To the End of the World： Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, & the Race to the Dan

Good evening, everyone. I am Chuck Payne. On behalf of Mike Perry, the director of the Army Heritage Center Foundation, I'd like to welcome all of you this evening to a presentation. We are glad that you're here with us and know that you will find this informative and noteworthy. Of course, our presentation tonight is on the Revolutionary War. The title is To the End of the World, Nathaniel Green, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dam by Mr. Andrew Waters. And at this time, I'll turn it over to Mr. Waters. Thanks, Chuck. Thanks to you. Thanks to Mike. Thanks to everybody from the Army Heritage Center for having me tonight. I am going to work off some slides tonight. So let me get these up, this presentation up real quickly. Okay. Chuck, you're getting the presentation, right? Yes, I am. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to talk for about the next 40 minutes or so, and then we're going to have some time for questions at the end of this presentation. So good evening and welcome to this presentation on my book, To the End of the World, Nathaniel Green, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dam. This presentation is titled The Race to the Dam, a Resilience Theory Perspective. So before we get into some of that, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I am born and raised in Hendersonville, North Carolina. I have a BA in English and Psychology from UNC Chapel Hill. I have a MBA from UNC Greensboro. I live in Spartanburg, South Carolina with my wife Anne and son Eli. I've worked as an editor, a realtor, and then most recently in the field of land conservation, which I'll talk about in just a little bit. And currently I'm studying at Clemson University. I'm working on a PhD in land conservation policy, natural resource policy. So just before we get started, this is actually my second book. My first book was called The Quaker and the Gamecock. It is also about Nathaniel Green, but talks specifically about his relationship with Thomas Sumter, who was kind of the great South Carolina militia general, and some of their personality conflicts that they experienced later in the war. And that book actually takes place after this book, which was my second book, which was To the End of the World about the Race to the Dam. And of course, please feel free to purchase these books. My wife runs the independent bookstore here in Spartanburg, so she wants me to send you to this bookshop.org website. So that's a way that you can support your local independent bookstore online. But I also like to mention my publisher, westhomepublishing.com. They actually have a really great deal. If you sign up for their newsletter, their email newsletter, you get a 25 percent discount on all books that you order directly from them. So it's really a nice bargain if you go there. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about this resiliency theory stuff in just a minute, but I didn't want any of you to go home tonight or turn on your computers tonight and say, hey, I attended this presentation about this book on the Race to the Dam and the guy never told me what happened in the book. So here is just a brief chronology of what happens in the book. The book really opens on Cornwallis's victory over Horatio Gates at Camden in August 1780. And I use that event as a way to explain what was called the southern strategy, the British strategy, to take the Carolinas and then move up through the southeast, trying to force Washington down from the Hudson Highlands into a decisive conflict around the Chesapeake region. So that's all laid out in context around the Battle of Camden, which was really a stunning defeat for the American forces in the south. And the American army is defeated, demoralized, almost annihilated, not quite annihilated. So then we go to the point where Nathaniel Greene comes down from the northeast and takes command of the southern army on December 2nd, 1780. Later that month, Greene splits his army. He sends Daniel Morgan over to the western part of South Carolina, and he moves over into the eastern portion of South Carolina. And this sets in motion the series of events that lead to the Battle of Camden in January 17th, 1781. So from there, this sets into motion this kind of chase across the Carolinas. There's a significant action at Cowens Ford on February 1st. A few days later, the southern army, the Continentals, with their militia support, escape across the Yadkin River in dramatic fashion on February 3rd, with the British just really just pulling up just as the Americans get to the other side. And then again, a very similar circumstance on February 14th, when the Americans and the British really are involved in this neck-and-neck chase across the northern part of central North Carolina into Virginia. And again, the Americans just barely escape across the Dan River on February 14th, 1781. So that's what happens in the book. And this is a visual representation of that. This is a map of all of those events. So you see we start here in Charlotte, where Green takes command of the army. We move over to Cowpens. This dotted line is Cornwallis pursuing Morgan across the Catawba, across the Yadkin, and then all the way up to what they call the Lower Fords of the Dan River. Now, I wanted to write about this portion of the American Revolution for a couple of reasons, one of which is I am a native North Carolinian, and I really feel like this is North Carolina's greatest contribution to the American Revolution. If you're telling the story of the American Revolution, this is where North Carolina really fits into the story. This is