Читать книгу "Downright Fighting". The Story of Cowpens онлайн

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Adding to this reassurance was 45-year-old Daniel Morgan’s appearance and reputation. He was over six feet tall, with massive shoulders and arms, toughened from his youthful years as a wagonmaster in western Virginia. In his younger days he had been one of the champion sluggers and wrestlers of the Shenandoah Valley. His wide volatile face could still flash from cheerfulness to pugnacity in an instant. In the five years of the Revolution, Morgan had become a living legend: the man who led a reckless assault into the very mouths of British cannon on the barricaded streets of Quebec in 1775, whose corps of some 570 riflemen had been the cutting edge of the American army that defeated the British at Saratoga in 1777.

The victor at Saratoga, Gen. Horatio Gates (top) came south in July 1780 to command the Southern Department after the main Continental army in the South was surrendered at Charleston. Charles Willson Peale shows Gates at 49 with an open face and a steady gaze.

A month later he himself was routed at Camden by Cornwallis. Cornwallis was only 45, two years after Yorktown, when he sat for Gainsborough. Both generals are portrayed in their prime.