Around the North Carolina village of Guilford Courthouse in the late winter of 1781, two weary armies clashed on a cold, wet afternoon. American forces under Nathanael Greene engaged Lord Cornwallis's British army in a bitter two-hour battle of the Revolutionary War. The frightful contest at Guilford was a severe conflict in which troops made repeated use of their flintlock muskets, steel bayonets and dragoon swords in hand-to-hand fighting that killed and wounded about eight hundred men. Historian John R. Maass recounts the bloody battle and the grueling campaign in the South that led up to it, a crucial event on the road to American independence.

John R. Maass is an education staff member of the new National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir. Dr. Maass received a PhD in early American history at The Ohio State University. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on early U.S. military history, including North Carolina and the French and Indian War: The Spreading Flames of War (2013); Defending a New Nation, 1783-1811 (2013); The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette and the British Invasion of Virginia (2015); and George Washington's Virginia (2017).