John L. Durham and the Revised Third Line
This page is the third installment in the discussion on the second reconstruction of the Guilford Courthouse battlefield, specifically its placement of the third line of battle east of Hunting Creek. The discussion began with the page on “Hunting Creek,” and continued with “Brandon.” These pages discuss problems with the second reconstruction, pointing out many of its overwhelming defects.
The second reconstruction began in earnest in the 1980s, when a group of park employees reconsidered the Schenck reconstruction. A major exponent of revision was John L. Durham, who wrote a paper, “Historical Marking of the Third Line of Battle at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse,” as a college student in 1987. Durham went on to a career as a Park Service employee and historian.
Durham joined Thomas W. Taylor, who wrote “The Landmarks of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse” as a graduate student in 1983. Taylor also later served at the park.
These papers started the cascade of revision that ended in the Park Service’s adoption of the second reconstruction, ending reliance on the earlier Schenck reconstruction. They were, in fact, the intellectual underpinning of the second reconstruction. Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard, in their influential book on Guilford Courthouse, strongly endorsed the second reconstruction and these two papers, noting Taylor and Durham “shed light on where things happened.”
Durham’s 1987 paper may be accessed here.
I disagree, and believe the Durham and Taylor papers shed light only on their own poor methodology and deficient support. This post will consider the Durham papers in its role as a foundation for the second battlefield reconstruction.
Durham’s paper spanned fourteen pages of text. It is replete with errors, and space does not permit an analysis of all of them. Three, prominent in the paper’s argument, will have to suffice.
A primary support of the argument to place the third line of battle behind Hunting Creek looked to the topography east of the American second line of battle. The second line stood on a ridge. Moving east, as the British did, one encounters the steep reverse slope of the ridge. Historian Thomas Baker, in Another Such Victory: The Story of the American Defeat at Guilford Courthouse that Helped Win the War for Independence, described the land as a “great natural amphitheater” where the walls of several escarpments came together to form a bowl, the bottom of which was marked by Hunting Creek’s unnamed tributary. The problem arose with Cornwallis, who described some British soldiers arriving late to the fighting at the third line. They had been “impeded by some deep ravines.” Durham seized on this passage, and asserted the third line had to be behind Hunting Creek, because the ravines around the creek were the only “ravines” in the area.
Durham’s position was entirely unsupported, and in fact defied any notion of support. The battlefield is full of ravines. Despite this fact, Durham insisted the Schenck reconstruction of the battlefield “does not take into account any ravines prior to the third line.” Durham recanted this absurd position in a second paper in 2004, noting "the ravine and hollows behind the Second American Line” would serve as a ravine for Cornwallis. Baker’s great natural amphitheater, a ravine even in Durham’s calculation, was where the Schenck reconstruction placed the third line fighting. The Americans lined up west of the creek, on one side of the bowl. The British started on the other side, occupying the high ground behind the second American line. The British, on the offensive, descended into the amphitheater, then into the third American line, bloodied but with dry feet.
Durham’s 2004 paper may be accessed here:
A second support argued by Durham in 1987 was the idea that the Tarleton map showed 176 yards from the end of the third American line to the courthouse. On the ground, he insisted, the distance was 500 yards using Schenck’s reconstruction of the battle. Moving the third line to the west bank of the creek vastly shortened the distance to the courthouse, bringing matters into line with Tarleton’s map.
Once more, the argument is so permeated with errors that one hardly knows where to start. The argument is based entirely on the notion that Tarleton’s map contained rigidly accurate distances, a notion that holds no water; see the page on “Brandon.” Moreover, as explained on the “Brandon” page, the courthouse location has been lost, and archaeology has failed to find it. Durham’s position, once more, eroded further in 2004 when he proposed an entirely new location for the courthouse. The idea of 176 yards on Tarleton’s map has vanished, unsupported.
The third point is the most frankly bizarre. Durham repeatedly relied on a work of fiction by Robert Graves, Proceed, Sergeant Lamb, about the fighting in America told from the perspective of a British soldier. Durham’s reliance on a work of fiction was an express admission that works of fact refused to support his contentions. His reliance was no isolated incident. He repeated his error in his 2004 paper, insisting Graves should be believed in his description of the courthouse, despite the obvious problem that Graves, as a twentieth-century author of fiction, had no tools to describe the courthouse other than his imagination.
At bottom, the documents forming the intellectual foundation of the second reconstruction provided no support at all. Durham’s paper was riddled with misconceptions marked by a lack of support. But, from now on, no one need take anyone else’s word for it. I have attached both Durham’s papers, 1987 and 2004. They are exactly as I received them from the park rangers.
Obtaining documents from the park is as much art as science. When I first started this project several years ago, I was assured Durham’s 1987 paper had disappeared from the files. When I returned for more documents in 2025, it had reappeared.
The 2004 paper, in particular, shows a great deal of handwritten content, especially on the maps and exhibits. With one exception, all the handwritten additions are original. I added the page numbers to the bottoms of all the pages on the 2004 paper. Otherwise, everything is as I received it from the rangers.