“The loss of the Americans in this astonishing action was twelve killed and sixty-one wounded. It is said that in point of tactics it was the most brilliant battle of the Revolutionary War. And it is brilliant even compared with the work of the greatest masters of the military art.
“That victory of the Americans was a crippling blow to Cornwallis, because it deprived him of his most effective light infantry.
“Cornwallis was nearer than Morgan to the fords of the Catawba which Morgan must cross to rejoin Greene, but by a superb march Morgan gained the river first, crossed it and kept on into North Carolina.
“There was a masterly series of movements there, after Greene’s arrival, which ended in the battle of Guilford and Cornwallis’s retreat into Virginia.
“But before the campaign was ended Morgan was suffering so severely with rheumatism that he was compelled to quit active work and go home.
“That was in February, 1781. By the following June he had so far recovered that he was able to command troops to suppress a Loyalist insurrection in the Shenandoah Valley.
“He then reported to Lafayette at his headquarters near Jamestown, and was put in command of all the light troops and cavalry in the marquis’s army. But in August a return of his rheumatism again obliged him to go home.
“For the next thirteen years he had a quiet life upon his estate. He grew wealthy, and entertained many eminent and interesting guests. His native qualities of mind were such as to make his conversation instructive and charming, in spite of the defect of his early education.
“In 1795, with the rank of major-general, he held a command in the large army that, by its mere presence in Western Pennsylvania, put an end to the whiskey insurrection. The next year he was elected by the Federalists to Congress. But failing health again called him home before the end of his term, and from this time until his death he seldom left his fireside. He died on the 6th of July, 1802, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.”