On paper Morgan’s army was inferior. The British numbered some 1100, all regulars and most of them tested in battle. Morgan had at best a little over 800 troops, and half of them were militia. Numbers, though, deceive, for Morgan’s army was in fact a first-rate detachment of light infantry, needing only leadership to win victories. The core of Morgan’s army was a mixed brigade of Maryland and Delaware Continentals under Col. John Eager Howard, about 320 men. They were supported by 80 or so Continental dragoons under Col. William Washington. [Illustration: Maryland Continental • Dragoon, 3rd Continentals] These Continentals were tough and experienced. Morgan’s militia were better material than the green troops who folded at Camden and later ran away at Guilford. Some 200 were ex-Continentals from Virginia. Morgan thought enough of them to employ them in the main battle line. The other militia were recruited by that wily partisan leader, Andrew Pickens, and William Davidson, a superb militia general. It’s unlikely that such able commanders would have filled their ranks with the wavering and shiftless. Morgan knew the worth of these troops and deployed them in a way that made the most of their strengths and minimized their weakness. They rewarded him with a victory still marveled at two centuries later. These figures represent the units in Morgan’s command. [Illustration: Virginia militiaman • Carolina militiaman] Collins and his friends had joined Sumter, only to encounter Tarleton at Fishing Creek. “It was a perfect rout and an indiscriminate slaughter,” he recalled. Retreating to the west, Collins described how they lived before Morgan and his regulars arrived to confront the British and loyalists. “We kept a flying camp, never staying long in one place, never camping near a public road ... never stripping off saddles.” When they ate, “each one sat down with his sword by his side, his gun lying across his lap or under the seat on which he sat.” It soon became necessary “for their safety,” Collins said, to join Morgan. At Cowpens, men like James Collins were fighting for their lives. Equally desperate—and angry—were men like Joseph Hughes, whose father had been killed by the loyalists. Hughes had been living as an “out-lier,” hiding in the woods near his home with a number of other men who remained loyal to militia colonel Thomas Brandon. One day he ventured out to visit his family. As he approached the house, three loyalists sprang out of the door with leveled guns, shouting: “You damned Rebel, you are our prisoner!” Hughes wheeled his horse and leaped the gate to escape the hail of bullets.