The old Wagoner: Daniel Morgan, a rugged frontiersman who earned the nickname "the Old Wagoner" while working as a teamster, helped turn the tide in America's War for Independence

New American, The, August 6, 2007 by Charles Scaliger

The haughty young British officer unsheathed his sword with one practiced, fluid motion and swung the flat against the face of the huge, powerfully built young man standing in front of him with his fists dug into his hips. The officer had learned this move in training, a non-lethal way to cow and punish insolent inferiors, like the uncouth wagoner who had just defied him.

Metal smacked against cheekbone with enough force to drop any ordinary man in his tracks. But his unkempt antagonist was unmoved. The wagon driver raised his left hand and rubbed his cheek, the corners of his mouth working into a slow smile.

Too late the effete English lieutenant saw the blow coming, distracted as he was by his opponent's left hand. A massive right fist slammed into his head, lifting his body slightly off the ground and then hurling him backward into a tree, where he fell limp to the ground.

Military justice was swift. The young wagon driver from Virginia with the iron fists was sentenced to 500 lashes, which he bore without a whimper, later contending that the British officer overseeing the punishment had miscounted, leaving the lashing incomplete by a single stripe.

The year Daniel Morgan received his 499 lashes was 1756. Young Daniel, just 20 years old, already had a fearsome reputation as a fighter with a gun, knife, or his fists. Ever guarded about his family background, the hulking young man with a seemingly limitless capacity for hard work, hard drink, and brawling had quickly risen to prominence in frontier Virginia. By the age of 19, Daniel had already saved enough money to purchase his own wagon and team. His occupation as teamster earned him the affectionate nickname, in later years, of "the Old Wagoner."

With the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, Daniel Morgan hired out his team for transporting military supplies. It was during this time that an altercation with a British officer led to his legendary flogging, a punishment that would have killed many men but left Morgan with a back crisscrossed with many ugly scars.

After the war, Morgan returned to Virginia and settled near Winchester where, it may be supposed, he anticipated a long and prosperous life of steady work, hunting, and occasional brawls.

True to his wild and apparently less than ideal upbringing, Morgan set up housekeeping with one Abigail Curry "without benefit of clergy," who bore him two daughters before finally marrying him in 1774. By that time, the eve of the American Revolution, Morgan had become a well-to-do and respected businessman in northern Virginia. Abigail, meanwhile, probably taught him to read and write and in general to conduct himself in a more civilized fashion than had formerly been his way.

War Again

In the spring of 1775, the American colonies were electrified by the news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Continental Congress soon ordered the formation of 10 rifle companies from the middle colonies, including Virginia, to support the Siege of Boston, where the British forces had holed up after the retreat from Lexington and were kept hemmed in by American troops. Virginia agreed to contribute two rifle companies, and Daniel Morgan was picked to lead one of them. He quickly recruited 96 men and marched them 600 miles to Boston, where they arrived in early August.

In the early years of the Revolutionary War, the rifle, the frontiersman's weapon of choice, was the one American asset that cowed the seemingly invincible British military. Outclassing the amateurish Continental Army and its supporting militia in heavy weaponry, field tactics, and strategy, the British had no answers for American sharpshooters from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and elsewhere, whose rifles could devastate battlefield chains of command, picking off officers from beyond the range of British muskets. Daniel Morgan's Virginia Riflemen (nicknamed "Morgan's Sharpshooters") soon earned a reputation for lethal accuracy and attracted the attention of George Washington himself.

Later in 1775, after Congress authorized the invasion of Canada, Daniel Morgan and his men found themselves in the vanguard of a task force led by General Benedict Arnold, bound for the city of Quebec.

The Battle of Quebec, launched on December 31, 1775, began auspiciously with the American forces penetrating the city. But the American fortunes took a disastrous turn, with the British regrouping and trapping the Americans inside the city. Daniel Morgan himself refused to surrender his weapon to a British soldier, finally handing it instead to a Catholic priest. Along with nearly 400 others, Morgan was taken prisoner, languishing in captivity before finally being freed in an exchange in January 1777.

In spite of missing more than a year of the war, Daniel Morgan re-entered the conflict without even breaking stride. He learned that, owing to his courage at the Battle of Quebec, he had been promoted to colonel during his imprisonment. He was assigned to create a new regiment, the 11th Virginia, which he would command personally.