le for independence.

In addition to those from their own neighborhoods, the Tories were
reinforced two days before the battle by two hundred well-armed men
from Lower Creek, in Burke county, under Captains Whiston and Murray.
Colonel John Moore, son of Moses Moore, who resided six or seven miles
west of Lincolnton, took an active part in arousing and increasing the
Tory element throughout the county. He had joined the enemy the
preceding winter in South Carolina, and having recently returned,
dressed in a tattered suit of British uniform and with a sword
dangling at his side, announced himself as Lieutenant Colonel in the
regiment of North Carolina loyalists, commanded by Colonel John
Hamilton, of Halifax. Soon thereafter, Nicholas Welch, of the same
vicinity, who had been in the British service for eighteen months, and
bore a Major's commission in the same regiment, also returned, in a
splendid uniform, and with a purse of gold, which was ostensibly
displayed to his admiring associates, accompanied with artful speeches
in aid of the cause he had embraced. Under these leaders there was
collected in a few weeks a force of thirteen hundred men, who encamped
on the elevated position east of Ramsour's Mill, previously described.

The Tories, believing that they were completely beaten, formed a
stratagem to secure their retreat. About the time that Wilson and
Alexander were dispatched to General Rutherford, they sent a flag
under the pretense of proposing a suspension of hostilities for the
purpose of burying the dead, and taking care of the wounded. To
prevent the flag officer from seeing their small number, Major James
Rutherford and another officer were ordered to meet him a short
distance from the line. The proposition being made, Major Rutherford
demanded that the Tories should surrender in ten minutes, and then the
arrangements as requested could be effected. In the meantime Moore and
Welch gave orders that such of their own men as were on foot, or had
inferior horses, should move off singly as fast as they could; so
that, when the flag returned, not more than fifty men remained. These
very brave officers, _before the battle_, and who misled so many of
their countrymen, were among the first to take their departure from
the scene of conflict, and seek elsewhere, by rapid flight, _more
healthy quarters_. Col. Moore, with thirty of his followers, succeeded
in reaching the British army at Camden, where he was threatened