Cornwallis Retreats to Wilmington
Near Wilmington, North Carolina
In March of seventeen eighty-one, Lord Cornwallis fought one of the costliest battles of the Southern campaign at Guilford Courthouse, near present-day Greensboro. He held the field but lost nearly a quarter of his army. Too battered to press forward, Cornwallis turned southeast and marched his wounded force through the Cape Fear region toward Wilmington, the nearest British-held port.
His army passed through this region in the spring of seventeen eighty-one, foraging through pine-barrens country as they went. After resting and resupplying in Wilmington, Cornwallis made the fateful decision not to return south but to drive north into Virginia, a campaign that ended with his surrender at Yorktown six months later.
