His plan complete, Morgan did not retire to his tent, in the style of more autocratic generals, and await the moment of battle. He understood the importance of personal leadership. Above all, he knew how to talk to the militia. He was a man of the frontier, like them. Although he was crippled from his sciatica, he limped from group to group while they cooked their suppers and smoked their pipes, telling them how sure he was that they could whip “Benny.” Sixteen-year-old Thomas Young was among the cavalry volunteers. He remembered how Morgan helped them to fix their sabers, joked with them about their sweethearts, told them to keep up their courage and victory was certain. “Long after I laid down,” Young recalled, “he was going among the soldiers encouraging them and telling them that the ‘Old Wagoner’ would crack his whip over Ben in the morning, as sure as they lived.” “Just hold up your heads, boys, give them three fires, and you will be free,” Morgan told them. “Then when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls will kiss you.” “I don’t believe that he slept a wink that night,” Young said later. Many of these young militiamen had something else to motivate them—a fierce resentment of the way the British and loyalists had abused, and in some cases killed, their friends and relatives. Thomas Young’s brother, John, had been shot down in the spring of 1780 when loyalist militia attacked the Youngs’ regiment. “I do not believe I had ever used an oath before that day,” Young said. “But then I tore open my bosom and swore that I would never rest until I had avenged his death.” [Illustration: A powder horn and linstock like these were essential tools for artillerymen. They primed the cannon by pouring powder into a vent leading to the charge and fired it by touching the burning hemp on the tip of the linstock to the vent. The gunners serving the two 3-pounder “grasshoppers” at Cowpens used such equipment.] Another South Carolinian, 17-year-old James Collins, had fought with Sumter and other militia leaders since the fall of Charleston. He remembered with particular anger the swath of desolation left by loyalists when they plundered rebel Americans on the east side of the Broad. “Women were insulted and stripped of every article of decent clothing they might have on and every article of bedding, clothing or furniture was taken—knives, forks, dishes, spoons. Not a piece of meat or a pint of salt was left. They even entered houses where men lay sick of the smallpox ... dragged them out of their sick beds into the yard and put them to death in cold blood in the presence of their wives and children. We were too weak to repel them....” Morgan’s Army