r of the situation.

{90}

CHAPTER VII
THE DEFEAT OF THE RED DRAGOONS

If what the proverb tells us is true, that it is always darkest
before dawn, the patriots of the South in 1780 must indeed have
prayed for the light. Affairs had gone rapidly from bad to worse. Sir
Henry Clinton had come again from New York, and in May of that year
had captured Charleston with all of Lincoln's army.

Sir Henry went back to New York, leaving Lord Cornwallis in command.
Washington desired to send his right-hand man, General Greene, to
stem the tide of British success, but the Continental Congress chose
to send General Gates.

In August, this weak general was utterly defeated in the battle of
Camden, in South Carolina. How the bitter words of General Charles
Lee, "Beware lest your Northern laurels change to Southern willows,"
must have rung in his ears! Gates fled from Camden like the commonest
coward in the army. Mounted on a fast horse, he did not stop until he
reached Charlotte, seventy miles away.

No organized American force now held the field in the South, and the
red dragoons easily overran Georgia and South Carolina. There seemed
to be little left for {91} Cornwallis to do; for the three Southern
colonies were for the time ground under the iron heel of the enemy.

Crushing blows, however, only nerved the leaders, Sumter, Pickens,
Marion, Davie, and others, to greater efforts. The insolence, the
cruelty, and the tyranny of the British soldiers, and the bitter
hatred of the Tories, had brought to the front a new class of
patriots. These men cared little about the original cause of the war,
but the burning of their houses, the stealing of their cattle and
their horses, and the brutal insulting of their wives and their
daughters, aroused them to avenge their wrongs to the bitter end. And
many were the skirmishes they brought about with the British.

Thirty days had now passed since the battle of Camden, and Cornwallis
on his return march had not yet reached the Old North State. It was
still a long way to Virginia, and the road thither was beset with
many dangers.

Meanwhile, the British commander had intrusted to two of his
officers, Tarleton and Ferguson, the task of pillaging plantations,
raising and drilling troops among the Tories, and breaking up the
bands of armed patriots.

The brutal manner in which Tarleton and his men plundered, burned,
and hanged does not concern this story.

Ferguson was the colonel