Following Pontiac’s attack on Fort Detroit, word quickly spread to Indian villages across the region and other tribes followed suit. On May 16, Wyandot warriors approached Fort Sandusky, on the south shore of Lake Erie, and asked to smoke a peace pipe with the commandant, Ensign Paully. Unaware of the rebellion and on friendly terms with the Wyandots, Paully opened the gates and the warriors massacred the fifteen-man garrison. Similar stories began to unfold throughout the region.

Pontiac, an Ottawa war chief, launched his rebellion in May 1763 when he attacked Fort Detroit and its 120-man garrison commanded by Major Henry Gladwyn. The uprising would be the longest and most widespread ever in North America. Pontiac’s initial targets were nine British outposts, including Fort Detroit, the centerpiece of the region. These forts were more than 100 miles apart, rendering them incapable of supporting one another, a fact not lost on Pontiac.

As a result of the French and Indian War, the Ohio Country and the land around the Great Lakes changed from French to British control in the early 1760s. Indian nations worried that their way of life would be adversely affected by this change, and a charismatic Ottawa chief named Pontiac was determined to prevent this from happening. In late 1762, Pontiac sent emissaries to tribes across the region, challenging them to join his endeavor to drive out the British.

Since 1607, when the first English settlers arrived in Jamestown, British America had largely been confined to the eastern seaboard. As the colonies began to expand west in the mid-1700s, they came into conflict with their longtime nemesis, the French, primarily over which nation would dominate the lucrative fur trade in the Ohio Country. In 1754, these tensions erupted into the French and Indian War, and when it ended, the map of North America was redrawn. France was essentially expelled from the continent and England was awarded all lands east of the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, except for New Orleans.

The first Europeans to reach North America and explore its interior were the Spanish in the early 1500s, who came mainly for “gold, glory, and God.” France also established a colonial empire in North America beginning with Samuel de Champlain in the early 1600s, calling their holdings New France. In 1692, La Salle, a former Jesuit priest, canoed down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, claiming the land for France and naming it Louisiana.

What Nathanael Greene accomplished in his two years in command of the southern Continental Army was nothing short of miraculous, especially considering his starting point. The army Greene inherited was in a shambles after the opening phases of the war and many saw little hope for the cause. His tactics were so effective that within six months of Greene taking command, Lord Charles Cornwallis moved his shrinking British army into Virginia and closer to his date with destiny at Yorktown.

By the late summer of 1781, the American Revolution was drawing to a close. Hoping to inflict more damage to the British, Major General Nathanael Greene planned a strike at the one remaining British army in South Carolina. The Battle of Eutaw Springs, fought on September 8, 1781, sixty miles from Charleston, resulted in another frustrating loss for General Nathanael Greene and his Continental Army, a fight Greene described as the most obstinate he ever saw.

In the spring of 1781, American forces under General Nathanael Greene rolled up the British garrisons in the interior of the Carolinas one by one. The last British holdout was the fortified town of Ninety Six, in the foothills of western South Carolina. On June 12, with the end in sight for the Brits, a rider brought word that a relief column under Lord Francis Rawdon was on the way from Charleston. Greene decided to lift the siege but not before trying one final assault on the night of June 18, an attack that failed terribly.

In late April 1781, Lord Charles Cornwallis made the painful decision to abandon the Carolinas and Georgia, and took his 2,000 veteran soldiers to Virginia. General Nathanael Greene’s strategy to wear down and frustrate Cornwallis had worked masterfully, as Cornwallis wrote he was “quite tired of marching about the country in quest of adventures.” The remaining British outposts in the southern colonies were left in the capable hands of Colonel Francis Rawdon, but they were not mutually supporting. Greene recognized this fatal flaw and immediately began to reconquer them one at a time.

In March 1781, General Nathanael Greene decided to finally confront Lord Charles Cornwallis’s British army in a pitched battle and selected Guilford Courthouse in western North Carolina as the spot. Greene positioned his troops as Daniel Morgan had at Cowpens, with two ranks of militia in front and a final line of seasoned Continentals led by Colonels Otho Williams and John Howard. With hand-to-hand fighting raging just in front of him and the contest hanging in the balance, Cornwallis ordered his artillery to fire grapeshot point blank into the mass.

