Brigadier General Daniel Morgan had reported for…
January 1781 CE
Morgan, whose military experience dates to the French and Indian War (1754-1763), had served at the Siege of Boston in 1775, later participating in the 1775 invasion of Canada and its climactic battle, the Battle of Quebec.
That battle, on December 31, 1775, had ended in defeat and Morgan's capture by the British.
Exchanged in January 1777 and placed by George Washington in command of a picked force of five hundred trained riflemen, known as Morgan's Riflemen, Morgan and his men had played a key role in the 1777 victory at Saratoga along the Hudson River in upstate New York, which had proved to be a turning point of the entire war.
Bitter after being passed over for promotion and plagued by severe attacks of sciatica, Morgan had left the rebel army in 1779.
The following year he was promoted to Brigadier General and returned to service in the Southern Department.
Greene, having decided that his weak army is unable to meet the British in a stand-up fight, had made the unconventional decision to divide his army, sending a detachment west of the Catawba River to raise the morale of the locals and find supplies beyond the limited amounts available around Charlotte.
Greene had given Morgan command of this wing and instructed him to join with the militia west of the Catawba and take command of them.
Morgan had headed west on December 21, charged with taking position between the Broad and Pacolet rivers, and protecting the civilians in that area.
He has six hundred men, some four hundred of which are Continentals, mostly the Marylanders.
The rest are Virginia militia who have had experience as Continentals.
By Christmas Day Morgan had reached the Pacolet River.
He had been joined by sixty more South Carolina militia led by the experienced guerrilla partisan Andrew Pickens.
Other militia from Georgia and the Carolinas have joined Morgan's camp.
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