the best part of the North Carolina story in the American Revolution. But a couple of other reasons I wanted to tell this story was because the action of the book really overlaps with my experience in my conservation career. So when I started my conservation career, I worked at a land trust here in the Catawba River Basin, and then since then I've spent about eight years working at a land trust here in the Yadkin PV River Basin. And then I moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina, and most recently I worked at a land trust that worked here in this Broad River Basin. Land conservation is often oriented around river basins, river systems, just strategically. And so if you look at the Race of the Dan from a river basin perspective, I worked in three of the four basins where the action of the book takes place. Here's the Catawba Basin, here's the Broad Basin, here's the Yadkin Basin, and up here this is the Roanoke Basin, which is the only part of the book where I haven't worked as a conservationist. And what I found as I was doing the research for this book and getting interested in this part of the American Revolution is that Nathaniel Green, the American general, really looked at this region in a very similar way to the way that I as a conservationist would look at this region. So as a conservationist we're really trying to kind of very strategically look at these river corridors, these river basin systems, and kind of put pieces of conserved areas together. So you're trying to build those nice conservation buffers, riparian buffers, on these river corridors. And Green wasn't looking at the Carolinas river basins that way, but he was looking at them strategically. And what he was doing was even before he was able to come down and take command of the Southern Army in Charlotte in early December of 1780, he was sending out these survey teams to study specifically the Dan River up here in the Roanoke Basin, the Yadkin-Pee Dee River, and the Catawba River. So what he was studying these basins for was he wanted to learn how he could move troops and supplies up and down these corridors. Because the road systems in the Carolinas at this time were notoriously bad, they weren't mapped very well, they were confusing. So Green wanted to know how he could move supplies across the up and down these rivers, across these rivers. And what he was doing was he was collecting information about the fords on the river. So he would have his survey teams collect information about how many boats were located at different fords or how the river behaved at these fords. So if it was raining, if it rained heavily, how long, how many days would it be until the river rose that it was, until it was so high that it couldn't be forded? And then again, how many days did it take until the river went back down after the rain and it could be forded again? So he was collecting all of this information about these river corridors, and that's really part of what attracted me to this story because he was looking, I could understand the way that Green was analyzing this geographically and I felt an affinity for Green through that connection that I felt that I had with him. All right, so just a little bit about resilience theory, which is a theory I like to use in my my research work and my research writing. So before you can talk about resilience theory, however, you've really got to talk about equilibrium theory, which is an adaptation of Darwin's survival of the fittest theory. So in the equilibrium, in this model, ecosystems or ecosystem behavior is oriented around equilibrium states that can be managed for optimization and sustained benefit. So classic examples of equilibrium management include agricultural monocultures like corn or soybeans, or here in the southeast we have a lot of pine production, or even the economic principle of supply equals demand can be an example of equilibrium theory. It's this idea that through science, through technology, through engineering, we can orient ecosystems around this ideal state where basically we can do whatever we want. We can have land for development. We can have land for industry. We can have land for agriculture. We can have land for river buffers. If we use technology, if we use science, we can manage for this equilibrium condition. And resilience theory is really in opposition to equilibrium theory. So resilience theory argues that ecosystems are in a constant state of transition. And even when they appear to be in an equilibrium state, the dominant actors are consuming so much of the resources in that ecosystem that eventually they're going to throw that system out of balance. And that leads to what we would call a threshold. So in a threshold, the ecosystem begins behaving in a fundamentally different manner. And kind of the great example of threshold is climate change. So we know that human behavior is influencing the ecosystem, kind of creating climate change. We just don't know what's on the other side of that threshold. We don't know how or if we're going to be able to sustain kind of our normal human behaviors on the other side of that threshold. So the key to managing in a resilience theory paradigm is adaptation. You have to be open to change. You have to be willing to change your tactics and adapt to the changing environment. So that's where we get this idea of resilience. Yes, adaptation is the resilience capacity of systems actors and their ability to avoid undesirable thresholds or succeed in new ecosystems. And the only other thing I want to talk about for resilience theory is that resilience thinking is really systems thinking. It focuses on the processes and mechanisms that govern systems interaction. Now, if we wanted to