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- · Daniel Morgan was actually born in New Jersey, not Virginia, in 1736. You might not realize it but much of New Jersey in the 18th century was thickly wooded, rugged land. It didn’t have the hilly or mountainous terrain of Virginia, but in terms of challenging terrain, it was close.
- · Morgan was hard-living. He was quick to a fight (and left home after a fight with his father) and loved both gambling and drinking. He was an outdoorsman, at home hunting, trapping, fishing, and tracking. His background imprinted his leadership.
- · He was a veteran of the French and Indian War, 1755-1763. The French and Indian War, as it was called in British North America (Seven Years’ War was its label in Europe), pitted England and its colonies and allies against France and its colonies and allies. Morgan joined Virginia’s military forces to fight the French and their allies of various Native American tribes. Morgan clashed with a British officer—remember, they were technically on the same side—and punched him in the face. British military officials had Morgan whipped 499 times. As you might expect, Morgan developed a lifelong hatred of the British from that bloody day forward.
- · With news of the battles of Lexington and Concord, Morgan quickly joined the cause of the American Revolution in 1775. He rose in rank to a captaincy when Virginia’s authorities pledged to raise two companies of riflemen. Morgan convinced 96 men to join his unit in less than two weeks. Barely three weeks after that he and his men covered 600 miles to enroll in George Washington’s makeshift army outside of Boston. Washington at that point was besieging a British army holed up in Boston. As an early leadership experience, this event in Morgan’s life showed his ability to unite followers around a common identity and sense of belonging.
- · Morgan’s unit rapidly developed a reputation as extraordinary marksmen and woodsmen. They were also among the most reliable and dependable of Washington’s force. Stories circulated around Washington’s camp of the prowess of Morgan and “Morgan’s riflemen.” They were also known as “brown shirts” or “fringed shirts” because of the tanned color and texture of their garments. Morgan had his men in this garb because it blended well with the natural surroundings of the woods. Again, you can see the importance of followers’ self-identity in leadership.
- · Morgan’s riflemen were chosen to participate in an invasion of Canada at Washington’s order. Interestingly, the overall commander of this invasion force was Benedict Arnold. Both Morgan and Arnold showed extraordinary battlefield, tactical skills during this invasion. This is an important distinction in leadership. Morgan demonstrated a strong grasp of smaller-scale leadership (tactics on a field of battle) but didn’t have the need or opportunity to think about broader-scale issues (strategy across several fields of battle and scenes of action).
- · Morgan was captured—taken prisoner—by the British during an assault of Quebec. The assault occurred in late December 1775 in the midst of a blinding snowstorm. Witnesses said that British soldiers trapped Morgan in an alley of Quebec, firing his weapons, slashing with his knives, exhorting his men. They also said that Morgan cried with rage, tears streaming down his face, as he finally agreed to surrender to vastly superior numbers. Doubtless, his trauma was partly because of having lost many of his beloved riflemen in the assault and his memories of the whipping years before. Leadership is about recognizing the role of emotional force and emotional bonds.
- · In the Canada invasion, Arnold arranged for Morgan to lead not only his own rifle unit but all three rifle units that were part of the American force. It was Morgan’s first major leadership experience beyond his single unit. It wasn’t quite strategic in scope but it revealed the dynamics of leading people across multiple units of organization.
- · Morgan was a British prisoner for slightly more than a year. He was exchanged and returned to the American army in early 1777. By the end of 1777 Morgan had again emerged as a key leader for his role in the First and Second Battles of Saratoga (Freeman’s Farm and Bemis Heights, respectively). By then Morgan was formally responsible for more than 500 riflemen and other “light,” or highly mobile and specialized, troops.
- · At Saratoga Morgan’s leadership showed a few consistent themes. First, he and his men were known as among the most effective and lethal parts of the American army. Second, they were defined by their specialization—expert in using rifles, quick on the move, able to travel through thick woods, highly aggressive, and capable of extreme physical feats. Third, they often participated in the most pivotal moments or periods of a battle. Fourth, they answered the call.
- · By late 1777 Morgan had risen to the rank of colonel. In September 1779, however, Morgan resigned from the American army. There is an important story in this two-year period. Morgan had been wounded in the leg and back during the assault on Quebec. These wounds had given him increasing amounts of trouble. In addition to physical pain, Morgan had grown disenchanted with the American army as an organization. He saw men of lesser ability than his own rise higher in rank and position. He couldn’t quite make the jump—get the promotion—from colonel to general. It irritated him (his one-time colleague Benedict Arnold would have similar feelings of his own but would act on them in a much different way). Thus, Morgan decided that if the army didn’t value him, he wouldn’t value the army. He resigned in the late summer of 1779. Goodbye. For a man whose hatred of the British ran as deep as it did for Morgan, this had to have been a very tough decision. It’s a measure of his disgruntlement with the American military apparatus.
- · Intriguingly, though, Morgan’s leadership showed another side. In summer 1780 the American army suffered one of its worst defeats of the war, this time at the Battle of Camden, not far from Morgan’s home in Virginia. So great and pervasive was the American defeat that it appeared to Washington and to Congress that the cause of the Revolution would likely die in the South, perhaps to the point of surrendering control of Georgia and the two Carolinas to Britain. Hearing of the defeat at Camden, Morgan set aside all his personal resentment toward many American national and state-level officials. He rejoined the American army to lead once again the “light forces.” Two weeks after rejoining, he received a promotion to brigadier general.
- · Morgan collaborated with General Nathaniel Greene to engage in a dramatic cat-and-mouse campaign against British forces led by Lord Cornwallis. Both Greene and Morgan sought to stay just out of range of Cornwallis’s forces. The purpose was to repair public support for the American cause in the South, drain away British resources and energy, and somehow to look for circumstances to renew American military efforts in the region.
- · Morgan, after discussing it with his officers and many of their men, decided to disobey his orders in early 1781 and engage in direct combat with one of Cornwallis’s most able, feared, and effective commanders, Banastre Tarleton. Tarleton’s Legion of British cavalry were extraordinarily skilled at the mobile warfare practiced by Morgan’s riflemen. It was in the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781 that Morgan held the round of “campfire conversations” that I referenced in my video and newsletter.
- · After Cowpens, Morgan’s physical condition was too poor for him to continue in active duty. He resigned from the American army, this time for good. Still, following the Treaty of Paris in 1783 which signaled the end of the war and the formal recognition of the United States by Britain, Morgan went on to resettle in Virginia as a landowner. He also helped command the American army sent to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in Congress. A short time before he died in 1802, Morgan served a term as one of Virginia’s representatives in Congress.
- · Interestingly, Morgan joined a Presbyterian Church in Virginia after the war. Some say he did it as part of “settling down” but I wonder if the impulses for his decision ran much deeper than that phrase implies.
