Cornwallis himself led the main army northward against the American forces.  Meanwhile he entrusted to two of his most redoubtable officers the task of scouring the country, raising the loyalists, scattering the patriot troops that were still embodied, and finally crushing out all remaining opposition.  These two men were Tarleton the dashing cavalryman, and Ferguson the rifleman, the skilled partisan leader.

    Colonel Ferguson.

Patrick Ferguson, the son of Lord Pitfour, was a Scotch soldier, at this time about thirty-six years old, who had been twenty years in the British army.  He had served with distinction against the French in Germany, had quelled a Carib uprising in the West Indies, and in 1777 was given the command of a company of riflemen in the army opposed to Washington. [Footnote:  “Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson,” by Adam Ferguson, LL.D., Edinburgh, 1817, p. 11.  The copy was kindly lent me by Mr. Geo. H. Moore of the Lenox Library.] He played a good part at Brandywine and Monmouth.  At the former battle he was wounded by an American sharpshooter, and had an opportunity, of which he forbore taking advantage, to himself shoot an American officer of high rank, who unsuspectingly approached the place where he lay hid; he always insisted that the man he thus spared was no less a person than Washington.  While suffering from his wound, Sir William Howe disbanded his rifle corps, distributing it among the light companies of the different regiments; and its commander in consequence became an unattached volunteer in the army.  But he was too able to be allowed to remain long unemployed.  When the British moved to New York he was given the command of several small independent expeditions, and was successful in each case; once, in particular, he surprised and routed Pulaski’s legion, committing great havoc with the bayonet, which was always with him a favorite weapon.  His energy and valor attracted much attention; and when a British army was sent against Charleston and the South he went along, as a lieutenant-colonel of a recently raised regular regiment, known as the American Volunteers. [Footnote:  Though called volunteers they were simply a regular regiment raised in America instead of England; Ferguson’s “Memoir” p. 30, etc., always speaks of them as regulars.  The British gave an absurd number of titles to their various officers; thus Ferguson was a brigadier-general of militia, lieutenant-colonel of volunteers, a major in the army, etc.]

Cornwallis speedily found him to be peculiarly fitted for just such service as was needed; for he possessed rare personal qualities.  He was of middle height and slender build, with a quiet, serious face and a singularly winning manner; and withal, he was of literally dauntless courage, of hopeful, eager temper, and remarkably fertile in shifts and expedients.  He was particularly fond of night attacks, surprises, and swift, sudden