equate these ecological concepts to organizational ones, we could argue that the British Army was oriented around an equilibrium perspective. So in the British Army, each officer, non-com soldier had strictly defined roles, as did the regiments for which they fought. And the British officer had little incentive to challenge the system because his career prospects and his social status were tied to promoting it, to endorsing it. And this equilibrium orientation can even be extended to the organization of the British Army itself, which I have seen described as one of the most sophisticated bureaucracies that existed in the world at this time. So the British Army was governed by this complex and often overlapping network of departments and boards that each had kind of their own function. And sometimes these functions were at odds with other boards or other departments. So it was a very bureaucratized system kind of organized around this theory that if each department just did their job the way it was supposed to be done, the British Army could win the war. Now, we can contrast that right with the American Army. And I'm not suggesting that this was due to any kind of intentional design. I'm not suggesting that George Washington sat around the command center and said, we got to be more resilient, boys. But they had to be more resilient. This was an organization born out of crisis, forced to organize in the midst of conflict, and perpetually understaffed and undersupplied. But nevertheless, through eight long years, the American Army had organically adopted a resilience ethos that created a more horizontal command structure. I've got to move some of my stuff around real quick. And this horizontal structure allowed it to recover more quickly. So it could come back from disasters like Camden or Charleston and reorganize and get back on its feet. And we can even kind of take this adaptation theme to our two main characters, our protagonists. So first, let's look at Nathaniel Green. Green was born August 7, 1742 in Rhode Island. He was born to a merchant family of relatively humble means. He was self-educated. But he was clearly he was intellectually gifted. And when Washington arrived in Boston in 1776, I think that's right, Green was in command of the Rhode Island militia. And then when these militia generals got co-opted into the Continental Army, Green became the youngest general in the Continental Army in 1776. He and Washington had an incredibly close relationship to the point where some of the other American officers complained about the nature of their relationship. But clearly, if you read about Green, if you study Green, you see that he was an intellectually gifted man. He had the capacity to kind of plan for several different contingencies at once. And then even more rare than that, he could adjust his plans based on which contingency kind of developed and which contingencies kind of went away. So when Gates was defeated at Camden, Washington was finally able to give Green kind of his first independent command of the Southern Army. Now we can compare Green to Cornwallis. So Cornwallis was born December 31, 1738, about four years older than Green, not that big a difference. But he was an entirely different cat. He came from an entirely different background. He inherited the title Earl in 1762. This automatically made him a member of the House of Lords. And this elevated him. He was considered a peer of the realm, which was the highest echelon of British aristocracy. About 200 members of the British nobility were considered peers of the realm. And even more so than that, Cornwallis actually had a relatively warm personal relationship with King George III. And by the time we get to the American Revolution, Cornwallis was considered the British army's best fighting general. But he had this tendency to check out when things didn't go his way. And often his blame would lie on these other kind of departments that weren't doing their job. So he would kind of defer the blame for his failures on to other elements of the British army. Again, the British army was a very hierarchical social institution. It was bound by social conventions and hierarchy that were essentially designed to preserve the social cast of British society. It was an organization bound by the conventions of 18th century warfare based on large scale combat and rules of war. And I forget where I got this quote, but I like it. The British officer who dared to confront the bureaucracy or conventions of the British army not only threatened his military career, but also his societal position. So everything about the British army was kind of pushing you into this equilibrium perspective. Now, one of the things we talk about when we're talking about resilience theory and kind of adaptive natural resource governance is this idea of the transformational leader or transformational leadership. So the idea here is that this threshold, this release phase, enables policy entrepreneurs who can adapt to change through new ideas and knowledge. So it enables the transformational leader, enables adaptation through persistence, enthusiasm, and articulating inspirational vision that challenges the status quo. And it recognizes that leadership is more complex than just the act of a single individual and focuses on empowering others. And this is one of the things that I kind of get into in the book is this discussion of the role of partisan officers, which was actually kind of an intellectual debate that was being written about in the 18th century. There were actually books that were kind of being written about this kind of partisan warfare and what should be the role of the partisan officer. And basically, the partisan officer