Battle of Charlotte

On September 26, 1780, forces clashed at Charlotte in an engagement tied to the American Revolutionary War. The fighting unfolded on the grounds of the Mecklenburg County courthouse of that era, a spot now occupied by the Bank of America tower near Trade and Tryon Streets in Charlotte, North Carolina's uptown district. Riding ahead of the main body, an advance guard belonging to General Charles Cornwallis pushed into the town and ran into militia from America, positioned carefully by William R. Davie just outside the courthouse. During the resulting clash, George Hanger, at the head of British cavalry, suffered a wound. Since the modest American contingent had planned nothing beyond a brief show of resistance, they pulled back toward the north, heading for Salisbury, North Carolina, once Cornwallis arrived with the bulk of his troops.

Battle

Riding boldly into the settlement, Hanger pushed his cavalry ahead of him while carelessly abandoning the infantry to the rear. His troopers pressed forward even once the twenty men positioned behind the house began firing, and they did not slow until a heavy volley erupted from the militia line stationed at the stone wall. Confusion followed when that first militia line shifted to allow the second to take position, a movement Hanger wrongly read as a retreat, prompting him to press the charge further. The result was a punishing crossfire, caught between the second line and the cavalry units posted on either flank to the east and west. A wound brought Hanger down, and his horsemen fell back in disorder toward the Legion's waiting infantry.

Drawn by the noise of the fighting, Cornwallis rode up to survey matters for himself. Irritated by his cavalry's reluctance to renew the assault, he called out that the Legion had everything to lose and nothing whatsoever to gain. He then directed the light infantry to move up in support of the Legion, and together they succeeded in driving through and securing the town.

Aftermath

Accounts of the losses vary among historians. Mark Boatner puts British losses at fifteen total casualties, while Patrick O'Kelley records no deaths on their side but thirty-three wounded men. John S. Pancake offers a different tally, citing twelve killed and forty-seven wounded among the British forces. On the Patriot side, O'Kelley lists five killed, six wounded, and twelve taken prisoner, whereas Boatner combines all such losses into a single figure of thirty.

Hanger dismissed the clash as merely "a trifling insignificant skirmish," yet its true significance lay in warning Cornwallis that more opposition still awaited him. Hanger himself soon grew sick, which weakened Tarleton's Legion even further at a critical moment. Rather than pushing toward Hillsboro as planned, Cornwallis chose instead to settle his forces in Charlotte. Even there, his hold on the area remained shaky, since Patriot militia units kept disrupting any meaningful contact with the surrounding countryside. Matters worsened when the force guarding his left flank, under Patrick Ferguson, was nearly wiped out on October 7, 1780, during the fighting at Kings Mountain, with most of the men killed, wounded, or captured. Faced with ongoing word of Patriot militia stirring throughout South Carolina, Cornwallis ultimately pulled his troops back to Winnsboro, South Carolina, that November.