My Journey To Cowpens 

by Robert A. Ford, author of The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined

For me, the Battle of Cowpens has never been one more entry in a parade of dry facts. It has always been something that resonated very personally. Many years ago, my father taught tactics at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. He had a special interest in the Revolutionary War in the south. He was a brilliant man, and like many brilliant people, had trouble communicating with those of us less gifted. I was only seven years old, but he regaled me with tales of Nathanael Greene, the American commander. “An idiot!” “An incompetent!” I can still hear him deriding and mocking Greene, “the hero of Greene’s Disaster, Greene’s Defeat, and Greene’s Ultimate Humiliation!” Being only seven, I was not completely sure what Greene had done, but I could tell it was bad.  

But Cowpens; that was another story entirely. Morgan was a genius. Morgan was the finest tactical mind born on American soil. To him, Cowpens was the Holy Grail of tactics, the example he held up to his students as the right way to do everything. For my part, I was not at all sure what had happened at Cowpens, but I knew it was monumental.  

As I grew older, my father and I drew apart, and we shared very little. But history was one thing where we could always find common ground. When I retired, I finally found the time to catch up to my father’s extensive knowledge of the southern war, Cowpens in particular. It was, of course, everything he said it was. Morgan was a genius. His plan was a tactical masterpiece. Ultimately, for me, however, Cowpens will always be a window into my own past, a look into a sunnier time when as a small boy I sat by my father’s desk and marveled at things beyond my horizon.