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 number under Major Davie, were equipped as dragoons, and formed into two companies under Captains Lemmonds and Martin.  A battalion of three hundred light infantry were placed under the command of General William Davidson, a regular officer, who could not join his Regiment in Charleston after that place was invested.  About five hundred men remained under the immediate command of General Rutherford.  On the evening of the 14th of June he received intelligence that the Tories, under Col.  John Moore, had embodied themselves in strong force at Ramsour’s Mill, near the present town of Lincolnton.  He immediately issued orders to Colonel Francis Locke, of Rowan; Major David Wilson, of Mecklenburg; also to Captains Falls, Knox, Brandon, and other officers, to raise men to disperse the Tories, deeming it unwise to weaken his own force until the object of Lord Rawdon, still encamped at Waxhaws, should become better known.