The Battle of Green Spring was fought on July 6, 1781, near Green Spring Plantation and the Jamestown crossing of the James River. It developed during the final phase of the Virginia campaign, as Lord Cornwallis moved east after weeks of raiding and maneuvering while the Marquis de Lafayette followed with a smaller American force. Orders from New York directed Cornwallis toward Portsmouth, making the river crossing appear to offer the Americans a chance to strike an exposed rear guard.

Cornwallis anticipated that opportunity and prepared a trap. He sent baggage and some troops across the James while concealing most of his army behind woods and broken ground north of the ferry. Deserters or informants encouraged the belief that only a weak rear guard remained. Marshes and a narrow causeway restricted the American approach, giving the British a strong position from which to overwhelm any detachment that advanced without recognizing the full force hidden nearby.

Lafayette sent Brigadier General Anthony Wayne forward with Pennsylvania Continentals, light infantry, riflemen, cavalry, and artillery—roughly eight to nine hundred men in the engaged force. Initial skirmishing drove back British pickets, but Lafayette soon realized that Cornwallis had not crossed with the main army. He attempted to recall the advance. Wayne, already close to the enemy and unable to retreat safely under immediate pressure, chose an aggressive charge to disrupt the British attack.

The Americans advanced with bayonets and briefly checked a much larger force before withdrawing in comparatively good order. They suffered about 140 killed, wounded, or missing; British losses were smaller but significant. Cornwallis held the field, making Green Spring a tactical British victory. He did not pursue aggressively and continued across the river, so the action failed to destroy Lafayette’s army or reverse the broader strategic problem facing British forces in Virginia.

Green Spring was the largest open-field engagement in Virginia before Yorktown and the last major clash between Lafayette and Cornwallis. Within weeks, new orders led Cornwallis to establish a fortified base at Yorktown. Lafayette continued watching and containing him until Washington, Rochambeau, and French naval power arrived. The September–October siege transformed a summer of inconclusive movement into the surrender of the principal British field army.

The marker identifies one part of a battlefield extending across plantation fields, woods, wetlands, and roads. It should not be read as placing every unit at one roadside point. Interpretation must also recognize that Green Spring was an enslaved agricultural landscape whose residents experienced military occupation and violence. The site preserves a moment when intelligence, terrain, deception, and Wayne’s risky counterattack prevented an American detachment from being swallowed by Cornwallis’s carefully prepared ambush.