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The North Carolina Continentals
In this classic account of the Revolutionary War experiences of the North Carolina Continentals, Hugh F. Rankin traces the events leading to war in North Carolina and follows all the campaigns and battles in which the North Carolina Continentals took part--Brandywine, Germantown, Charleston, Savannah, Camden, Eutaw Springs, and others. He also provides descriptions of almost all of the significant personalities in the Continental Army. Originally published in 1971, this new edition contains a foreword by Lawrence Babits, introducing the book to a new generation of scholars and general readers interested in the Revolutionary War.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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March 27, 2024
The North Carolina regiments of the Continental Army made many vital contributions to American victory in the Revolutionary War – and anyone who wants to understand how these Tar Heel soldiers helped make the United States of America an independent nation would do well to turn to Hugh F. Rankin’s 1971 book The North Carolina Continentals.
Rankin, who died in 1989, was a legendary professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans; in those times when academics wore even more proverbial hats than they do now, he served as faculty chair of athletics while authoring, co-authoring, or editing sixteen works of history, most of them dealing with colonial or revolutionary American history.
Yet he was originally a North Carolinian who graduated from high school in Reidsville, earned his bachelor’s degree at Elon College, and gained his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of North Carolina. His love for his home state and his appreciation for the valor of North Carolina’s Continental Army soldiers come through on every page of The North Carolina Continentals.
Rankin begins by setting the scene against which war began, suggesting that the conflict in colonial North Carolina between pro-independence Whigs and pro-British Tories “was particularly venomous, for, it has been said, the colony contained a greater number of loyalists in proportion to its population than any other” (p. 3). I’m not sure I agree with Rankin on that point – I’d tend to look to neighboring South Carolina as harboring the most substantial loyalist population in the Southern colonies-turned-states – but Rankin does establish that, on the eve of the American Revolution, North Carolina was a house divided.
A peculiarity of the Revolutionary War throughout the Carolinas is that war came to the region early but then left it for a period of years, only to return in force later. In the case of North Carolina, war came in earnest through the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. This sharp little battle, which took place more than four months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, had its genesis in an effort of British and loyalist forces to unite for a march to the sea at Wilmington.
The battle featured, among other things, the last broadsword charge of the Scots Highlanders – but the Scots’ old-school heroism was largely in vain, as the canny pro-independence patriots had taken up the planking of the bridge over Moore’s Creek, and greased the support rails to boot. The loyalist casualties in killed, wounded, and captured totaled almost 1300; patriot casualties numbered two.
Rankin sums up well the importance of this oft-overlooked battle, the site of which is now a national battlefield park:
The Moore’s Creek Bridge campaign, viewed from a perspective of nearly two hundred years, assumes greater importance than in 1776. Had the loyalists reached the sea, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their ranks would have been swelled considerably by the Tories of the coastal areas. If a junction had been made with Governor [Josiah] Martin, and arms in sufficient number acquired, large numbers of loyalists and Regulators would have flocked in to the royal standard. But time, the terrain, the sea, Richard Caswell, and James Moore all cooperated to frustrate Tory hopes. (p. 54)
With the formal declaration of American independence, the war shifted north, and therefore one reads about North Carolina Continentals fighting in other states, as with the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania in September and October of 1777. At Brandywine, Brigadier General Francis Nash led North Carolina Continentals participating in George Washington’s defense of the American capital at Philadelphia. Rankin recounts how
Eight hundred light infantry, including a number of Continentals detached from the North Carolina brigade, were thrown across to the southern or far side of the stream. Nash’s brigade was held in reserve behind the center of Greene’s division. Thomas Burke [a North Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress], who had ridden out from Philadelphia, reported the North Carolina Continentals to be “in high spirits.” Burke was so carried away with the excitement of the moment that he was led to boast, “Our army is supposed superior, and the enemy is very shy.” (p. 101)
Unfortunately, Burke’s optimism notwithstanding, both Brandywine and Germantown turned out to be Continental defeats – and General Nash, a resident of Hillsborough, would be fatally wounded at the latter battle. His name lives on in northeastern North Carolina, in Nash County and its county seat at Nashville – and also in that somewhat larger Nashville in Tennessee.
