After Charleston surrendered, Pickens’ military superior in the Ninety Six district, Brig. Gen. Andrew Williamson, was the only high-ranking official left in South Carolina. The governor John Rutledge had fled to North Carolina, the legislature had dispersed, the courts had collapsed. Early in June 1780, Williamson called together his officers and asked them to vote on whether they should continue to resist. Only eight officers opposed immediate surrender. In Pickens’ own regiment only two officers and four enlisted men favored resistance. The rest saw no hope of stopping the British regular army advancing toward them from Charleston. Without a regular army of their own to match the British, they could envision only destruction of their homes and desolation for their families if they resisted. Andrew Pickens was among these realists who had accepted the surrender terms offered by the British. At his command, his regiment of 300 men stacked their guns at Ninety Six and went home. As Pickens understood the terms, he and his men were paroled on their promise not to bear arms against the king. They became neutrals. The British commander of Ninety Six, Colonel Cruger, seemed to respect this opinion. Cruger treated Pickens with great deference. The motive for this delicate treatment became visible in a letter Cruger sent Cornwallis on November 27. “I think there is more than a possibility of getting a certain person in the Long Canes settlement to accept of a command,” Cruger wrote. “And then I should most humbly be of opinion that every man in the country would declare and act for His Majesty.” It was a tribute to Pickens’ influence as a leader. He was also a man of his word. Even when Sumter, Clarke, and other partisan leaders demonstrated that there were many men in South Carolina ready to keep fighting, Pickens remained peaceably at home on his plantation at Long Canes. Tales of Tarleton’s cruelty at Waxhaws, of British and loyalist vindictiveness in other districts of the State undoubtedly reached him. But no acts of injustice had been committed against him or his men. The British were keeping their part of the bargain and he would keep his part. Then Cornwallis’s aide, Haldane, appeared at Ninety Six and summoned Pickens. He offered him a colonel’s commission in the royal militia and a promise of protection. There were also polite hints of the possibility of a monetary reward for switching sides. Pickens agreed to ride down to Charleston and talk over the whole thing with the British commander there. The visit was delayed by partisan warfare in the Ninety Six district, stirred by the arrival of Nathanael Greene to take command of the remnant of the American regular army in Charlotte. Greene urged the wounded Sumter and the Georgian Clarke to embody their men and launch a new campaign. Sumter urged Pickens to break his parole, call out his regiment, and march with him to join Greene. Pickens refused to leave Long Canes.