army's most capable dragoon commanders.

Washington led his cavalry regiment throughout Greene's southern campaign and was present at Hobkirk's Hill on April 25, 1781, where his troopers played a critical role in the battle's outcome. When Greene's Maryland infantry line collapsed under Rawdon's assault and a retreat became necessary, Washington's cavalry screened the withdrawal, interposing between the advancing British infantry and the retreating Continentals and buying time for the army to disengage in reasonable order. In the aggressive pursuit that followed the American retreat, Washington's troopers turned on British officers who had advanced too far from their own lines and captured several of them, a sharp reminder that pursuit could be as dangerous as defense. His dragoons had also served prominently at the Battle of Cowpens earlier in 1781, where Washington personally led the charge that helped destroy Tarleton's force.

Washington was wounded and captured at the Battle of Eutaw Springs in September 1781, ending his active service in the southern campaign. He remained in South Carolina after the war, marrying into a local planter family and settling near Charleston, where he lived until his death in 1810. His combination of aggressive striking power and disciplined rearguard work made him indispensable to Greene's operational style, and among the cavalry officers of the Continental Army he was ranked among the most effective. The mounted arm that he helped develop in the south would serve as a model for American cavalry thinking in the generations that followed.