The Battle of Cowpens: Correcting A Historical Error

The Battle of Cowpens, fought on January 17, 1781, in South Carolina, was one of the most significant American victories in the War for Independence. At a relatively low cost in casualties, the Americans destroyed the light troops of the British southern army, which not only weakened British control of South Carolina but more importantly, caused Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, to set off in an unsuccessful pursuit of the retreating Americans that ultimately led to his surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, ten months later. For more than two centuries, the site of the battle has been referred to as “Hannah’s Cowpens” by nearly every historian who wrote about the battle, as well as by the National Park Service, which manages Cowpens National Battlefield Park. A careful examination of the original reference to “Hannah” and land records for northwestern South Carolina reveals that while there was indeed a “Hannah’s Cowpens,” it was located approximately eleven miles east-southeast of the cow pens where the battle was fought.

Since the name “Hannah’s Cowpens” was first applied to the Cowpens battlefield, few have questioned its accuracy. One of the first historians to examine the name, Lyman C. Draper, did not mention “Hannah” in his exhaustively researched 1881 account of the Battle of Kings Mountain; Draper mentioned the cowpens because Americans used the location as a staging point on their way to the 1780 battle. “For an hour or two on the evening of [October] the sixth, there was a stirring bivouac at the Cowpens,” Draper wrote. “A wealthy English Tory, named Saunders, resided there, who reared large numbers of cattle, and having many pens in which to herd his stock—hence the derivation of Cow-pens.” The Americans allegedly dragged Saunders from his bed, as he was sick or pretending to be, and demanded information about British movements, which Saunders would or could not provide. “Several of the old Tory’s cattle were quickly shot down and slaughtered for the supply of the hungry soldiers,” Draper stated. He listed the narratives of Capt. David Vance and McDowell, in the possession of the late Capt. Robert Henry, as his sources of information on Saunders, though he probably meant Vance’s and Henry’s accounts, as neither Charles nor Joseph McDowell composed a narrative on Kings Mountain.[1]

In fact, Vance did not mention Saunders in his account, but Silas McBee, who Draper listed as the source for the killing of the cattle, did. In an interview with Draper, McBee recalled that the Americans “late in the evening of the 6th of October reached the Cowpens, where lived a noted Tory, an Englishman of the name of Saunders, and his ungathered corn crop of perhaps 50 acres was harvested in about 10 minutes; and some of his beeves were killed and roasted. Here at the Cowpens, a fine range along a hill, the army lay an hour to refresh.”[2] The hill to which McBee referred was Thicketty Mountain.

In the official National Park Service handbook “Downright Fighting”: The Story of Cowpens, author Thomas J. Fleming speculated that the site “was probably squatters’ ground though one tradition says that it belonged to a person named Hannah, while another credits it to one Hiram Saunders, a wealthy loyalist who lived close by.”[3] Fleming did not cite a source for this statement. National Park Service Chief Historian Edwin C. Bearss investigated the name in his book on Cowpens and concluded that “Hannah’s Cowpens” was indeed the correct name, citing a 1954 article by Hugh F. Rankin, who described “Hannah’s Cowpens” as “a former trading post.” Rankin cited William Johnson’s 1822 biography of General Nathanael Greene as the source of the information.[4]