Cowpens: Where the Revolution Turned

The town took its name from what was here before the town: an open grazing ground where backcountry settlers penned and fattened cattle before driving them to market. Early land grants called it Hannah's Cow-pens. On January seventeenth, seventeen eighty-one, that unfenced pasture became one of the most consequential battlefields in American history.

Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, commanding a force of Continental regulars and militia, met Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton and about eleven hundred British and Loyalist troops here. In under an hour, Morgan's men virtually destroyed Tarleton's force. British casualties topped six hundred. Sources differ on American losses, but they were under two hundred. The victory at Cowpens broke the British grip on the Carolina backcountry, badly wounded Cornwallis's campaign, and set in motion the chain of events that ended at Yorktown nine months later. The town incorporated in eighteen eighty and named itself for the battlefield that gave the cattle pen its fame. Cowpens National Battlefield preserves the ground today.