had to be able to adapt to on the ground contingencies and motivate men outside of regular army operations and discipline. And this is kind of a very familiar concept for us today because we think of special forces and paratroopers and these kind of military units that are sent behind enemy lines and essentially operate autonomously. But this was kind of a revolutionary idea in the 18th century. And there was this guy named Maurice de Saxe, Marshal de Saxe from the French army that had written this book called Reveries on the Art of War. It was kind of this mysterious book that he supposedly had written in a laudanum haze. And, you know, people read this book. Green had read this book. So this idea of the partisan officer, partisan warfare was kind of part of the intellectual conversation that was going on in the 18th century. And I talk in the book about how, again, it wasn't that the Continental Army was embracing this idea of the partisan officer kind of intellectually or from an organizational, you know, management perspective. They had to. Their resources were so much more limited. Their manpower was so much more limited. Their training was so much more limited that they had to kind of authorize these officers to operate independently, autonomously in the field. And, of course, the great example of the partisan officer for the Continental Army is Daniel Morgan, the Virginia brigadier general who takes a detachment from Green's army and achieves one of the most spectacular victories of the American Revolution at Cowtham's in January of 1780. He was operating entirely independently of his superior commander Green during that time. So and actually there's several great examples like Morgan in the book. I talk about Henry Lee, Otho Holland Williams. There's William R. Davey is a great example of this concept. So if you read the book, you'll read a lot about partisan officers and how the Continental Army was really kind of superior to the British Army in this facet. But that doesn't mean that British didn't have any, because they had on Cornwallis had one of the most famous examples in Danister Tarleton, who, of course, was the British officer who was also leading a partisan force at Cowtham's, but he was defeated. So I'm going to give you a kind of finishing up this presentation with an example of how Green used resilience, used adaptation to kind of achieve this strategic victory over Cornwallis in the race to the Dan. And before that, I got to go back. I forgot to talk about this diagram. I need to talk about this really quick. This is a diagram of resilience theory. So this kind of loop is an ecosystem. This is a model for an ecosystem. And basically, the ecosystem is transitioning through different stages of development. And here in the conservation phase is where those dominant actors in the ecosystem are kind of consuming so many resources that they're knocking the system out of whack. And right here between the K and the omega phase is where we have threshold. That's where the system changes fundamentally. So I really needed to go over that real quick before we get to this part of the presentation. Okay, so this is the situation that Green finds himself in when he gets to Charlotte in December 1780. This is Green up at Charlotte. He's got about 2,000 soldiers, about 1,400 continental soldiers, you know, kind of trained regular soldiers and the rest, militia. This is Cornwallis. He is camped in a town called Winsboro, South Carolina. But he's assembling his forces for this North Carolina invasion. And eventually, he's going to assemble a force of about 3,500 men, which is not a lot of men to take North Carolina and Virginia. But that was kind of the scale that this part of the war was being fought on. Green had about 2,000. Cornwallis had about 3,500 for this invasion. But Cornwallis had some other forces kind of holding down South Carolina, securing South Carolina. So here was one of his main outposts at Camden. And Camden was guarding the Great Wagon Road, which was the main north-south thoroughfare through the Carolinas. It came all the way down from Philadelphia through the Shenandoah Valley and into the Carolinas. But this was the route that Cornwallis was planning to march up to take North Carolina, to complete the southern strategy. Basically, he was just planning to march right up the road and take out Green and move into North Carolina. And basically, that's what Gates had done. Gates had marched down the road and tried to stop Cornwallis and failed. So now, Cornwallis is planning to march up the road with this invasion force. He's got kind of his main garrison down here at Charleston, protecting the port at Charleston. And then he's got an outpost here in 96 South Carolina. And this outpost was performing a couple of important jobs. A, it was kind of anchoring down this western frontier of his occupied territory. Now, the British were also occupying Georgia at this time as well. So, 96 was really kind of holding down that frontier. But even more important than that, 96 was providing security to the loyalists that lived in western South Carolina. There were actually quite a few loyalists in this part of South Carolina. And this had really been a very brutal civil war in this part of South Carolina. A lot of pillage, looting, murder, ambush, just back and forth. And as the tide of the war would shift, the ascendant side would seek reprisal. And this had gone back and forth and back and forth. And these loyalists were very concerned that if something should happen to 96, then it would unleash another round of these reprisals. And they were very concerned for their personal security in this part of South Carolina. So, one of the conventions of this