Soon the end of the battle is at hand, and all is a more violent storm of strife and tumult, freighted with wounds and death. Ferguson is in the midst of it, calmly courageous but restlessly active. He is here and there all over the field--wounded in his right hand, but heedless of personal danger--giving courage to others as he goes, and bearing the silver whistle, whose sharp sound quickens his men’s pulses to the fray. He orders the cavalry into action and his regulars to charge, but at last, in vain. The Americans press him on all sides into ever narrowing limits. A white flag goes up from the Tories and he pulls it down. Another is raised at a distance, and quickly he is there to level it with the dust. A surrender is suggested to him by friends, repeatedly, but he will not listen to it. He _will not_ give up his sword to men whom, with a curse, he calls “banditti”: but he will escape by cutting his way through the hostile ranks with a sword in his left hand. Two officers join him in the attempt. Dashing at a weaker point in the Whig lines, he strikes with his sword until it is broken, and falls, pierced with bullets. Instantly De Peyster surrenders. The battle is finished. It was about an hour long. In the confusion that followed, the Whigs ceased not at once from firing. The British called for quarter, but kept their weapons. The fearless Shelby galloped up to their lines and commanded, if they wanted quarter, to lay down their arms. Perhaps animosity against the Tories would not die in some Whigs as soon as white flags were raised, for wars between neighbors are apt to be next in bitterness to religious wars. Some allowance also is to be made for the difficulty of self-restraint common to men in the heat of passion and strife. Their destructive zeal is slow to abate. Col. Campbell had to cry out to his men, “Don’t shoot!” “Cease firing!” and actively to promote mercy; but when De Peyster profanely complained to him of the unfairness, he declined with dignity, to reply, except by ordering the prisoners into position. The victory was complete. Of the soldiers composing Ferguson’s army, two-thirds were prisoners and the other third were killed and wounded in nearly equal numbers. Of the Americans, twenty-eight were killed and sixty-two wounded. Eight days after the battle the conquerors began their march westward. They had received information, which proved untrue, that Tarleton, a bold, skillful and ruthless British officer, was advancing upon them. On the contrary, Cornwallis and Tarleton were fleeing at the time from Charlotte to South Carolina, in fear that the mountaineers by thousands were about to assail them. The intention and hope of the British commander to bring North Carolina, and then Virginia, into like subjection with South Carolina and Georgia, were frustrated by the defeat of Ferguson. It disheartened Tories who had openly taken sides with the British, and deterred others from following their example.