The Student's Life of Washington; Condensed from the Larger Work of Washington Irving For Young Persons and for the Use of Schools

by tidings that Gates, the conqueror of Burgoyne, was on his way to take command of the Southern forces.
    The prospect of such aid from the North reanimated the Southern patriots. One of the most eminent of these was Thomas Sumter, whom the Carolinians had surnamed the Game Cock. [He was now between forty and fifty years of age, brave, hardy and vigorous. He had seen service against the Indians, and in the French war, and had held the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Continental line. After the fall of Charleston he had sought refuge with his family in one of the open savannahs that lie concealed amid the swamps with which the lower part of South Carolina abounds. In one of his temporary absences his retreat had been invaded, his house burnt to the ground, and his wife and children driven forth without shelter.] Private injury had thus been added to the incentives of patriotism. Emerging from his hiding-place, he had thrown himself among a handful of his fellow-sufferers who had taken refuge in North Carolina. They chose him at once as a leader, and resolved on a desperate struggle for the deliverance of their native State. Destitute of regular weapons, they forged rude substitutes out of the implements of husbandry. Old mill-saws were converted into broadswords; knives at the ends of poles served for lances; while the country housewives gladly gave up their pewter dishes and other utensils, to be melted down and cast into bullets for such as had firearms.
    When Sumter led this gallant band of exiles over the border, they did not amount in number to two hundred; yet with these he attacked and routed a well-armed body of British troops and tories, the terror of the frontier. His followers supplied themselves with weapons from the slain. In a little while his band was augmented by recruits. Parties of militia, also, recently embodied under the compelling measures of Cornwallis, deserted to the patriot standard. Thus reinforced to the amount of six hundred men, he made, on the 30th of July, a spirited attack on the British post at Rocky Mount, near the Catawba, but was repulsed. A more successful attack was made by him, eight days afterwards, on another post at Hanging Rock.
    The advance of De Kalb with reinforcements from the North, had been retarded by various difficulties, the most important of which was want of provisions. This had been especially the case, he said, since his arrival in North Carolina. The legislative or executive power, he complained, gave him no assistance, nor could he obtain supplies from the people but by military force. There was no flour in the camp, nor were dispositions made to furnish any. His troops were reduced for a time to short allowance, and at length, on the 6th of July, brought to a positive halt at Deep River. The North Carolina militia, under General Caswell, were already in the field, on the road to Camden, beyond the Pedee River. He was anxious to form a junction with them, but a wide and sterile region lay between him and them, difficult to be traversed, unless magazines were established in advance, or he were supplied with provisions to take with him. For three weeks he remained in this encampment, foraging an exhausted country for a meagre subsistence, and was thinking of deviating to the right, and seeking the fertile counties of Mecklenburg and Rowan, when on the 25th of July, General Gates arrived at the camp.
    Gates approved of De Kalb’s standing orders, but at the first review of the troops, to the great astonishment of the baron, gave orders for them to hold themselves in readiness to march at a moment’s warning . It was evident he meant to signalize himself by celerity of movement in contrast with protracted delays. It was in vain the destitute situation of the troops was represented to him, and that they had not a day’s provision in advance. His reply was, that wagons laden with supplies were coming on, and would overtake them in two days.
    On the 27th he actually put the army in motion over the Buffalo Ford, on the direct road to Camden. Colonel Williams, the adjutant-general of De Kalb, warned him of the sterile nature of that route, and recommended a more circuitous one further north, which passed through the abundant county of Mecklenburg. Gates persisted in taking the direct route, which proved all that had been represented. It led through a region of pine barrens, sand hills and swamps, with few human habitations, and those mostly deserted. The supplies