General Nathanael Greene's Patriot army fought Lord Cornwallis to a tactical defeat on March 15, 1781, but so devastated the British force that Cornwallis abandoned the Carolinas and marched north to his eventual surrender at Yorktown. Established in 1917 as the first national military park in the South, the 220-acre battlefield is dotted with monuments including one to the only US president born in North Carolina, James K. Polk.