Patriots of the CarolinasThe Ground This Coffee Is Roasted On
Our own line runs through Maryland and Virginia. But the Piedmont we roast in carried the war to its turning point, and these are the people and places that did it. They are history, not family, and we honor them as such.
In the winter of 1781 the Southern campaign ran straight through this country. Nathanael Greene, sent south by Washington, could not beat Cornwallis in a straight fight, so he made the British chase him instead: two hundred miles north across the Carolina Piedmont to the Dan River, burning nothing and losing nothing that mattered. When he finally turned and stood at Guilford Courthouse, the army that met him had already been worn down by the march. Cornwallis held the field and lost the campaign. Seven months later he surrendered at Yorktown.
- 7 October 1780
Kings Mountain and the Overmountain Men
Scots-Irish farmers from the Carolina backcountry and the Appalachians, who had been reluctant to take sides at all until the war reached their settlements. Led by colonels including Isaac Shelby, John Sevier, William Campbell and Charles McDowell, they crossed the mountains on foot and destroyed a Loyalist force in about an hour. Historians count it the turning point of the war in the South.
- 10 February 1781
Salem and the Race to the Dan
Cornwallis marched his army through the Moravian town of Salem, now Winston-Salem, chasing Greene toward Virginia. It took six hours for the column to file past. The Moravians were pacifists, exempt from service and abused by both sides for feeding the other; they fed both anyway and nursed the wounded. Maps drawn in Salem helped guide Greene safely across the Dan.
- 15 March 1781
Guilford Courthouse
Greene turned and fought Cornwallis outside what is now Greensboro with about 4,400 men. The British held the field and lost a quarter of their army doing it, and the road from that day led to Yorktown. Two North Carolina signers of the Declaration, William Hooper and John Penn, rest on the battlefield today.
Carry Yours Forward
Have a Patriot in your family? We are building this series to honor more than our own. Tell us about them.
