longer needed to guard against the danger of invasion
from that direction, and as smallpox had broken out in his camp, General
Gregory now released his men from duty, and they returned to their
homes.

The British army that had just left Portsmouth, was now on its way to
Yorktown, whither Cornwallis, after his fruitless chase of Greene, his
disastrous victory at Guilford Courthouse, and his retreat to
Wilmington, was now directing his army. There on the 19th of October the
famous Battle of Yorktown was fought and Cornwallis and his entire army
forced to surrender.

This battle virtually ended the war; but peace did not come to Carolina
immediately upon the surrender. The Tories in the State kept up a
constant warfare upon their Whig neighbors, and in March, 1782, General
Greene, who not long after the battle of Guilford Courthouse had won a
decisive victory at Eutaw Springs, and was still in South Carolina, sent
the alarming intelligence to the towns on the coast that the British had
sent four vessels from Charleston harbor to plunder and burn New Bern
and Edenton. To meet this unexpected emergency, General Rutherford was
ordered to quell the Tories in the Cape Fear section, who were
terrorizing the people in that region. And in April, 1782, General
Gregory received orders from General Burke to take 500 men to Edenton
for the defense of that town, and to notify Count de Rochambeau as soon
as the enemy should appear in Albemarle Sound. In August no sign of the
British ships had as yet been seen, though the coast towns were still in
daily dread of their arrival. Governor Martin, who had succeeded Burke,
wrote Gregory to purchase whatever number of vessels the Edenton
merchants considered necessary for the protection of the town, to buy
cannon and to draft men to man the boats.

But Edenton was spared the horror of a second raid such as she had
suffered in 1781. In December, 1782, the British army in South
Carolina, which since the battle of Eutaw Springs had been hemmed in at
Charleston by General Greene, finally embarked for England. The ships
that had been keeping the towns near the coast in North Carolina in
terror, departed with them, and the States that had for so many long and
bitter years been engaged in the terrific struggle with England, were
left to enjoy the fruits of their splendid victory without further
molestation from the enemy.

In September, 1783, the Treaty of Peace was signed by Great Britain, and