State

From 1 to 3 P.M Tho liloorly hours in IV'urlli Caro¬ lina's history . Hi* hi Rkt: im is The Southern campaign of ihc American Revolution, tlte one that finished the war our Yankee friends claim to have started, cunte to a climax in Guilford County one crop March day in 1781. It was March 15. from I until 3 in the afternoon From the westward road out of present Guilford College the army of Lord Cornwallis appeared. 2.500 strong, a band of tested veterans, with weary marches all the way from Charleston behind them They were alter revenge for King'» Mountain, and Some 4.000 Americans waited for them, nervously Commanding was Nathanael Greene. Washington's fight¬ ing Quaker, sent to recoup in the South. A Rhode Islander, given to drinking tea in these backwoods, and reading classics — Swift, for one. But also a man who knew how to Fight Greene had the oddly assorted army spread in three lines. The first about half a mile long, lay along the present western boundary of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park. Most of the farm boys, who had never seen a shot fired in anger, watched from behind a rail fence as the scarlet of the British and hung there, and cut great holes British ranks. Except for little islands of mountain riflemen on the flanks, however, the first line broke, disappeared, never to but they British formations and took consider¬ able toll, fighting like Indians British drive turned them out. however, and they swarmed downhill into a clear¬ ing where Greene's last line wailed The last hope was Maryland, whose the British. «4 ten hand to hand, clubbed muskets, bayonets and lor more than half an hour Coins stopped this, and won the ground, by firing grapeshot from two through the backs of the Guards, his crack troops, and about half his casualties of the day. By night, when a terrible rainstorm broke, Cornwallis had about a third of his men dead or wounded, Greene had pulled back out of reach, and the British general aw fit to proclaim victory But two days later he began his retreat, to Wilmington for supplies, on the road leading to Yorktown Tar Heel patriots in later years de¬ fended their militia at this battle, and the old books arc still warm with the controversy. It mattered little, how¬ ever. whether the green farm boy» ran that day — things were so bad for the invaders that Cornwallis was to say: "Such fighting I have never wen since God made me.” And on the tloor of Parliament, Fox was to say. “Another such victory would destroy the British army.” Rilihly Francisco army i is day the British kid pushed on about half a mile farther, into big timber — near the present Southern Railway line — they met a different Virginians, many ol tore up ТИС »TATC. Jus» so. tu»» Here s wlui it says on his mom IWCnt at Guilford Battleground: "Peter Francisco, a giant of in¬ credible strength, killed II British soldiers with his own broad and although That information is jusi enough to pique one’s curiosity but history con¬ tain* little real information about him Л Remarkable Fighter Foote, in his Sltichet о/ Vorr/r Car.Jim,. tells that "the noted Fran¬ cisco performed a deed of Mood with¬ out a parallel In that short encounter, he cut down II men with his leirMc broadsword. One of the guards thnist his bayonet and. in spite of the parry- ing of Francisco's sword, pinned Ills leg to his horse As the soldier turned and fled. Francisco made a furious {Ctmnnurd on part 60> ■ Э