After the decisive American victory at Saratoga, the theatre of war shifted back to the South, with the British government effectively deciding that, if the Northern colonies were lost, perhaps Great Britain could hold on to at least some of the Southern colonies. And things went well for the British forces in the American South at first, as royal forces successfully took Savannah (in December of 1778) and Charleston (in May of 1780).
Around the time of the American defeat at the Battle of Stono Ferry in South Carolina, things were going badly for the Continental forces, and North Carolinians feared a British invasion of their state. William Hooper, a North Carolina member of the Continental Congress, and one of three North Carolina Signers of the Declaration of Independence, found such fears absurd: “What could the enemy get by it?...To rob the pine trees and bear away the sandhills?” (p. 207)
Yet eventually, British forces did enter the Tar Heel State; indeed, one explanation for that popular term is that patriot militia dumped tar into a river of eastern North Carolina to slow down the British, causing the British to complain about having “tar heels” when they emerged, their feet black with sticky tar, from crossing a watercourse that has been known ever since that time as the Tar River.
Whatever its origin, the term “Tar Heel” has come to refer to North Carolinians’ tenacity and determination – qualities amply demonstrated at the Battle of Charlotte on September 26, 1780. The British took the town, but the outnumbered Americans, under Colonel William R. Davie, fulfilled their tactical goal of slowing the British down and protecting the main Continental Army, inflicting many British casualties while suffering few of their own.
And Davie’s troops, defending the small village that is now North Carolina’s largest city, unquestionably made an impression. Cornwallis reported incessant harassment from “Davie and other irregular troops who have committed the most shocking cruelties, and the most horrid murders on those suspected of being our friends that I ever heard”; and a Cornwallis aide’s statement, as the British Army left Charlotte and retreated back into South Carolina, that “Charlotte is an agreeable village, but in a d----d rebellious country” (pp. 250-51) may have given rise to the popular story that General Cornwallis called Charlotte “a damned hornets’ nest of rebellion.” That story has its modern echoes in Charlotte, from Hornets’ Nest Park to the hornet on the city seal to the name and logo of the Charlotte Hornets NBA team.
Particularly crucial, in the saga of North Carolina’s part in the successful winning of American Independence, was the Battle of Guilford Court House, at present-day Greensboro, on March 15, 1781. Greensboro is named for General Nathanael Greene, a Rhode Islander who came south after his predecessor, General Horatio Gates, suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina.
Greene, a brilliant tactician, knew that the best thing he could do to help the Continental forces win the war and gain American independence was to keep his army intact and together. Guilford Courthouse was characteristic in that regard: disciplined British efforts against the American flank forced a Continental withdrawal, but at exceedingly high British costs in killed and wounded. The British held the field, but General Greene learned to look at his “defeat” philosophically:
For a general who had just been driven from the field, Nathanael Greene was in surprisingly good spirits….Reports from the British army indicated that it had been severely hurt, and Cornwallis would be forced into a withdrawal just as soon as he could care for his wounded. But Greene’s pride had been damaged and he complained that he could never gain a reputation through defeat, or while forced to operate under so many disadvantages. Yet after thinking over the events of March 15, he admitted…that “the Enemy got the ground the other Day, but we the victory” (p. 310).
The North Carolina Continentals then follows the parallel marches of Continental and British forces from North Carolina into Virginia – where General Lord Cornwallis, hoping in vain for relief from Royal Navy forces, would find himself surrounded, besieged, and compelled to surrender at Yorktown in October of 1781.
I got my copy of The North Carolina Continentals quite a few years ago, at the museum shop of the Moore’s Creek Bridge National Battlefield. The National Park Service ranger at the cash register that day saw my selection, smiled broadly, and said, “Good choice!”
Some years later, I had the good fortune to become a resident of North Carolina, with a home in the historic town of Pittsboro, where an historical marker on the southern edge of town chronicles a loyalist raid on Chatham County’s patriot leaders in July of 1781.