time, one of the military conventions of this time, was you do not split an inferior force against a superior force. And that was exactly the situation that Green found himself in at Charlotte. He was outmanned. The British troops were better trained, better supplied. And kind of the military rules, standards of that time said you do not split your force in that case because you're just going to, you're going to, both of those parts are going to be weakened. And the superior force is just going to be able to crush each of those forces. It's better to keep your forces in one body and fight as one than to split. Green disregarded this maxim. And what he did was he split his army. And he sent Morgan with what was called the Flying Army, kind of the best part of his army, his cavalry and his most experienced soldiers over to the West. And he sent, he took kind of the part of his army that needed the most kind of reorganization and training, kind of to get them back into shape. He took them to a place called Cheraw, which is on the Pee Dee River. And he knew at the time that he was flying in the face of military convention. I mean, he realized at the time that he was opening himself up to criticism. And of course, if he lost, you know, he would be blamed for this, for making this move. And he wrote at the time, the split makes the most of my inferior force for it compels my adversary to divide his and holds him in doubt as to his own line of conduct. And that's exactly what it did. By splitting his army, he now threatened Camden and Charleston with the part of the army that was here on the Yadkin. And more significantly, Morgan was threatening 96 on Cornwallis' western flank. Now, Cornwallis intellectually understood what Green was trying to do. And at first, he tried to ignore Morgan. But he just, he couldn't get Morgan out of his head. And part of the problem was, was that a lot of the loyalists were, were buzzing in his ear. They were making him kind of reconsider, they were saying, well, Morgan's getting ready to take 96. And that's going to totally undermine the security of your western flank. And actually, there was an engagement at a place called Hammond's store, where elements of Morgan's forces defeated a loyalist force, and this kind of set in stage hysteria. So eventually, Cornwallis, even though he knew he could see intellectually what Green was trying to do, he, he changed his plans, he capitulated. And he sent a detachment to push Morgan off his western flank. And this was the detachment led by Bannister Tarleton. And it contained about 1100 of Cornwallis' best troops, his strongest troops. And so I'm not going to talk about the Battle of Cowthens tonight. But I do talk about it quite extensively. In the book, I devote a couple of chapters to it. And basically, as you all probably know, what happened was Morgan achieved this spectacular victory at Cowthens. And this totally upended Cornwallis' plans for this northern campaign. Because not only was Tarleton defeated, but Morgan was able to capture about 800 of those 1100 troops. And these were, you know, Cornwallis was trying to invade North Carolina with only 3500 men, he needed to get these 800 men back. So now Cornwallis is reacting again to Green's strategy. And he is going to pursue Morgan into western South Carolina and western North Carolina to try to get these troops back. So this is my resilience theory of the race to the dam. So Cornwallis comes after Morgan, he's desperate to get these troops back, he moves into western South Carolina, immediately, he gets lost. He can't, his intelligence networks fail him. He realizes that his supply, his wagons, his supply train is too long that he's got too many camp followers. Meanwhile, Morgan is escaping across the Catawba River at Cowens Ford. Cornwallis is stopped at the Catawba because of the rain. He can't follow Morgan across because the river has risen and it can't be forded. So he has this dramatic bonfire at a place called Ramsers Mill. And he is there throwing his own baggage into this bonfire and saying, we are going to pursue Nathaniel Green to the end of the world. So he's committing psychologically to this pursuit, which is totally undermining his original plan to march into North Carolina. Meanwhile, Green is racing across the Carolinas. He rejoins Morgan at the Catawba and kind of takes command of the troops there. He's able to organize the militia at Cowens Ford to fight this delaying action to keep Cornwallis, to delay Cornwallis at the Catawba River. He sends the rest of his troops to Guilford Courthouse. Morgan and Green escape across the Yadkin River again. They knew how many boats were there. They knew where the boats were stored. They were able to get the boats. And just as the British were pulling up to the Yadkin River, the Americans are unloading on the other side. And again, because of the rain, the river couldn't be forded. So Cornwallis has to march to the north and cross the Yadkin at a place called Shaliford. Meanwhile, Green's able to reunite the two branches of his army at Guilford Courthouse. He briefly considers fighting Cornwallis at that point, but he realizes that he doesn't have the militia support to fight. So he initiates this retreat across the Dan River, where again, he's collected boats, he has supplies, he's done a thorough reconnaissance, so he knows exactly how he can get across the river. Cornwallis sets off in pursuit. There's this neck-and-neck chase over the last four days of the race to the Dan, but again, Green just barely escapes across the Dan. The British pull up a few hours later and there's nothing they can do. So they're demoralized, they go back. And my argument, my resilience theory perspective, is that