In 1756 a British officer sentenced a young Virginia wagoner to 500 lashes. Twenty-five years later, that same man, Daniel Morgan, set a trap at the Battle of Cowpens that destroyed one of the best British forces in America in less than an hour.

On January 17, 1781, Banastre Tarleton, the most feared British cavalry commander in the South, charged into a cattle pasture in South Carolina expecting an easy win. Half of Morgan's army were militia farmers, the same kind of men who had run at Camden. What Tarleton didn't know was that Morgan had built his whole battle plan around their weakness. Three lines, two volleys, a hidden cavalry reserve, and a double envelopment that military academies still study today.

But the plan almost failed. At the decisive moment a misunderstood order sent the American Continentals into retreat, and that mistake is what finally broke the British.

The British lost around 800 men killed, wounded or captured. Morgan reported just 12 Americans killed. It remains one of the most lopsided victories of the American Revolutionary War.

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