After the Battle of Cowpens, General Daniel Morgan began a rapid retreat north to put some distance between him and Lord Charles Cornwallis’s 2,500-battle hardened veterans who were coming their way. To gain time, General Nathanael Greene, the commander of the southern Continental Army, split his force, sending Colonel Otho Williams and a light corps on a different route, hoping to pull Cornwallis away from the slow-moving main army.

On the morning of January 17, 1781, General Daniel Morgan arrayed his Continentals and militiamen for battle in a South Carolina field known as Hannah’s Cowpens. Morgan placed his 1,400 men in three lines 150 yards apart. He instructed the front-rank militiamen to fire two volleys at the British and then retire to the rear and told the second line to do the same. The last line of defense was comprised of 450 battle-hardened Continental Army veterans from Delaware and Maryland, men that Morgan knew would stand their ground.

Daniel Morgan received a captain’s commission from the Continental Congress in June 1775, and soon raised a force of 96 skilled riflemen much like himself, hardy and fearless, and toughened by years of fighting with Native Americans. The merit of Morgan’s riflemen was quickly recognized, and they were selected to accompany Colonel Benedict Arnold on a mission to capture Quebec in British Canada.

Daniel Morgan, who rose to national prominence during the American Revolution, was born in New Jersey in 1736. At 17, after a fight with his father, young Daniel left home, settling in western Virginia. Daniel became a wagoner and, by age 20, was 6 feet 2 inches and a tower of strength. He had a cheerful nature and a natural intelligence. Following the French and Indian War, Morgan continued his work as a wagoner, became known as the toughest man in the county, and settled down to a peaceful married life in the beautiful foothills of western Virginia.

On October 14, 1780, General Nathanael Greene was appointed commander of the southern Continental Army by General George Washington and tasked with salvaging the desperate situation in the southern theater. Confronting Greene and his skeleton force was a British army of 3,200 trained, experienced men led by Lord Charles Cornwallis, arguably the best British general in North America.

In 1775, Rhode Island officials named Nathanael Greene commander of the state’s Army of Observation, making Greene the youngest general in the army. During the Siege of Boston, Greene’s brigade was recognized as the most disciplined and best equipped of the colonial militias, and Greene gained the notice and admiration of General George Washington.

Nathanael Greene was one of America’s greatest generals in the Revolutionary War, perhaps second only to George Washington. He was born on August 7, 1742, in Warwick, Rhode Island into a prosperous Quaker family. When his father died in 1770, Nathanael, despite having several older brothers, took over the family business. As relations with England worsened, Greene became more involved in colonial resistance to British authority.

In September 1780, Lord Charles Cornwallis ordered Major Patrick Ferguson to secure North Carolina. Ferguson, a very capable British officer, issued a proclamation to the Overmountain Men of the Watauga River Valley in present day Tennessee to “desist from their opposition to British arms” or he would “lay waste their country with fire and sword.” Isaac Shelby and John Sevier rallied 1,000 men in Sycamore Shoals and advanced through Yellow Mountain Gap to the east side of the Appalachians. Ferguson decided to confront the Tennesseans at King’s Mountain, just inside the South Carolina border. The fight raged for an hour, but Ferguson’s militia was no match for the Tennesseans.

On the morning of August 16, 1780, Lord Charles Cornwallis’s Redcoats and the Southern Continental Army under General Horatio Gates clashed near Camden, the site of a British supply depot. Gates led 3,000 men, but two-thirds were inexperienced militiamen, while Cornwallis had 2,200 seasoned British regulars at his command. The final result was catastrophic for the Americans; in essence, the Southern Continental Army ceased to exist. But this victory at Camden would be the high-water mark of the British southern campaign. Soon, the tide would turn, and the resilient Americans would gain the upper hand.

To restore a presence in the south following the fall of Charleston, Congress named General Horatio Gates, a weak but politically well-connected officer, as the new southern commander. Gates inherited a small but well-trained group of Continental soldiers that was starving and waiting for reinforcements and supplies to catch up when Gates took command.