Guilford Courthouse

March 15, 1781

“The battle was long, obstinate, and bloody. The enemy purchased their victory at a price ruinous to their future prospects.” Patriot Cavalry Commander Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee

If you look up “pyrrhic victory” in a dictionary, you’ll see a painting of British General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Well, not really. But here’s what Webster’s says about it, and General Cornwallis would likely agree: “a victory that is not worth winning because so much is lost to achieve it.” While the outcome of March 15,1781 was technically a British victory, Cornwallis didn’t just lose a quarter of his army. He also lost his foothold in the Carolinas and, forced to move north into Virginia, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse directly contributed to the unthinkable—Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown seven months later.

This tour will help you understand the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, but the 28 nineteenth and twentieth-century monuments that dot the landscape here help us understand how Americans connected with their Revolutionary past in an era not long after the American Civil War. The private venture Guilford Battleground Company incorporated in 1887 and led the preservation efforts here. In 1917, when Guilford Courthouse National Military Park was created, it became the first Revolutionary War battlefield to be preserved by the federal government. Many of the monuments and markers you’ll visit on your tour date from the era of the Guilford Battleground Company. Some of these monuments mark strategic locations in the order of battle, but many are also gravesites, marking the final resting places of patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of American independence.

So what happened here on this picturesque landscape that caused the Americans to fight like demons, and the British to risk it all for a victory that wasn’t worth the cost? Start your tour at the Visitor’s Center to find out. You’re about to explore the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and you’re on The Liberty Trail.