In the first place Morgan the rifleman met the bold Colonel Tarleton and gave him a sound flogging. Tarleton hurried back to Lord Cornwallis, the British commander in the South. Cornwallis thought he would catch Morgan napping, but the lively rifleman was too wide-awake for him. He hurried back with the prisoners he had taken from Tarleton, and crossed the Catawba River just as the British came up. That night it rained hard, and the river rose so that it could not be crossed for three days.
General Greene now joined Morgan, and the retreat continued to the Yadkin River. This, too, was crossed by the Americans and a lucky rain again came up and swelled the river before the British could follow. When the British got across there was a race for the Dan River on the borders of Virginia. Greene got there first, crossed the stream, and held the fords or crossing-place against the foe. Cornwallis by this time had enough of it. Provisions were growing scarce, and he turned back. But he soon had Greene on his track, and he did not find his march a very comfortable one.
Here I must tell you an interesting anecdote about General Greene. Once, during his campaign, he entered a tavern at Salisbury, in North Carolina. He was wet to the skin from a heavy rain. Steele, the landlord, knew him and looked at him in surprise.
"Why, general, you are not alone?" he asked.
"Yes," said the general, "here I am, all alone, very tired, hungry, and penniless."
Mrs. Steele hastened to set a smoking hot meal before the hungry traveler. Then, while he was eating, she drew from under her apron two bags of silver and laid them on the table before him.
"Take these, general," she said. "You need them and I can do without them."
You may see that the women as well as the men of America did all they could for liberty, for there were many others like Mrs. Steele.
I have told you that General Greene was one of the ablest of the American leaders, and you have seen how he got the best of Cornwallis in the retreat. Several times afterwards he fought with the British. He was always defeated. His country soldiers could not face the British veterans. But each time he managed to get as much good from the fight as if he had won a victory, and by the end of the year the British were shut up in Charleston and Savannah, and the South was free again.
Where was Cornwallis during this time? Greene had led him so far north that he concluded to march on into Virginia and get the troops he would find there, and then come back. There was fighting going on in Virginia at this time. General Arnold, the traitor, was there, fighting against his own people. Against him was General Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had come to the help of the Americans.