through his adaptation, through his resilience, Nathaniel Green is able to not only adapt to these conditions, he's actually able to create this threshold through his splitting of the army that entirely changes the ecosystem of the Southern theater. And Cornwallis is not able to adapt. He's not able to be resilient. He's bound by this equilibrium perspective that prevents him from being able to catch Green. So there's this argument that because of the brilliance of this strategic retreat, that you can create a direct line from the race to the Dan to Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown eight months later. And I admit it's not a direct argument, but it's an argument that requires what I would call qualitative understanding of the Southern theater. And so we're not just talking about troop numbers or the outcomes of battles because we know that Green actually lost the battle of Guilford Courthouse about a month later in March 15th. And so if you just kind of go by the meta-narrative of the American Revolution, well after defeating Green at Guilford Courthouse, Cornwallis just decided to go into Virginia. And we never really know why he elected to make that move. But I think the argument that the race to the Dan had a direct impact on that move was because this had been such a frustrating campaign that the British had kind of, the Americans had escaped the British so narrowly again and again, that psychologically Cornwallis, if not his army, if not demoralized, then they'd had enough. They realized that their prospects in North Carolina were minimal. They couldn't hold the state. They were exhausted. They were frustrated with the loyalist support they'd received during this portion of the campaign. And essentially Cornwallis just decided to abandon the Carolinas and move into Virginia. And of course, then he was trapped and surrendered at Yorktown. So that is my resiliency perspective on the race to the Dan and a little bit about my book and my perspective in writing the book. And now I would be delighted to take some of your questions. Thank you, Mr. Waters. We do have some questions. The first one is, do you cover anything or very much about Guilford Courthouse in your book? So yeah, I really, the book kind of ends emotionally at the Dan. You know, there's this scene that I think this is Henry Lee writing about this kind of celebration that the men are having in the race. Once they get across the river, officer and soldier met with radiant smiles and beaming eye around every watch fire. There were tales of risks run, feats performed, and privations endured. So that's kind of the emotional climax of the book. I do write a couple more chapters just kind of explaining what happened for the rest of the, this period of the war kind of leading to Cornwallis moving into Virginia and surrendering at Yorktown, including the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. But I don't go into kind of a real in-depth analysis of Guilford Courthouse the way I do with, certainly with Cowpens, with Cowens Ford, with Camden, some of the other battles that kind of are encompassed in this part of the narrative. Okay. The next question, how much control did Green exercise over the irregulars, such as Marion, Pickens, Sumter, and other smaller ranger groups in Cornwallis' rear? So that is a great question and that's really what my first book is about, The Quaker and the Game Con. So I'm just going to scroll back through these slides real quick. In that book, I really do go into depth about that portion of the campaign where Green is trying to use these partisan forces, these Marion, Sumter, Pickens, to kind of extricate this British occupation force from South Carolina. Now, as far as in the race to the Dan, to the end of the world, I do talk a lot about the kind of the militia element in the Battle of Cowpens, because that was such an important part of that battle and just the way that Morgan was able to kind of relate to the militia forces and kind of, he could kind of, he was born in Virginia and he could kind of, he was able to communicate with the militia forces very effectively. Now, some of those forces stayed with Morgan's troops as they moved into North Carolina, but after the Battle of the Cowpens, well, and then after Cowens Ford, when the North Carolina militia is really able to kind of put up a resistance to the British as they're fording the Catawba River, after that part of the story, the kind of the militia contribution diminishes, so I don't talk about the militia that much in the latter part of to the end of the world. Okay, next question. Do you cover Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox? So, not in this book. Marion was, it's funny because the two books that I've written, I consider them kind of two different parts of the same story, and in the Quaker and the Gamecock, I talk about Green's relationship primarily with Sumter, because Sumter is really the kind of the overall commander of South Carolina militia at this time, but also about the role of Marion, and Marion and Henry Lee kind of join up during that early portion of Green's command, and then I go to the Race to the Dan in the second book, to the end of the world, and then I come back to the South Carolina militia in the Quaker and the Gamecock. So, you know, I'm not saying you have to buy both of the books, but it really helps to understand kind of the continuum of the story and how all these militia elements played into the Southern campaigns. Okay, let me just make a point here that to the attendees, Mr. Waters and I were talking earlier, and I invited him to come back and give us a presentation on that particular book, so hopefully he'll do that and you will