Chris Kyle: American Gun

Morgan wasn’t the only commander of riflemen in the war, and he didn’t just lead riflemen, but he did both very well. Credit where credit is due: individual riflemen played a small but important role in skirmishes and battles all across the continent. And employing what we would now call guerilla tactics, their hit-and-run raids kept the British off-balance throughout.

But let’s focus on Morgan and his crew. He had a bunch of riflemen besides our friend Murphy, who was back home north when Morgan returned to action down south. One of Morgan’s troops was a fella you may think you’ve heard of, namely Sam Houston.

No, not that Sam Houston—this was his dad. Major Samuel Houston Sr. was an officer in Morgan’s rifle brigade.

He was also my seventh great-grandfather on my mom’s side. My dad’s ancestors served in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. They were rebels in the first, but picked the wrong side in the second.

By the winter of 1780–81, Dan Morgan had amassed a force of at least 1,900 Continental regulars, state troops, and militiamen, plus a small cavalry unit. His men hailed from South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Georgia, and Delaware. They had been given a simple task: raise as much hell among the British as they could in the Carolinas.

British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis had invaded the states in 1780 in an attempt to crush the rebellion in the South with the help of friendly American Tories and Native Americans. He did well at first, trouncing a rebel force under Horatio Gates and taking effective control of South Carolina. But as he expanded his campaign into North Carolina, the Revolutionary Army was able to regroup and slow his progress. In the meantime, small groups of rebels bit away at his supply lines, continually harassing him. The war behind the lines was ferocious in the South, just as it was in parts of the North; American Tories and American patriots massacred each other in small hand-to-hand encounters. Gruesome atrocities were the order of the day: scalping, hatcheting, spontaneous summary hangings, the slaughter of prisoners, you name it. It was a no-holds-barred kind of war.

As dirty and bloody as it may have been, the actions of one British commander in the south stood out as truly outrageous. Colonel Banastre Tarleton led the elite British Green Dragoons cavalry force, a small but highly effective unit of horsemen who moved with explosive speed and struck terror in American soldiers and civilians alike. By 1781, he was arguably the most hated man in America, a cold-blooded killer rebels called “the Butcher.” The title wasn’t propaganda. In his most notorious and controversial act, he had either ordered or stood by as his men slayed Americans attempting to surrender at Waxhaw Creek on the border of the Carolinas. Word of the massacre spread throughout the states; ironically, it helped turn the tides against the British, outraging many who’d been neutral in the war.

Whatever his morals, Tarleton was bold and audacious—and effective. At one point, in a daring raid deep behind American lines, he came within a whisker of capturing Thomas Jefferson and the entire Virginia legislature.

All this made him the perfect opponent for Morgan. Occupied in an ill-fated attempt to extend the Southern campaign to Virginia, Lord Cornwallis tasked Tarleton to find and destroy Dan Morgan and his unit operating in South Carolina.

For his part, Morgan was under orders only to harass the British with hit-and-run tactics, and to avoid the risks of an open battlefield confrontation. But Morgan knew the Butcher was hot on his trail, thirsting for blood, and about to catch up with him. So on January 16, 1781, with Tarleton closing in a few miles away, Dan Morgan decided to dig in to stand and fight in a field (or “cowpens”) near Burr’s Mill in South Carolina. That night, Morgan cooked up one of the most brilliant battle plans in American history, a masterpiece of combined arms, fire, and movement that featured the American long rifle in a starring role. It would go down in history as the Battle of Cowpens.

Dan Morgan’s men likely were armed with a mix of muskets and frontier rifles, personal guns the militiamen would have used in their regular jobs as hunters, trappers, and farmers. That night, Morgan delivered an inspiring speech to his troops. One soldier recalled, “It was upon this occasion I was more perfectly convinced of Gen. Morgan’s qualifications to command militia, than I had ever before been. He went among the volunteers, helped them fix their swords, joked with them about their sweet-hearts, told them to keep in good spirits, and the day would be ours. And long after I laid down, he was going about among the soldiers encouraging them, and telling them that [he] would crack his whip over [Tarleton] in the morning, as sure as they lived.”

Folklore paints a rosy picture of the American militia, the part-time army of local farmers and the like. But truth be told, the militia’s record through the Revolution was, to be polite, mixed. The majority of the American militia troops were ragtag, volunteer part-time soldiers who might panic, break, and run at the sight of a thousand enemy troops charging them with muskets, bayonets, and cavalry. Few had been trained to any degree of professionalism. Many didn’t necessarily want to be on the battlefield in the first place, only answering the summons to serve out of a sense of duty, pride, and in a few cases, fear. Their time in the field was generally supposed to be measured in months, and even if they stayed on, their homes, farms, and families were never far from their minds.

Morgan told them their part in the battle would be short and sweet. All he needed them to do was hold formation for three volleys. Then, battle over, they would be released from service—and be called heroes, even.

“Just hold up your heads, boys, three fires,” he said, “and you are free, and then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls kiss you, for your gallant conduct!”

Just three shots and you are free.

Morgan’s men chowed down on a hearty meal of butchered beef fresh from the pasture, stacked their guns, and tried to grab some shut-eye. Just before sunrise on January 17, Tarleton the Butcher and his 300 cavalry and 950 infantry troops fell into Morgan’s trap.

Morgan knew of Tarleton’s hair-trigger lust for the lightning-fast combat strike, so he constructed a plan that exploited the strengths and weaknesses of his own men, and the peculiar dynamics of the terrain at Cowpens. It all hinged on an elaborate trick, a stunning deception that required split-second timing by the Americans.

At dawn Tarleton emerged from the woods, saw the Americans, and quickly formed up his troops. Just as Morgan hoped, he lunged like a hound after a thick steak, barely waiting for all his men to arrive.

The British were cold, dehydrated, and exhausted from a long, fast march, and they hadn’t eaten or slept properly for days. But Banastre Tarleton saw his chance for a grand victory, one that would annihilate a good portion of the American southern army. His men played drums and fifes and cheered as they covered the length of three football fields in three minutes.