The Battle of Cowpens: Almost Entirely a Presbyterian Army

Continental Army - Lefferts Watercolor

By Rev. David T. Myers - Posted at This Day in Presbyterian History:

When Lord Cornwallis brought his British army into the southern colonies, it was the Presbyterian colonists of that part of the infant nation which met him and his forces in every county and town with their Bibles, their Psalm books, and their rifles. Sending a fierce cavalry officer in Colonel Banastre Tarleton, who rarely gave quarter, into western South Carolina, with a picked force of 1100 men, they came up against the smaller American forces at a grazing ground on the Broad River called the Cowpens.

Commanding the American militia and Continentals was Brig. General Daniel Morgan, a Presbyterian elder. In charge of the second of three lines of American soldiers was Presbyterian elder Andrew Pickens. The majority of the militia were from the Presbyterian congregations of South Carolina and Virginia. It was almost entirely a Presbyterian army. All through the night, the elders prayed with the men to ask God to give them the victory.

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