enerals Sumner and Davidson, with their brigades of militia, reached
his camp in Providence on the same evening. On the advance of the
British army these officers retreated by way of Phifer's to Salisbury,
ordering Colonel Davie, with about one hundred and fifty men, and some
volunteers under Major Joseph Graham, to hover around the approaching
enemy, annoy his foraging parties, and skirmish with his light troops.

On the night of the 25th of September, Colonel Davie entered the town
of Charlotte, determined to give the British army, which lay a few
miles from that place, a _hornets-like reception_. The brilliancy and
patriotic spirit of that skirmish was appropriately displayed on the
very ground which, in May, 1775, was the birth-place American
independence. (See "Skirmish at Charlotte.")

On the next day, Colonel Davie joined the army at Salisbury, where the
men and officers to raise new recruits had assembled. Generals
Davidson and Sumner continued their retreat beyond the Yadkin River,
while Colonel Davie returned to Charlotte, around which place the
activity of his movements, dashing adventures, and perfect knowledge
of the country, rendered him extremely useful in checking the
incursions of the enemy, repressing the Tories and encouraging the
friends of liberty.

Lord Cornwallis sorely felt the difficulties with which his position
at Charlotte was surrounded, and, on hearing of the defeat and death
of Colonel Ferguson, one of his favorite officers, he left that town
late on the evening of the 14th of October, in great precipitation,
recrossed the Catawba at Land's Ford, and took position, for a few
months, at Winnsboro, S.C.

The signal defeat of the British and Tories at King's Mountain--the
conspicuous turning point of success in the American Revolution, and
the retreat of Cornwallis, after his previous boast of soon having
North Carolina under royal subjection, greatly revived the hopes of
the patriots throughout the entire South.

General Smallwood, of Maryland, who had accompanied General Gates to
the South, had his headquarters at Providence, and, in a short time,
several thousand militia, under Generals Davidson, Sumner, and Jones,
joined his camp. Colonel Davie, with three hundred mounted infantry,
occupied an advanced post at Land's Ford.

When General Greene took command of the Southern Army in December,
1780, he and Colonel Davie met for the first time. The Commissary
Department having become va