John Eager Howard

John Eager Howard. NPS photo.

John Eager Howard (1752–1827) commanded the Continental line at the Battle of Cowpens, and for a few minutes on a January morning in 1781 the outcome of the battle rested on what he did with it. Nathanael Greene thought him "as good an officer as the world afforded, and deserves a statue of gold, no less than the Roman or Grecian heroes." Congress sent a silver medal instead.

Before the war found him

Howard was born on 4 June 1752 to a wealthy Maryland planter, and had the education that came with that. He was commissioned a captain in the 2nd Maryland Brigade of the Flying Camp — a mobile reserve — in July 1776, and rose quickly: major in the 4th Maryland that December, lieutenant colonel in the 5th Maryland by March 1778.

Those who served with him described a contradiction. He was placid and reserved in company, and none of that carried onto a battlefield, where he was reliably in the worst of the fighting and reliably willing to use a bayonet. By January 1781 he had the Continentals under Daniel Morgan.

Cowpens

The armies met on 17 January 1781 at the Cow Pens, a grazing ground in the South Carolina upcountry. Morgan could account for 970 men and probably had more; Banastre Tarleton had about 1,050. Both sides fought in the long straight lines that eighteenth-century tactics called for.

Morgan did something else. He put his militia in front of his regulars in two lines and told them to fire twice and fall back — the first line about 120 sharpshooters ordered to aim at officers. Behind them stood roughly 300 Continentals from Maryland and Delaware with some Virginia militia. That was Howard's line, and both he and Morgan made sure it knew the retreat in front of it was the plan and not a collapse.

The first two lines did as they were told. Then, with the regulars and the British locked together, Tarleton sent in Fraser's 71st Highlanders against Howard's exposed right. Howard ordered the Virginia militia on that flank to wheel backwards and to the right to meet them.

The order was misheard, and the whole line began to walk away. It is the moment the battle could have been lost, and what saved it is that the line walked away in perfect order. Morgan rode up to ask what was happening; Howard pointed out that a line retreating in good order is not a line that has been beaten. Morgan told him to take it to the rising ground, turn, and fire. His men did, "uncommonly cool", and gave the British what Howard called "an unexpected and deadly fire."

Into the disorder that followed, Howard ordered a bayonet charge. The Americans closed on both British flanks at once — a double envelopment, the manoeuvre every officer of the period had read about and few ever executed — and the battle was over in under an hour. Morgan wrote that the charge "was done with such address that the enemy fled with the utmost precipitation…. We pushed our advantages so effectually, that they never had an opportunity of rallying."

The rest of the southern campaign

Howard fought on at Hobkirk's Hill (25 April 1781), Ninety Six (22 May – 19 June 1781) and Eutaw Springs (8 September 1781). The wounds he took at Eutaw Springs ended his military career and hurt him for the rest of his life.

"Light-Horse Harry" Lee's summary is the one that stuck: "We have seen him at the Battle of Cowpens seize the critical moment and turn the fortune of the day; — alike conspicuous, though not alike successful, at Guilford and the Eutaws; and at all times, and all occasions eminently useful. He was justly ranked among the chosen sons of the South."

Afterwards

He went home to Maryland and in 1787 married Margaretta "Peggy" Oswald Chew, daughter of Chief Justice Chew of Pennsylvania. Public life followed: delegate to the Continental Congress in 1788, Governor of Maryland from 1788 to 1791, United States Senator from 1796 to 1803. He was a figure in the Federalist Party and stood unsuccessfully as its candidate for Vice President in 1816.

Much of the land Baltimore now stands on was his. He gave the city the ground for its monument to George Washington, and an equestrian statue of Howard stands near it. Maryland's state song names him.

He died at home on 12 October 1827 and is buried at St Paul's churchyard in Baltimore.

Further reading

• Lawrence E. Babits, A Devil of a Whipping
• Thomas J. Fleming, Downright Fighting: The Story of Cowpens
• Mark M. Boatner III, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution
• W. J. Wood, Leaders and Battles: The Art of Military Leadership
• John Buchanan, The Road to Guilford Courthouse

Where this belongs

• Cowpens National Battlefield

Sources

Written from the National Park Service's account of
John Eager Howard,
a work of the United States government in the public domain.