Mecklenburg Resolves

Charlotte, NC

On December 3, 1780, General Nathanael Greene took command of the battered Southern Continental Army at Charlotte, replacing Horatio Gates after the disaster at Camden. A self-taught Rhode Island Quaker's son, Greene rebuilt the ragged force and waged a brilliant war of maneuver against Cornwallis across the Carolinas. He never won a major battle outright, yet steadily bled the British toward defeat.

Charlotte, NC

On September 26, 1780, British forces under Lord Cornwallis marched into Charlotte and clashed with local Patriot troops led by William R. Davie. Though the Americans were driven off and the town captured, the stubborn resistance around Charlotte contributed to the region's reputation for defiance — Cornwallis reportedly dubbed it a "hornet's nest" of rebellion during the Revolution's hard-fought southern campaign.

Charlotte, NC

In the autumn of 1780, Lord Cornwallis and his British army occupied Charlotte, but the surrounding Mecklenburg County countryside was fiercely hostile — so much so that Cornwallis reportedly called it a "hornet's nest" of rebellion. On October 3, a small band of local Patriot militia ambushed a much larger British foraging party at the McIntyre farm north of town, harassing the redcoats with well-aimed fire from behind fences and trees and driving them back toward Charlotte. The skirmish was one of many stinging local resistances that made the British occupation of the region untenable.

Charlotte, NC

In the autumn of 1780, the Revolution's southern campaign swept into the North Carolina backcountry, and for a few tense weeks Lord Cornwallis's British army occupied Charlotte — a town so fiercely rebellious he reportedly branded it a "hornet's nest." This marker honors Jane Parks McDowell, who according to local memory rode ten hard miles to carry word to the American camp as the British pulled out of the town. Her ride belongs to that anxious moment when Patriot militia shadowed every British move through the Carolina Piedmont.