=228. General Greene takes Command in the South.=--A new Continental army was now to be sent from the north, and this time Washington had his choice of commanders. He sent one of his best and most trusted officers, General Greene, who had been a Rhode Island blacksmith. He knew how to fight; for he had served under the eye of Washington in many battles, and so had been well trained in military matters. It was in December, 1780, that Greene took command of the so-called "southern army" at Charlotte, a little town in North Carolina. He had in all about two thousand men, but only eight hundred were fit for duty. On the day Greene took command there were not three days' provisions in camp. He had no money. The people would not touch the Continental paper money. Ably, patiently, and brilliantly, this sagacious general at once set to work to effect his great purpose of driving the British armies from the south. With Greene came another famous officer, General Daniel Morgan, the man who had marched with Arnold to Canada, and who commanded the infantry at Stillwater and Saratoga. [Illustration: GENERAL GREENE TAKING COMMAND OF THE SOUTHERN ARMY.] This was the man who, when he heard of Lexington, led his riflemen six hundred miles in twenty-one days, from Virginia, to join Washington in Cambridge. Morgan was of gigantic stature, vast physical strength, and wonderful powers of endurance. In his youth he was a teamster. One day by order of a tyrannical British officer he was given five hundred lashes for some slight offense. He walked away saucy and defiant as before. Of a gentle and unselfish nature, resolute, fearless in battle, a born fighter, Morgan was the ideal leader of the riflemen of the frontier. His force was smaller than Greene's, who had detached him to occupy a post in South Carolina. =229. How General Morgan defeated the British at Cowpens.=--Cornwallis in January, 1781, sent Tarleton with eleven hundred troops to meet Morgan and dispose of him. They met at Cowpens, but Morgan, with a smaller army, reversed the order and disposed of Tarleton! He killed a large number, ten officers and more than one hundred men, took over five hundred prisoners, with all the artillery and stores. It was at Cowpens that Colonel Washington, a distant relative of the Commander-in-Chief, wounded Tarleton in a hand-to-hand combat. Shortly afterwards this hated British officer said to a lady:-- "You seem to think very highly of Colonel Washington; and yet I have been told that he is so ignorant a fellow that he can hardly write his name." "It may be so," quickly replied the lady; "but no man can testify better than yourself that he knows how to 'make his mark.'" At another time the haughty Tarleton, boasting of his own deeds and speaking with disdain of the continental cavalry, said to a lady:-- "I have a very earnest desire to see your far-famed hero, Colonel Washington."