into slugs for the shot-guns with which the men were armed.
The British dared not forage except in force, the pickets were shot
from ambushes, and their Tory allies hung whenever captured. In
August the disastrous battle of Camden destroyed Gates's army, and
the Congress sent Greene to supersede him. Making his head-quarters in
North Carolina, this experienced commander divided his force and sent
General Morgan, with about one thousand men, into South Carolina to
harass Cornwallis in the rear. The latter at once sent Tarleton with
eleven hundred troopers, among them his famous Legion, to cut off
Morgan or drive him back upon Greene. In the latter part of December
the Americans were in the region of the upper Broad River, in
Spartanburg district, South Carolina, Morgan having but one hundred
and thirty mounted men--they could hardly be called cavalry--among
whom was Washington's troop.

It was about nine o'clock on the night of the 16th of January, 1781,
that the little army was encamped between the Pacolet and Broad
rivers, near a piece of thin woodland known as Hannah's Cowpens. The
weather was very cold, for the elevation of that part of the country
produces a temperature equal in severity to that of a much higher
latitude, but neither tents nor shanties protected the sleeping
soldiers from the frosty air. Here and there a rough shelter of pine
boughs heaped together to windward of the smouldering camp-fires told
of a squad who had not been too weary to work for a little show of
comfort; but in most cases the men were stretched out on the bare
ground, their feet toward the embers and their arms wrapped up with
them in their tattered blankets, which scarcely served to keep out the
cold. The regular troops, who had seen some service, might have
been easily distinguished from the less experienced militia by their
superior sleeping arrangements. Two and sometimes three men would be
found wrapped in one blanket, "spoon-fashion," with another blanket
stretched above them on four stakes to serve as a tent-fly, and their
fires were usually large and well covered with green branches to
prevent their burning out too rapidly. One and all, however, slept
as soundly as if reposing on beds of down, while the same quiet stars
smiled on them and on the anxious wives and mothers who lay waking
and praying in many a distant home. In and out among the weird and
shifting shadows of the outer lines the dim figures of the sentinels
stalk