The impatience of the royalists, stimulated by the triumph of their friends in a neighbouring state, and by the necessary severities of a vigilant government, could not be restrained by this salutary counsel.  Anticipating the immediate superiority of their party, they could not brook the authority exercised over them, and broke out into premature and ill concerted insurrections, which were vigorously encountered, and generally suppressed.  One body of them, however, amounting to about eight hundred men, led by Colonel Bryan, marched down the east side of the Yadkin to a British post at the Cheraws, whence they proceeded to Camden.

Having made his dispositions, and fixed on Camden as the place for his principal magazines, Cornwallis left the command of the frontiers to Lord Rawdon, and retired to Charleston for the purpose of making those farther arrangements of a civil nature, which the state of affairs and the interest of his sovereign might require.

His lordship, as well as Sir Henry Clinton, seems to have supposed the state of South Carolina to be as completely subdued in sentiment as in appearance.  Impatient to derive active aids from the new conquest, his measures were calculated to admit of no neutrality.  For some time these measures seemed to succeed, and professions of loyalty were made in every quarter.  But under this imposing exterior, lurked a mass of concealed discontent, to which every day furnished new aliment, and which waited only for a proper occasion to show itself.

The people of the lower parts of South Carolina, though far from being united, were generally attached to the revolution, and had entered into the war with zeal.  They were conducted by a high spirited and intelligent gentry, who ardently sought independence as a real and permanent good.

Several causes had combined to suspend the operation of this sentiment.  Many of their leaders were prisoners; and the brilliant successes of the British arms had filled numbers with despair.  Others were sensible of the inutility of present resistance; and a still greater number, fatigued and harassed with militia duty, were willing to withdraw from the conflict, and, as spectators, to await its issue.  To compel these men to share the burdens of the war, was to restore them to their former friends.

Late in March, General Washington had obtained the consent of congress to reinforce the southern army with the troops of Maryland and Delaware, and with the first regiment of artillery.  This detachment was to be commanded by the Baron De Kalb, a German veteran who had engaged early in the service of the United States.