Almost immediately thereafter, while celebrating their victory and planning an attack on Ninety Six, the rebels were advised to leave the field of battle and assure their own safety. The British had won one of the greatest victories of the war at Camden, North Carolina. With two thousand men under his command, Lord Cornwallis had attacked Major General Horatio Gates and mostly inexperienced militia from Virginia and North Carolina. Of the three thousand Americans who went into battle, most of them fled when attacked, without ever having fired their weapons. Two hundred and fifty were killed, eight hundred wounded, and one thousand taken prisoners. In fact, Gates and seven hundred survivors abandoned their women camp followers and wounded and fled 180 miles northward in only three days until they arrived at Hillsborough, North Carolina, the longest and fastest military retreat in history.

After mopping up the battlefield at Camden, Banastre Tarleton and his dragoons learned that General Sumter was nearby with eight hundred troops, most of them experienced Continentals who had captured some British troops and supply wagons. Tarleton immediately commenced a hot pursuit, with about a hundred light infantry accompanying his mounted dragoons. The two military forces proceeded on parallel paths on opposite sides of the Catawba River, with the British about ten miles behind. When Tarleton finally crossed the river on confiscated boats, his infantry were too exhausted to proceed. Typically, the British cavalryman refused to slow down. He picked the best of the foot soldiers, permitted sixty of them to double-mount behind his dragoons, and continued the chase. Believing himself to be completely safe, Sumter encamped at a place called Fishing Creek, permitted his men to go swimming and even visit nearby plantations, and went into his tent for a long nap.

Tarleton did not hesitate to attack, even though his 160 men faced five times as many experienced American troops. Once again, the British gave no quarter. The rebels lost all but forty of their five hundred men, who were either killed or captured, while General Sumter managed to escape, half-clothed and on an unsaddled horse. After the heartbreaking defeats at Camden and Fishing Creek in August 1780, General Washington ordered all remaining American forces to protect themselves from the advancing British.

Major Ferguson was eager to equal Tarleton’s achievements, and he swore to his men, before God, that he would find and destroy the forces of the Georgians and the Over Mountain men. The militia commanders were equally determined that their troops would survive, and they disbanded and returned to their home bases in the Watauga Valley and across the Savannah River into Georgia. Now that he was back in the familiar region of the Hornet’s Nest, Elijah Clarke’s primary responsibilities were to avoid a military encounter between his few men and Thomas Brown’s Florida Rangers, to protect their hiding places, and to dress his serious wounds.