Pyle’s Defeat
The experience of Tarleton at the Waxhaws permeated the story of the Battle of Cowpens. At Cowpens, the atrocity at Waxhaws was still fresh and painful. As I discussed at length in The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined, revenge for Tarleton’s excesses proved a powerful motivator at Cowpens, as it had earlier at King’s Mountain.
There was another story of a massive atrocity, occurring after Cowpens and having no effect on it. Like Waxhaws, this second atrocity shocked the public and infuriated many, in this case, many Loyalists, because this time, responsibility lay with the Whigs.
John Pyle was a colonel in the Tory militia in Orange County, North Carolina. Orange County was a much larger piece of North Carolina at the time, and included present-day Alamance County, Pyle’s actual home. On 15 February 1781, British General Cornwallis reached the bank of the Dan River in a campaign later christened the Race to the Dan, a race won by his opponent, American General Nathanael Greene. Cornwallis, powerless to cross to Virginia, moved instead to Hillsborough, North Carolina, the capital of Orange County and by reputation the seat of Loyalist sentiment in the region.
Cornwallis raised the King’s standard and called on the loyal subjects to rally. The support on the ground was tepid and disappointing. Greene, his main army recruiting and provisioning in Virginia, sent detachments into North Carolina to harass and delay Cornwallis. One of these detachments was a mixed force of cavalry and infantry under Brigadier General Andrew Pickens, a South Carolina militia commander, and Lieutenant Colonel Harry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, a Continental officer. Of the two officers, Lee was the more aggressive and effusive, always overflowing with plans and ideas.
Cornwallis had detached Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton westward from Hillsborough, into present-day Alamance County. Tarleton was hated and feared by the Americans. To Lee, however, Tarleton was far more. He was a challenge, and his presence in western Orange County was a red cape to a bull.
Lee pursued Tarleton relentlessly. On or about 25 February, the Americans were within striking distance of Tarleton’s camp. Within a few miles of the objective, they encountered a large formation of Tory militia, several hundred strong, on their way to join Tarleton. Colonel John Pyle was in command.
Pyle’s men, enthusiastic Loyalists excited at the prospect of joining their idol, had spent much of the day celebrating. In Tarleton’s priceless words, they had become “inspired by whiskey and the novelty of their situation.” Not merely inspired, but careless, in that they had ignored Tarleton’s admonitions to reach his camp early. By the time Pyle encountered Lee, it was almost dark, long past time for the militia to sequester within the safety of the British camp.
The idea of mistaken identity infused story of Pyle’s Defeat. While there are several versions of the story in circulation, all share the commonality that Pyle and his men mistook Lee’s Legion for Tarleton’s, and passed through the ranks blissfully ignorant that they were in the presence of their enemies. The way in which the mistake became known was also subject to many different tellings, but once out, the battle began.
It lasted a short time. Lee’s men, with those commanded by Pickens, made short work of the raw and untrained militia. The casualty figures are all estimates, the most credible of which saw 100 Tories killed, another 200 wounded, few surviving unhurt. The only American casualty was a cavalry horse. Cornwallis articulated the British position: the Tories “were inhumanly butchered, when begging for quarter without making the least resistance.”
Pyle’s Defeat will always serve as a foil, a parallel, to the engagement with Tarleton at the Waxhaws. As Tarleton failed to defend himself well after the Waxhaws, so Lee failed after Pyle’s Defeat.
Lee prepared more than one version of the affair, always a mark of problems. The first was in his after-action report on 25 February 1781. This first report was a simple description. The Tories, expecting Tarleton, mistook Lee’s men for British dragoons. They discovered their mistake and fired first. Captain Joseph Eggleston, in command of the cavalry in Lee’s rear guard, ordered a charge, resulting in a complete rout of the Loyalists.
Lee’s second version appeared in his memoirs, published in 1812. By this time, Lee was only too acutely aware of the accusations against him arising out of the encounter. In this story, Lee insisted the mistaken identity was a ruse de guerre. He had captured two British prisoners, and on threat of instant death coerced them into supporting an intentional deception. It worked well initially, and the Tories, coming from the rear, passed all the way to the front, where Pyle and Lee were shaking hands. At this point, the Tories identified Pickens’s militia as Whigs, and opened fire. Eggleston ordered a charge, destroying the lot.
As with the British descriptions of the Waxhaws, the narratives were in layers. Several layers of British verbiage needed peeling back to find the acknowledgement of the atrocity, and so with the Americans at Pyle’s Defeat. Thus far, one sees only a one-sided victory. Lee, however, went on: he agreed that some of Pyle’s men surrendered and cried out for mercy, believing the British were attacking: “You are killing your own men!” Lee failed to bring the slaughter to a halt. He insisted it was a question of survival, and self-preservation prevented him from stopping his men.
After Waxhaws, Tarleton failed to deny an atrocity had occurred. Lee went Tarleton one better. He openly acknowledged Americans killed Tories begging for mercy, a shameful development that Lee’s pathetic excuses simply made more poignant. The Tories were outmanned and outgunned, trying to surrender and begging for quarter. Lee had no reason, no excuse, for failing to put a stop to the slaughter.
Even so, authors following behind Lee have strained to find some good in the dark tale of Pyle’s Defeat. David Schenck, a booster in the later nineteenth century, asserted that the “sanguinary destruction” of Pyle ended Toryism in the region, but more to the point, it satisfied an atavistic need for vengeance. The Waxhaws, at last, were avenged. While Schenck’s justifications should strike us as hollow, many historians, to the present day, have accepted crude vengeance as a responsible motivator for the atrocity in Orange County.