return to us. Here's a question, very contemporary and a little different, but the writer asks, perhaps an off-the-wall question, what, if anything, could Ukraine and Morgan in their battle against technically and numerically superior Russian forces? I'm sorry, repeat the question. Bottom line is, what could the Ukrainian partisans learn from Green and Morgan in their fight against the Russians right now? Yeah, well, I think, I mean, maybe we're seeing a little bit of that, that kind of resilient perspective where the Ukrainians are being a little bit more adaptive to the situation that's developing there, and the Russians are kind of tied to their strategies that at this point in the conflict don't appear to be as effective as probably we all thought they might be. So, I would say that, you know, it's really that adaptation, that resiliency kind of perspective, you know, the side that's able to change and adapt to the evolving ecosystem of the conflict is going to be able to find success. Absolutely, it does seem that there is a parallel in that regard. Here's another question. First of all, this writer says, excellent presentation. Thank you. I'm wondering to what extent the British defeat at Cowpens, thorough as it was, may have set the tone of British morale for the campaign? Well, I think, yeah, I think certainly it had an impact. You know, I talk about, you know, there's a famous scene, you know, that's in the book that is not original to my book by any means, but Tarleton has ridden back to the British camp, and he's telling Cornwallis about what happened, and apparently this was witnessed by an American observer, an American who was being held at the camp, and as Tarleton was telling Cornwallis what happened, he's kind of bearing down on this sword that he's leaning on until the sword actually snaps. So, you know, we can kind of use that as a visual illustration of the fact that Cornwallis was not happy. He was very upset. Now, I think that, you know, Cornwallis would go through these spells, like a lot of us, like me, you know, I get down, I get, you know, a little bit discouraged, and it takes me a day or two to get back on my feet, you know, and kind of get my attitude readjusted, and I think Cornwallis was very much like that, and you see that happening to him a couple of times. I think, for me, the more interesting kind of portion of the story was when he had made this commitment to kind of pursue Morgan, and he kind of gets lost in the woods, and I theorize in the book that he has a psychological breakdown, and he's really, he kind of, he's unable to function, and so then, when he gets to Ramsor's Mill, you know, he has this big bonfire, and he says, okay, we're going to have to, we're not keeping up, we got to burn all our stuff so we can keep up, and it's really Cornwallis himself that kind of has to burn away this psychological conflict. It's really, he's having the bonfire for himself to psych himself up to continue this pursuit of green across North Carolina. Very well. Well, thank you, sir. Mr. Waters, I want to thank you very much for a captivating presentation. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Again, do hope that you will be back to see us. Again, I want to, for our attendees tonight, want to invite you next week to another Revolutionary War presentation. That presentation is entitled The Armstrong Brothers, One Pennsylvania Family's Contribution to Victory During the American Revolution with Colonel Dave Smith. And after this very interesting and informative discussion, I think it sets us up pretty well for that. I think that, let me see, we may have one more, we may have one more question for you. And I'll tell you what, we'll, if you have time for us, do you have time for one more question? Yes, I do. Okay. The question is, I'm reading and enjoying your book right now. What is your assessment of General Ugar, who is pretty much unknown? Yeah, Huey, it's actually pronounced Huey. Okay, pardon me, which I've made that same mistake, and you wouldn't know that probably unless you lived in South Carolina. It's a Huguenot, French Huguenot name. Okay. So Huey was actually captured during, he was in a prisoner at Charleston during this part of the campaign. And kind of the most interesting contribution that he makes during this portion of the Southern campaigns is he's, he is kind of reporting on British reactions in Charleston. So he's, he's kind of letting, he's in his correspondence, he's telling the Americans how the British are reacting in Charleston to things that are going on in other parts of the theater. Huey does not have a particularly outstanding reputation as a fighting general. However, he is a very significant figure in South Carolina history, and he actually left a pretty substantial memoir as well that I've used many times as a reference for some of my research. So I'm not sure that was the answer that your person was looking for. But that's, that's off the top of my head, my feelings on Huey. Okay, very well. One writer has just, one of our participants has just written in and said it's that phonetically in the book, and I, you're right, I blew it. Well, once again, we get corrected as well by the audience, which is absolutely fine. It is Huguenot, I know that. So in conclusion, two other folks have written in. One says, great presentation, well delivered, I intend to buy both books on your wife's website. And another says, thank you for a presented program. Absolutely. So, so again, sir, thank you so much. Okay. To you and all our attendees tonight. Thank you. We hope that you'll join us next week. So Mr. Waters, we look forward to seeing you again. And on that note, everyone, I will say good evening. Good night.