Moores Creek Bridge: Where the Revolution Began in the South
Near Wilmington, North Carolina
About twenty miles north of Wilmington, a small wooden bridge crosses Moores Creek, and on February twenty-seventh, seventeen seventy-six, that crossing changed the course of the American Revolution in the South.
Royal Governor Josiah Martin had a plan. He believed that if he could mobilize enough Loyalists in the North Carolina backcountry, particularly the Scottish Highland emigrants who had settled along the upper Cape Fear Valley, he could link them with British naval forces arriving by sea, crush the Patriot resistance, and restore royal control of the colony.
Colonel Donald MacDonald assembled a Loyalist force of fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred men, mostly Highlanders, many of them carrying broadswords rather than muskets, and marched them south toward the coast. Patriot militia from across the region converged on Moores Creek Bridge to stop them.
The night before the battle, the Patriots removed the planks from the bridge and greased the remaining support logs. When the Loyalists advanced at dawn, the crossing became a catastrophe. Patriot rifle fire cut down the front ranks. Dozens fell into the creek. The Loyalist army collapsed in minutes.
The victory at Moores Creek did several things at once. It ended British plans for a major Southern campaign that spring. It secured North Carolina for the Patriot cause at a critical moment. And it emboldened the Second Continental Congress: six weeks after the battle, North Carolina became the first colony to authorize its delegates to vote for independence from Great Britain.
Moores Creek National Battlefield is preserved today as a National Park Service site. The ground is quiet now, wooded and low, the creek moving slowly through cypress and Spanish moss. It takes about twenty minutes to walk the loop trail. That walk is worth your time.