Living in North Carolina for four years gave me a heightened appreciation for the state’s “Tar Heel” spirit; and while any student of America’s Revolutionary War history will benefit from reading Hugh Rankin’s The North Carolina Continentals, I would imagine that North Carolinians will read it with particular pride.
Rankin, who died in 1989, was a legendary professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans; in those times when academics wore even more proverbial hats than they do now, he served as faculty chair of athletics while authoring, co-authoring, or editing sixteen works of history, most of them dealing with colonial or revolutionary American history.
Yet he was originally a North Carolinian who graduated from high school in Reidsville, earned his bachelor’s degree at Elon College, and gained his master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of North Carolina. His love for his home state and his appreciation for the valor of North Carolina’s Continental Army soldiers come through on every page of The North Carolina Continentals.
Rankin begins by setting the scene against which war began, suggesting that the conflict in colonial North Carolina between pro-independence Whigs and pro-British Tories “was particularly venomous, for, it has been said, the colony contained a greater number of loyalists in proportion to its population than any other” (p. 3). I’m not sure I agree with Rankin on that point – I’d tend to look to neighboring South Carolina as harboring the most substantial loyalist population in the Southern colonies-turned-states – but Rankin does establish that, on the eve of the American Revolution, North Carolina was a house divided.
A peculiarity of the Revolutionary War throughout the Carolinas is that war came to the region early but then left it for a period of years, only to return in force later. In the case of North Carolina, war came in earnest through the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge on February 27, 1776. This sharp little battle, which took place more than four months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, had its genesis in an effort of British and loyalist forces to unite for a march to the sea at Wilmington.
The battle featured, among other things, the last broadsword charge of the Scots Highlanders – but the Scots’ old-school heroism was largely in vain, as the canny pro-independence patriots had taken up the planking of the bridge over Moore’s Creek, and greased the support rails to boot. The loyalist casualties in killed, wounded, and captured totaled almost 1300; patriot casualties numbered two.
Rankin sums up well the importance of this oft-overlooked battle, the site of which is now a national battlefield park:
The Moore’s Creek Bridge campaign, viewed from a perspective of nearly two hundred years, assumes greater importance than in 1776. Had the loyalists reached the sea, it is not unreasonable to suppose that their ranks would have been swelled considerably by the Tories of the coastal areas. If a junction had been made with Governor [Josiah] Martin, and arms in sufficient number acquired, large numbers of loyalists and Regulators would have flocked in to the royal standard. But time, the terrain, the sea, Richard Caswell, and James Moore all cooperated to frustrate Tory hopes. (p. 54)
With the formal declaration of American independence, the war shifted north, and therefore one reads about North Carolina Continentals fighting in other states, as with the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania in September and October of 1777. At Brandywine, Brigadier General Francis Nash led North Carolina Continentals participating in George Washington’s defense of the American capital at Philadelphia. Rankin recounts how
Eight hundred light infantry, including a number of Continentals detached from the North Carolina brigade, were thrown across to the southern or far side of the stream. Nash’s brigade was held in reserve behind the center of Greene’s division. Thomas Burke [a North Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress], who had ridden out from Philadelphia, reported the North Carolina Continentals to be “in high spirits.” Burke was so carried away with the excitement of the moment that he was led to boast, “Our army is supposed superior, and the enemy is very shy.” (p. 101)
Unfortunately, Burke’s optimism notwithstanding, both Brandywine and Germantown turned out to be Continental defeats – and General Nash, a resident of Hillsborough, would be fatally wounded at the latter battle. His name lives on in northeastern North Carolina, in Nash County and its county seat at Nashville – and also in that somewhat larger Nashville in Tennessee.
After the decisive American victory at Saratoga, the theatre of war shifted back to the South, with the British government effectively deciding that, if the Northern colonies were lost, perhaps Great Britain could hold on to at least some of the Southern colonies. And things went well for the British forces in the American South at first, as royal forces successfully took Savannah (in December of 1778) and Charleston (in May of 1780).
