American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms Read online

  Morgan told them their part in the battle would be short and sweet. All he needed them to do was hold formation for three volleys. Then, battle over, they would be released from service—and be called heroes, even.

  “Just hold up your heads, boys, three fires,” he said, “and you are free, and then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls kiss you, for your gallant conduct!”

  Just three shots and you are free.

  Morgan’s men chowed down on a hearty meal of butchered beef fresh from the pasture, stacked their guns, and tried to grab some shut-eye. Just before sunrise on January 17, Tarleton the Butcher and his 300 cavalry and 950 infantry troops fell into Morgan’s trap.

  Nostalgic Currier & Ives prints depicting American militia men setting off for the Revolution.

  Library of Congress

  Morgan knew of Tarleton’s hair-trigger lust for the lightning-fast combat strike, so he constructed a plan that exploited the strengths and weaknesses of his own men, and the peculiar dynamics of the terrain at Cowpens. It all hinged on an elaborate trick, a stunning deception that required split-second timing by the Americans.

  At dawn Tarleton emerged from the woods, saw the Americans, and quickly formed up his troops. Just as Morgan hoped, he lunged like a hound after a thick steak, barely waiting for all his men to arrive.

  The British were cold, dehydrated, and exhausted from a long, fast march, and they hadn’t eaten or slept properly for days. But Banastre Tarleton saw his chance for a grand victory, one that would annihilate a good portion of the American southern army. His men played drums and fifes and cheered as they covered the length of three football fields in three minutes.

  The British were, Morgan wrote a few days later, “running at us as if they intended to eat us up.”

  Morgan had laid his pieces on the battlefield like a chess master. He deployed his troops in three main formations—the first line made up of riflemen-sharpshooters, the second line of militia armed with rifles and muskets, then musket-armed regulars. They created what you could call “a defense-in-depth on high ground,” or a “reverse slope defensive strategy.” The idea was to goad Tarleton into a premature victory rush up a broadly sloping hill, where Morgan would snap the trap shut.

  Morgan put his long-rifle snipers at the tip of the spear. Some one hundred and fifty sharpshooting riflemen from Georgia and the Carolinas scattered in swamps and behind trees, guerrilla-style. Following Morgan’s plan, they opened fire individually at the advancing British from close range, with special attention given to the officers. Then, having blooded the enemy, they broke off and ran uphill toward the American lines, re-forming to commence long-range fire. With their slow reloading time and lack of bayonets, these soldiers had a special incentive to try to avoid close contact with the British regulars toting bayonet-tipped muskets.

  The American second line, theoretically the riskiest bunch and the most likely to break, consisted of roughly 1,000 North and South Carolina militia troops. They opened fire, as Morgan ordered, inflicting major damage on the royal troops who were less than forty yards away. Most of the Americans couldn’t manage to pull off the three shots Morgan hoped for, and some could only manage one, but no matter. As a group, they turned their backs to the charging British and hightailed up the hill, simulating a panicked retreat.

  As intended, the sight of a broadly collapsing American line cheered Tarleton’s remaining troops, who charged forward uphill—bloodied, weakened, and disorganized, not realizing that the third and final line was made up of five hundred battle-hardened regular American troops. These were General Dan Morgan’s best men, the Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia continentals. These seasoned vets acted as a screen for the fleeing militia troops, who ran behind and through them, then about-faced and started re-forming into a new unseen fourth line preparing to face the British. Meanwhile a reserve American cavalry force of light dragoons under Colonel William Washington (second cousin of George) stood ready to pounce at the right moment.

  The American third line opened fire in good order, leading one militia man to report, “When the regulars fired, it seemed like one sheet of flame from right to left. Oh! It was beautiful.”

  But suddenly, disaster appeared for the Americans.

  In the chaos of combat, an order by American Lieutenant Colonel John Howard to his Virginia regulars to adjust their line to face the onrushing Scottish Highlanders of the 71st Regiment was misinterpreted as an order to retreat. Instead of wheeling to form a new line perpendicular to their unit, portions of the line withdrew, triggering a domino effect, and most of the American regulars started withdrawing. Colonel Howard later explained the catastrophe-in-progress: “Seeing my right flank was exposed to the enemy, I attempted to change the front of Wallace’s company. In doing this, some confusion ensued, and first a part and then the whole of the company commenced a retreat. The officers along the line seeing this and supposing that orders had been given for a retreat, faced their men about and moved off.”

  To the British, it looked like yet another collapse of the American lines was under way, and they rushed forward, now in badly disconnected fragments.

  This was not, however, part of the American plan, and it threatened to doom them on the battlefield.

  But Morgan and two of his officers reacted instantly to the sudden crisis and created a new plan on the spot: stop the retreat, spin the whole line of five hundred Virginia regulars around, and blast the British from inside fifteen yards away, shooting muskets virtually from hip level.

  “They are coming on like a mob!” declared cavalry leader Colonel Washington, sensing an opportunity to strike the British with a final blow. “Give them a fire,” he called to Lieutenant Colonel Howard of the Virginia militia, “and I will charge them!”

  Howard yelled for his troops to stop and about-face. They did exactly that. “In a minute we had a perfect line,” recalled Howard. “The enemy were now very near us. Our men commenced a very destructive fire, which they little expected, and a few rounds occasioned great disorder in the ranks. While in this confusion, I ordered a charge with the bayonet, which order was obeyed with great alacrity.” As Dan Morgan later explained, “We retired in good Order about 50 Paces, formed, advanced on the Enemy & gave them a fortunate Volley which threw them into Disorder.”

  At the same moment the Continentals fired, the American cavalry, until now held in reserve, appeared from behind the hill. They raced around the British and struck into their ranks. Simultaneously, the militia troops, having re-formed behind the screen of the regulars, jumped back into the fight, ripping away with musket and rifle fire into the British left flank. The exhausted British troops, stunned by the abrupt volley of fire and with their officer ranks withered by constant pressure from American long-rifle fire on their flanks, couldn’t take the punishment.

  Now it was the Brits’ turn to panic and haul ass in the opposite direction. British Legion infantrymen fled. The Highlanders tried to form pockets in a doomed attempt to defend themselves, but their commander quickly ordered them to drop their guns in the dirt. Tarleton galloped onto the field and tried to rally his fleeing troops, briefly engaging in a mounted saber duel with the American cavalry. He soon realized it was hopeless and fled himself, barely escaping with his life. When he got back to British lines, he recommended that his boss court-martial him.

  Dan Morgan had manipulated the enemy into a battlefield commander’s dream of maneuver warfare: the double envelopment, first perfected by Hannibal against the Romans at the Battle of Cannae two thousand years earlier. As the chief of the nineteenth-century German General Staff Alfred von Schlieffen wrote, the “Cannae model” was a sure recipe for victory in battle: “The enemy front is not the goal of the principal attack. The mass of the troops and the reserves should not be concentrated against the enemy front; the essential is that the flanks be crushed. . . . To bring about a decisive and annihilating victory requires an attack against the front and agains
t one or both flanks.” At Cowpens, ol’ Dan Morgan slammed the British in their left flank, their right flank, and their rear. It was a complete victory.

  In the twenty-minute battle, Tarleton lost roughly a hundred men, about a third of them officers. Over eight hundred were taken prisoner. Less than fifty Americans were killed. The Americans captured Tarleton’s cannon, supplies, and equipment, even his personal slaves. It was the worst psychological defeat for the British since Saratoga. Chief Justice John Marshall later wrote, “seldom has a battle, in which greater numbers were not engaged, been so important in its consequences as that of Cowpens.” The Battle of Cowpens, wrote British historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan, led to “an unbroken chain of consequences to the catastrophe at Yorktown which finally separated America from the British crown.”

  Tarleton escaped, but neither he nor his commander were loose in America for much longer. In October 1781, sealed off from reinforcements by George Washington’s army and the French navy, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia. Benny the Butcher Tarleton escaped, returned to England, wrote a book, served in Parliament, and enjoyed a comfortable estate in retirement. Dan Morgan was awarded a special medal by the new U.S. Congress.

  Original battle flag from the Battle of Cowpens.

  Library of Congress

  I like to think of my ancestor Major Houston Sr. standing beside Dan Morgan as the redcoats surrendered. It’s recorded that the Americans graciously treated the defeated British officers to a delicious feast to show their honor. If Major Houston was anything like me, he introduced those tea drinkers to venison steaks and American whiskey. Now, that’s honorable.

  Remember Tim Murphy, the sniper who killed General Fraser at Saratoga with a shot from his long rifle?

  He was reported to be in the crowd of American soldiers who witnessed the surrender ceremony at Yorktown, when eight thousand British troops stacked their guns and a military band played “The World Turned Upside Down.”

  I bet he had a fat grin on his face.

  When I was growing up, I heard a lot of different stories about Sam Houston Junior. Some of them weren’t too good—you see, he earned a reputation among some folks as a general who ran away from the action during the Texas Revolution.

  My ancestor, a coward?

  Damn.

  But if you check deeper into the story, you’ll see that Sam—founding father of Texas—wasn’t a coward at all, far from it. He was a hell of a crafty tactician and a master strategist. Though sometimes, as Dan Morgan proved at the Battle of Cowpens, running away from your enemy can turn out to be a good way to smash him right in the jaw.

  Samuel Houston Sr. died when his son was fourteen years old. But I think it’s entirely possible that father and son might have talked about what happened at Cowpens, and maybe—just maybe—that served as inspiration for what became Sam Houston’s biggest moment on the battlefield in the spring of 1836.

  In the decades after the Revolution, Americans kept pushing west—and took their long rifles with them every step of the way. They proved themselves on the frontier, and even did service in the War of 1812—not a particularly fun war for the U.S., though it at least showed Britain we wouldn’t let them push us around without fighting back. Then between October 1835 and April 1836, long rifles and a host of other firearms starred in Texas settlers’ bid to shake free from Mexico. In fact, the Texas Revolution was like a big gun show, showcasing the grab-bag assortment of weapons available on the open market at the time. It also offered a last snapshot of the old firearms designs that were soon to give way to new technologies. There is no good inventory of the guns used at these battles, but experts make educated guesses.

  When Mexican dictator and president-general Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops marched up to the Alamo in late February 1836 and began their epic thirteen-day siege, they outnumbered the fewer than two hundred rebellious Texas volunteers inside the fort by 10 to 1. Here and at the later Battle of San Jacinto, both sides would have been armed with European-patterned, muzzle-loading, single-shot, flintlock muskets like the English Brown Bess and some French models, too, plus Spanish-style escopeta short muskets and Spanish pistolas that would have featured the classic Miquelet lock.

  The Texans would have had American long rifles, but also “blunderbuss” short-range muskets, carbines (a shorter version of the musket or rifle, often preferred by cavalry), bird guns, and some pistols here and there. The Texans may even have had a few guns featuring the new “caplock” or percussion-cap firing mechanism, which was a big improvement on the flintlock because it replaced the troublesome flash pan and flint with a sturdy, waterproof copper cap that triggered a spark when it was struck. Toss in some Bowie knives, tomahawks, and Belduques (a long fighting knife similar to the Bowie), and you’ve got yourself a gang that can really do some damage.

  During the Battle of the Alamo, one legendary American long-rifleman was spotted on the wall by Captain Rafael Soldana of the Mexican Army. The “tall man with flowing hair” on the wall wore “a buckskin suit with a cap all of a pattern entirely different from those worn by his comrades. This man would rest his long gun and fire, and we all learned to keep a good distance when he was seen to make ready to shoot. He rarely missed his mark, and when he fired, he always rose to his feet and calmly reloaded his gun, seemingly indifferent to the shots fired at him by our men. He had a strong, resonant voice and often railed at us.”

  Soldana later learned the man was known as “Kwockey”—the national celebrity frontiersman and former congressman Davy Crockett.

  After almost two weeks of siege, Mexicans punched through the Alamo’s flimsy defenses and killed or massacred all but two of the Texan defenders of the Alamo, including Crockett. A month later, when General Santa Anna ordered the cold-blooded bayonet-and-bullet massacre of 353 more Texan prisoners near Goliad on Palm Sunday, March 27, terrified Texas civilians started fleeing eastward.

  The panicked exodus was called the Runaway Scrape, and Texas General Sam Houston assumed the role of Skedaddler-in-Chief. Day after day, Sam led his troops eastward, away from Santa Anna, moving as fast as he could in the direction of Louisiana. Texas politicians were appalled, as were some of Sam’s own troops. They publicly wondered if he was a coward.

  “The King of the Wild Frontier”: Born in Tennessee, Davy Crockett died, long rifle in hand, defending the Alamo in 1836.

  Library of Congress

  But Houston was just biding his time, looking for an opening to turn around and strike. The deeper Santa Anna marched into Texas, the more worn out his troops and equipment got. Camped near the meeting of the San Jacinto River and the Buffalo Bayou, Santa Anna decided it was time for a siesta on the afternoon of April 21, 1836. He forgot to post sentries. His men lay snoozing as a burly, mangy-looking Sam Houston and his more than eight hundred Texans and their allies snuck up through the cover of a forested hill, led by a contingent of uniformed Kentucky riflemen. “Now hold your fire, men,” Houston cautioned, “until you get the order!”

  It was time for payback, Texas-style.

  Screaming “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember Goliad!” the Texans overwhelmed the Mexicans in a mere eighteen minutes, enough time for Sam Houston to lose two horses—both shot out from under him—and sustain a bad gunshot wound to the ankle.

  The Texans were in no mood for mercy and unleashed a full-scale slaughter. No one was spared, not even the wounded or soldiers trying to surrender. “Take prisoners like the Meskins do!” shouted one Texan, and scores of Mexicans were shot to pieces after surrendering, or hunted down in the river and clubbed to death while pleading “Me no Alamo!” or “Me no Goliad!” A horrified Sam Houston tried to stop the massacre, shouting “Parade! Parade!” in a vain attempt to call his men back to form a dress formation and leave off killing. By the time the butchery stopped, a total of 630 Mexicans died that day, versus nine Texans.

  The people of Texas were jubilant, grasping that independence was theirs. A messenger ra
ced into one refugee camp on the Sabine River waving his hat and shouting, “San Jacinto! San Jacinto! The Mexicans are whipped and Santa Anna a prisoner!” A lady named Kate Scurry Terrell witnessed the reaction and wrote: “The scene that followed beggars description. People embraced, laughed and wept and prayed, all in one breath. As the moon rose over the vast flower-decked prairie, the soft southern wind carried peace to tired hearts and grateful slumber.”

  Sam Houston—and his long rifle—accept Santa Anna’s surrender.

  Library of Congress

  When Santa Anna was captured, he asked Sam Houston to “be generous to the vanquished.”

  Houston told the prisoner curtly, “You should have remembered that, sir, at the Alamo.” Santa Anna would eventually be shipped off to Washington; he later returned to Mexico and in fact would go to war twice more, against France and finally against the U.S.

  The epic revenge-victory at the Battle of San Jacinto marked the birth of a free American Texas, and it altered the fate of three republics: Mexico, Texas, and the United States, then a country barely fifty years old. Mexico was forced to sign a withdrawal and peace treaty three weeks later that conferred legitimacy on the new Republic of Texas. Mexico never ruled Texas again, despite periodic raids in the 1840s. The United States absorbed the Republic of Texas in 1845, plus more Mexican land after the Mexican War in 1848.

  If you drive about twenty-five miles southeast of downtown Houston today, you’ll come across the 570-foot-tall San Jacinto Monument, the world’s tallest memorial column. (Everything’s bigger in Texas, right?) The inscription reads, in part: “Measured by its results, San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican-American War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American Nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.”