Doggin' Guilford Courthouse National Military Park: Hike With Your Dog Where The Revolution Turned

With the Revolutionary War stalemated in the North in 1778, the British
strategy to win the war shifted to the South. Georgia and South Carolina were
completely under British control by 1780. Nathanael Greene, an ironmaster by trade,
self-taught in the art of war and George Washington's hand-picked commander of
the Southern Department, was determined to keep North Carolina out of British
hands.

From his base in Virginia Greene harassed the British as their attack spread
northward. Pursued by a frenetic Lord Cornwallis, Greene selected sloping ground
near Guilford Courthouse to make his stand. He aligned his superior force of 4,000
men - of which scarcely one in five had ever seen battle action - in three lines to
receive the British assault on March 15, 1781.

The first line, manned by inexperienced North Carolina militia, was quickly
brushed aside and fled. Breaking through the second Patriot line, however, required
savage fighting and by the time the redcoats reached Greene's last line, Cornwallis
was becoming desperate. As the fighting raged Cornwallis directed his artillery to
fire grapeshot over his own lines into the melee of friend and foe alike. The harsh
directive to fire into his own troops dispersed the Americans and saved his army.

Greene retired from the field. Technically the loser, his losses had been light.
Cornwallis kept the field but lost the war at Guilford Courthouse. His army limped
on to Wilmington, convinced that conquering Virginia would collapse the
Revolution. Greene let him go and moved southward to reconquer South Carolina
and Georgia, confident that American troops assembling in Virginia would destroy
Cornwallis - which they did seven months later in Yorktown.

Begun in 1887, the 220-acre park was later established in 1917 as the first
battleground of the American Revolution to be preserved as a national military park.

The military park is a local popular dog-walking destination with level, leafy
paths to hike with your dog in a suburban environment. Nothing remains of either
the small wooden courthouse or the community of March 15, 1781 but the dog-
friendly grounds are among the most decorated of Revolutionary battlefields, graced
by twenty-eight monuments.

The most impressive monument you see as you hike wit your dog is the large
equestrian statue of General Greene, sculpted by Francis H. Packer. Unveiled on July
3, 1915, it bears Greene's words: "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."

You can find Guilford Courthouse National Military Park on New Garden Street
in Greensboro, North Carolina. Directional signs lead you in from I-85 and I-40.

 

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