o swollen with the rains
that he was forced to halt on its banks while Morgan continued his
march. Meanwhile, General Greene was making earnest efforts to collect a
force of militia, directing all those who came in to meet at a certain
point. Such was the situation on the 1st of February when Greene waited
for weary hours at the place fixed upon for the militia to assemble,
only to learn that Cornwallis had forced the passage of the river,
dispersing the North Carolina militia left to guard the ford, and
killing General Davidson, their commander. He had certainly abundant
reason for depression on that wet and dreary night when he rode alone
into Salisbury.

The Catawba crossed, the next stream of importance was the Yadkin.
Hither Morgan marched in all haste, crossing the stream on the 2d and 3d
of February, and at once securing all boats. The rains began to fall
again before his men were fairly over, and soon the stream was swelling
with the mountain floods. When Cornwallis reached its banks it was
swollen high and running madly, and it was the 7th of February before he
was able to cross. It seemed, indeed, as if Providence had come to the
aid of the Americans, lowering the rains for them and raising them for
their foes.

Meanwhile, the two divisions of the American army were marching on
converging lines, and on the 9th the forces under Greene and Morgan made
a junction at Guilford Court-House, Cornwallis being then at Salem,
twenty-five miles distant. A battle was fought at this place a month
later, but just then the force under Greene's command was too small to
risk a fight. A defeat at that time might have proved fatal to the cause
of the South. Nothing remained but to continue the retreat across the
State to the border of Virginia, and there put the Dan River between him
and his foe.

To cover the route of his retreat from the enemy, Greene detached
General Williams with the flower of his troops to act as a light corps,
watch and impede Cornwallis and strive to lead him towards Dix's ferry
on the Dan, while the crossing would be made twenty miles lower down.

It was a terrible march which the poor patriots made during the next
four days. Without tents, with thin and ragged clothes, most of them
without shoes, "many hundreds of the soldiers tracking the ground with
their bloody feet," they retreated at the rate of seventeen miles a day
along barely passable roads, the wagon-wheels sinking deep in the mud,
and ev