Victories and defeats in North Carolina during the revolutionary war?

Answer 1

Moore's Creek Bridge was a Patriot victory very early in the war. There was a large group of Scottish Highlanders living in Fayetteville, North Carolina. These people had been exiled there by Great Britain following the Jacobite Rebellion, where the Scottish Highlanders had supported the effort to restore the Stuarts to the throne of England, in the person of "Bonnie Prince Charlie". This effort came to grief at the Battle of Culloden Moor in 1746, when the Jacobites were smashed. Following that the Highlanders were exiled for their support for the Bonnie Prince. It was a double slap in the face because Fayetteville, (then known as Cross Creek) was in newly established Cumberland County, named for the victor at Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland, who had defeated the Highlanders. Incredibly, these Highlanders were Loyalists to the British Crown when the Revolution came. Two British officers slipped into North Carolina and met with the Loyal Highlanders at Cross Creek, encouraging them to make their way to Wilmington, North Carolina, where they would be met by British ships, and armed and equipped. Patriots in the area learned of this and intercepted the Highlanders at Moore's Creek Bridge, and defeated them.

The Battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens were just over the line in South Carolina, but came after the British had completely subdued South Carolina by taking Charleston and inflicting what is still one of the worst battlefield defeats ever suffered by the US Army at Camden. Both Kings Mountain and Cowpens were part of the British plan to next invade and subdue North Carolina, and both were important Patriot victories, fought by Patriot forces including substantial numbers of North Carolinians.

Eventually the British forced their way into North Carolina and there was a Battle at Guilford Courthouse in March 1781. This is accounted as a British victory, because the Patriot force withdrew after fighting all day. But they had inflicted at least 25% casualties on the army of British general Cornwallis, who said "another such victory will ruin us". Guilford Courthouse, along with Cowpens and Kings Mountain, were the important steps along the path which led Cornwallis to Yorktown and the Americans to victory.

There was a Battle at Ramsuer's Mill, near Rutherfordton. Like Kings Mountain all the participants, on both sides, were Americans, Patriots on one side and tories, or loyalists on the other. (At Kings Mountain the British commander, Ferguson, was the only Britisher on the field). Ramsuer's Mill was a bloody, but small battle, which solved nothing but gives us an idea today of the real strife that beset the people of the Carolina backcountry. It was a real civil war, neighbor against neighbor, families divided. Cleveland County, North Carolina is named after Colonel Benjamin Cleveland. Its said the enormously fat Colonel hanged more people than anybody in the war. Cleveland and his crew would come riding up to your farmhouse and demand to know which side you were on. Since they wore nothing like uniforms, you had to guess, and you had a 50% chance of getting it right and saving your neck. There were tory bands equally industrious and energetic, such as that under the notorious Colonel Fanning.

At the western end of settlement in North Carolina was today's Old Fort, in McDowell County. Settlement farther west, beyond the crest of the Blue Ridge, had been forbidden by the Proclamation of 1763. The people needed the Fort (which was pretty new then) because the British made allies of the Indians, buying scalps and paying them with trade goods to attack settlements. The Cherokees were active on the British side from Virginia to South Carolina. In response the government of North Carolina mounted an expedition against the Cherokees, memorialized on state historic markers throughout western North Carolina as the "Rutherford Trace". Commanding the expedition was militia general Griffith Rutherford, for whom Rutherfordton is named. There was little fighting as the Cherokees withdrew on the approach of this powerful force. They preferred raiding isolated farms, where they would have every advantage, to pitched battles with strong forces. This allowed Rutherford to burn their villages, destroy their standing crops in the fields and burn their reserves of corn. This "scorched earth" campaign ensured a winter of starvation for the Cherokees, and broke the power of the tribe.