Daniel Morgan: the rifleman who won Cowpens

Morgan's war ran through three battles. He took command of the American column inside Quebec on 31 December 1775 and was captured there; he led his riflemen in both battles of Saratoga in 1777; and at Cowpens in 1781 he nearly destroyed Banastre Tarleton's British force.¹

Why was Daniel Morgan called the Old Wagoner?

Morgan was called the Old Wagoner because he began his military life driving a supply wagon for the British army in the French and Indian War. He hauled freight in General Edward Braddock's 1755 campaign against Fort Duquesne, which ended in defeat, and the nickname stayed with him for the rest of his life, through the Revolution and beyond.²

Little is certain about his youth, because Morgan rarely spoke of it. He was born in 1736, most likely in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, though Pennsylvania and Virginia have also been claimed. The American Battlefield Trust gives his birthday as 6 July, while his first biographer, James Graham, wrote that he was born in the winter of that year.³

He reached Virginia at seventeen or eighteen, barely able to read or write, and settled in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, where he cleared land and then hauled freight across the mountains. He was known for drink, cards and fistfights. He married Abigail Bailey, and they had two daughters.⁴

In the same war he struck a British officer who had hit him with the flat of a sword, and he was sentenced to 500 lashes. He survived, and liked to say the drummer miscounted, so the British still owed him one. The accounts place the incident differently: the American Battlefield Trust ties it to Braddock's expedition, while Graham, followed by the Park Service, sets it at Fort Chiswell in the spring of 1756.⁵

Later, serving as a ranger on the Virginia frontier, he was shot through the back of the neck in an ambush. The ball knocked out the teeth on the left side of his jaw and left a scar he carried for life.⁶

What did Daniel Morgan do at Quebec and Saratoga?

At Quebec in December 1775 Morgan took over the American attack when Benedict Arnold was wounded, and he was captured when it failed. At Saratoga in 1777 his corps of riflemen opened the fighting at Freeman's Farm on 19 September and helped rout the British on 7 October, when his marksmen shot the British general Simon Fraser.⁷

When the Revolution began in 1775, Morgan raised a company of Virginia riflemen and marched it from Winchester to the siege of Boston in 21 days. Later that year he and his riflemen joined Benedict Arnold's expedition against Quebec.⁸

The assault of 31 December 1775 went in during a blizzard. When Arnold was shot in the leg, Morgan took command and pushed on until re-formed British troops trapped his men in the narrow streets. He surrendered with them; Arnold put the prisoners at about 300, the American Battlefield Trust at about 400.⁹

Morgan was released on parole in 1776 and exchanged around the turn of 1777, and Congress made him colonel of the 11th Virginia Regiment. He was then given a corps of picked riflemen and sent north to the army of Horatio Gates, which was facing Burgoyne's invasion from Canada.¹⁰

Estimates of the corps run from 400 riflemen (the Park Service) to 500 (the American Battlefield Trust). On 19 September it opened the fighting at Freeman's Farm against the center British column. On 7 October Morgan attacked the British right; his marksmen shot General Fraser, and his men then joined the assault that took the Breymann Redoubt.¹¹

Morgan was repeatedly passed over for promotion, and in 1779 he resigned. He at first refused to return, but after Gates's defeat at Camden in 1780 he rejoined the army, and in October 1780 Congress made him a brigadier general.¹²

How did Daniel Morgan win the Battle of Cowpens?

Morgan won at Cowpens by building his militia's habit of running into the plan. He asked them for two volleys before falling back behind his Continentals, and kept his cavalry out of sight. When the British charged after the militia, the Continentals turned and fired, the cavalry struck, and Tarleton's force was surrounded on 17 January 1781.¹³

Nathanael Greene, the new commander in the South, split his army and sent Morgan with a flying army of light troops into the South Carolina backcountry. Cornwallis, believing that Morgan meant to attack the British post at Ninety Six, sent Banastre Tarleton after him. Morgan fell back and on 16 January 1781 chose to stand at the Cowpens, a frontier pasture with the flooded Broad River behind him.¹⁴

That night Morgan went among his men explaining what he expected of them. He formed three lines: sharpshooters in front, militia under Andrew Pickens behind them, and John Eager Howard's Continentals on the rise, with William Washington's cavalry posted out of sight to the rear. In the morning the militia fired and withdrew as ordered.¹⁵

When part of the Continental line fell back by mistake, it kept its order, faced about and fired into the British, who had broken ranks to charge. A bayonet charge followed, the cavalry and re-formed militia closed on both flanks, and the British began to surrender. The battle was over in less than an hour.¹⁶

The armies were close in size, though the counts differ: Morgan reported fighting with about 800 men against more than 1,000 British, while the American Battlefield Trust counts 1,065 Americans and 1,150 British. Morgan reported 12 killed and about 60 wounded; the Trust estimates 25 killed and 124 wounded.¹⁷

British losses are given as 110 killed, 229 wounded and 529 captured (the American Battlefield Trust) or 110 dead, more than 200 wounded and about 600 captured (the Park Service); the Army historian Kim Holien reckons that Tarleton lost 86 percent of his command. The Americans also took both of Tarleton's field guns.¹⁸

Morgan marched north with his prisoners to keep clear of Cornwallis, who pursued Greene into North Carolina. The British won a costly victory at Guilford Courthouse in March 1781, then moved into Virginia and surrendered at Yorktown that October.¹⁹

What was Daniel Morgan famous for?

Daniel Morgan is famous above all for Cowpens, a small battle that the Army historian Kim Holien calls “a perfect tactical battle” and compares, on a small scale, to Hannibal's victory at Cannae. He is also remembered for leading Morgan's Riflemen at Saratoga, and for rising from frontier wagoner to general with almost no schooling.²⁰

His strength was knowing his men and his enemy. The Park Service explains that he expected the militia to run, so he asked them only to fire and fall back, and trusted the Continentals to hold; the American Battlefield Trust adds that he read Tarleton's aggressive habits and drew him into a trap. Graham praised his “frank and manly bearing.”²¹

A bronze statue of Morgan was erected in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1881 for the centennial of Cowpens and stands in Morgan Square. On the Saratoga Monument his statue fills the west niche, facing the positions his riflemen held.²²

How did Daniel Morgan die?

Daniel Morgan died in Winchester, Virginia, on 6 July 1802, at the age of sixty-six, after years of failing health. Sciatica had already ended his field service soon after Cowpens in 1781. He was buried in Winchester, and his grave is now in the city's Mount Hebron Cemetery.²³

After Cowpens he went home to Virginia and built a house he named Saratoga. In 1790 he received the gold medal Congress had voted him for Cowpens. In 1794 he led militia against the Whiskey Rebellion, and from 1797 to 1799 he served one term in the House of Representatives as a Federalist.²⁴

In 1951 the town of Cowpens, South Carolina, tried to move his remains from Mount Hebron to the battlefield. Winchester resisted, and Morgan stayed where he was. The historian Patrick H. Hannum calls the dispute the second battle of Cowpens.²⁵