The Battle of Cowpens

By Kenneth Roberts

108 pages, softcover: $3.95

ISBN 0‑915992‑05‑1

Reviewed by Kyle Carroll

While visiting the Battle of Cowpens National Battlefield near Chesnee, South Carolina, I stopped in the visitor's center to browse through their books. I was working as an extra on the set of The Patriot at the time and was visiting with a National Park Service employee working in the bookstore about the Cowpens battle scenes that we were filming. She recommended a small paperback book by Kenneth Roberts, called appropriately The Battle of Cowpens. I'm glad she did. I read the book on the plane home a week later. It was perfect timing. I could still hear the fife and drum mingled with exploding shells and the commands of Mel Gibson as Benjamin Martin leading us into the battle echoing in my memory as I turned the pages.

Kenneth Roberts is an author many readers of history and historical fiction will be familiar with. He has written some notable historic novels, including Rabble in Arms, Arundel and Northwest Passage. Roberts was doing research on the Battle of Cowpens when he died in 1957. What may have become a great historical novel was never finished. As the book cover states, "Instead what remains is his vivid and precisely accurate account of the battle itself."

Indeed it is. In this small 104-page book, Roberts paints a lush canvas of a key battle in the Revolution. Banastre Tarleton, Daniel Morgan and Nathanael Green all become flesh and blood as they struggle to once and for all defeat their opposition, with whom they are locked in a desperate struggle for control of the Southern theater and survival in the war. You will read about Morgan lifting his shirt to show the scars on his back that were inflicted on him by the British. Using his scars as a reminder of other atrocities committed by the British, he motivates his riflemen.

"All through the night Morgan explained his plans to the men and developed those plans with his officers. Long after the fires died down and the men were rolled in their blankets, Morgan sat waiting for his informers, his patrols, to come to him and explain by scratching with sticks in the ashes of his fire that Tarleton was closer . . . closer . . . his advance scouts had reached Thickity creek."

This book may be a little tough to find, but it is worth the effort. You will enjoy reading Roberts’ story about this history-changing battle.

The Battle of Cowpens is published by Eastern Acorn Press. It is available on the National Parks Services website at <www.nps.gov>. Link to the Cowpens National Battlefield site and then choose bookstore.