Around the time of the American defeat at the Battle of Stono Ferry in South Carolina, things were going badly for the Continental forces, and North Carolinians feared a British invasion of their state. William Hooper, a North Carolina member of the Continental Congress, and one of three North Carolina Signers of the Declaration of Independence, found such fears absurd: “What could the enemy get by it?...To rob the pine trees and bear away the sandhills?” (p. 207)
Yet eventually, British forces did enter the Tar Heel State; indeed, one explanation for that popular term is that patriot militia dumped tar into a river of eastern North Carolina to slow down the British, causing the British to complain about having “tar heels” when they emerged, their feet black with sticky tar, from crossing a watercourse that has been known ever since that time as the Tar River.
Whatever its origin, the term “Tar Heel” has come to refer to North Carolinians’ tenacity and determination – qualities amply demonstrated at the Battle of Charlotte on September 26, 1780. The British took the town, but the outnumbered Americans, under Colonel William R. Davie, fulfilled their tactical goal of slowing the British down and protecting the main Continental Army, inflicting many British casualties while suffering few of their own.
And Davie’s troops, defending the small village that is now North Carolina’s largest city, unquestionably made an impression. Cornwallis reported incessant harassment from “Davie and other irregular troops who have committed the most shocking cruelties, and the most horrid murders on those suspected of being our friends that I ever heard”; and a Cornwallis aide’s statement, as the British Army left Charlotte and retreated back into South Carolina, that “Charlotte is an agreeable village, but in a d----d rebellious country” (pp. 250-51) may have given rise to the popular story that General Cornwallis called Charlotte “a damned hornets’ nest of rebellion.” That story has its modern echoes in Charlotte, from Hornets’ Nest Park to the hornet on the city seal to the name and logo of the Charlotte Hornets NBA team.
Particularly crucial, in the saga of North Carolina’s part in the successful winning of American Independence, was the Battle of Guilford Court House, at present-day Greensboro, on March 15, 1781. Greensboro is named for General Nathanael Greene, a Rhode Islander who came south after his predecessor, General Horatio Gates, suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Camden in South Carolina.
Greene, a brilliant tactician, knew that the best thing he could do to help the Continental forces win the war and gain American independence was to keep his army intact and together. Guilford Courthouse was characteristic in that regard: disciplined British efforts against the American flank forced a Continental withdrawal, but at exceedingly high British costs in killed and wounded. The British held the field, but General Greene learned to look at his “defeat” philosophically:
For a general who had just been driven from the field, Nathanael Greene was in surprisingly good spirits….Reports from the British army indicated that it had been severely hurt, and Cornwallis would be forced into a withdrawal just as soon as he could care for his wounded. But Greene’s pride had been damaged and he complained that he could never gain a reputation through defeat, or while forced to operate under so many disadvantages. Yet after thinking over the events of March 15, he admitted…that “the Enemy got the ground the other Day, but we the victory” (p. 310).
The North Carolina Continentals then follows the parallel marches of Continental and British forces from North Carolina into Virginia – where General Lord Cornwallis, hoping in vain for relief from Royal Navy forces, would find himself surrounded, besieged, and compelled to surrender at Yorktown in October of 1781.
I got my copy of The North Carolina Continentals quite a few years ago, at the museum shop of the Moore’s Creek Bridge National Battlefield. The National Park Service ranger at the cash register that day saw my selection, smiled broadly, and said, “Good choice!”
Some years later, I had the good fortune to become a resident of North Carolina, with a home in the historic town of Pittsboro, where an historical marker on the southern edge of town chronicles a loyalist raid on Chatham County’s patriot leaders in July of 1781.
Living in North Carolina for four years gave me a heightened appreciation for the state’s “Tar Heel” spirit; and while any student of America’s Revolutionary War history will benefit from reading Hugh Rankin’s The North Carolina Continentals, I would imagine that North Carolinians will read it with particular pride.
October 4, 2018
Good overview of the North Carolina Line in the Revolutionary War. However, there were only two maps in the entire book; also, some parts seemed more appropriate for a general history of the state in the war, rather than for a unit history.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews