Cowan's Ford was a consequence of Cowpens. Two weeks earlier, Daniel Morgan had shattered Banastre Tarleton's force in South Carolina, destroying some of the best units in Cornwallis's army. Furious and desperate, Cornwallis ordered his men to burn their own baggage and supplies -- tents, extra clothing, wagons -- and launched a headlong pursuit of the retreating Americans. This grueling chase became known as the Race to the Dan, named for the river along the Virginia-North Carolina border that Greene needed to cross to reach safety. But the Dan was still far north. First, Cornwallis had to get across the Catawba, and Greene had posted Davidson's militia at every ford along its length to slow the British advance.

Cowan's Ford was actually two crossings. The horse ford angled across the stream at a shallow depth but stretched a long distance. The wagon ford cut straight across but plunged into water deep enough to submerge a horse. Cornwallis chose the wagon ford -- the shorter, more dangerous route -- and sent Lieutenant Colonel Webster upstream to Beatties Ford as a diversion, with orders to make every possible demonstration of an intent to force a passage there. The feint worked. Davidson had spread his men across multiple fords, and his strongest positions anchored Beatties Ford. At Cowan's, he had a company of cavalry, a detachment of infantry, and pickets at the water's edge. Davidson himself arrived toward nightfall and set up camp half a mile from the river, worried that Tarleton's remaining cavalry might slip across in darkness.

The British reached the ford near daybreak after a miserable night march that cost them several cannons mired in mud. With almost no hesitation, the lead elements waded into the swollen Catawba along the wagon ford. The current was ferocious. Horses went over their heads in the raging water. Soldiers struggled to keep their footing, their muskets held above the spray. Davidson's militiamen opened fire from the eastern bank, picking off redcoats as they fought the river. Men who lost their footing were swept downstream. But the British kept coming. When the first soldiers clawed their way onto the far bank and formed a firing line, they unleashed a volley into the retreating militia. In the chaos of that exchange, General Davidson rode forward to rally his men. A rifle ball struck him through the heart. Oral tradition holds that a local Tory guide fired the fatal shot.

Davidson's body was discovered late that evening, stripped of valuables and soaked by the rain. His wallet of personal papers -- taken, presumably, by a British soldier as a trophy -- vanished into the fog of war. It would not surface again for 170 years. In 1951, the wallet was found among documents in the Public Records Office in London. It was returned to the United States in 2001. Davidson was buried at Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Mecklenburg County, where his grave remains today. The town of Davidson, North Carolina, and Davidson College both bear his name -- lasting monuments to a general who held a river crossing with half-armed militia and paid for it with his life.

Cornwallis got his army across the Catawba, but the delay at Cowan's Ford served Greene's purpose. Every hour the British spent forcing the river was an hour the Continental Army used to put distance between itself and destruction. Greene and Morgan had already left for Salisbury with the bulk of their forces, and the militia's resistance -- however brief -- kept the chain of retreat intact. The Race to the Dan continued north through freezing rain and muddy roads, with Cornwallis burning everything he could not carry and Greene staying just beyond reach. That pursuit led to the Battle of Guilford Court House, then to Cornwallis's fateful decision to march into Virginia, and finally to the siege of Yorktown. The swollen waters of the Catawba at Cowan's Ford were one link in what John Marshall called an unbroken chain of consequences that separated America from the British crown.