days for the Americans than those which intervened between the
promise of French help and its fulfilment. Lord Cornwallis had appeared
in the South and had taken possession of Charleston, the chief port of
South Carolina. In that State the inhabitants were less unanimous than
elsewhere. The "Tories," as the local adherents of the English Crown
were called, had already attempted a rebellion against the rebellion,
but had been forced to yield to the Republican majority backed by the
army of Washington. The presence of Cornwallis revived their courage.
They boasted in Tarleton, able, enterprising and imperious, an excellent
commander for the direction of irregular warfare, whose name and that of
the squadron of horse which he raised and organized became to the rebels
what the names of Claverhouse and his dragoons were to the Covenanters.
Cornwallis and Tarleton between them completely reduced the Carolinas,
save for the strip of mountainous country to the north, wherein many of
those families that Tarleton had "burnt out" found refuge, and proceeded
to overrun Georgia. Only two successes encouraged the rebels. At the
Battle of the Cowpens Tarleton having, with the recklessness which was
the defeat of his qualities as a leader, advanced too far into the
hostile country, was met and completely defeated by Washington. The
defeat produced little immediate result, but it was the one definite
military success which the American general achieved before the advent
of the French, and it helped to keep up the spirit of the insurgents.
Perhaps even greater in its moral effect was the other victory, which
from the military point of view was even more insignificant. In Sumter
and Davie the rebels found two cavalry leaders fully as daring and
capable as Tarleton himself. They formed from among the refugees who had
sought the shelter of the Carolinian hills a troop of horse with which
they made a sudden raid upon the conquered province and broke the local
Tories at the Battle of the Hanging Rock. It was a small affair so far
as numbers went, and Davie's troopers were a handful of irregulars drawn
as best might be from the hard-riding, sharp-shooting population of the
South. Many of them were mere striplings; indeed, among them was a boy
of thirteen, an incorrigible young rebel who had run away from school to
take part in the fighting. In the course of this narration it will be
necessary to refer to that boy again more than once. His name wa