The South was
then left, for a time, without any regular force to defend her
territory. Soon after the surrender of Charleston, detachments of the
British army occupied the principal military posts of Georgia and
South Carolina. Col. Brown re-occupied Augusta; Col. Balfour took
possession of Ninety-Six, on the Wateree, and Lord Cornwallis pressed
forward to Camden. Sir Henry Clinton then embarked with the main army
for New York, leaving four thousand troops for the further subjugation
of the South. After his departure the chief command devolved on Lord
Cornwallis, who immediately repaired to Charleston to establish
commercial regulations and organize the civil administration of the
State, leaving Lord Rawdon in command at Camden. North Carolina had
not yet been invaded, and the hopes of the patriots in the South now
seemed mainly to rest on this earliest pioneer State in the cause of
liberty.

Charleston surrendered on the 12th of May, 1780. On the 29th of the
same month Tarleton defeated Col. Buford in the Waxhaw settlement,
upwards of thirty miles south of Charlotte, on his way to the relief
of Charleston. Just before the surrender, a well organized force from
Mecklenburg, Rowan and Lincoln counties, left Charlotte with the same
object in view, but arrived too late, as Charleston was then
completely invested by the British army. And yet this force, after its
return, proved of great service in protecting the intervening country,
and prevented the invasion of North Carolina until a few weeks after
the battle of Camden.

At this critical period General Rutherford ordered out the whole
militia, and by the 3d of June about nine hundred men assembled near
Charlotte. On the next day the militia were addressed by the Rev.
Alexander McWhorter, the patriotic President of "Liberty Hall
Academy," (formerly "Queen's Museum"), after which General Rutherford
dismissed them, with orders to hold themselves in readiness for
another call. Major, afterward General, Davie having recovered from
his wounds received at Stono, near Charleston, again took the field,
and part of his cavalry were ordered to reconnoiter between Charlotte
and Camden. Having heard that Lord Rawdon had retired with his army to
Hanging Rock, General Rutherford moved from his rendezvous to Rea's
plantation, eighteen miles north-east of Charlotte, to Mallard Creek.
On the 14th of June the troops under his command were properly
organized. The cavalry, sixty-five in