On the twenty-fifth of January, while in camp on Hicks’ Creek, a fork of the Great Republic, Greene received the message of Morgan that he “had many prisoners in charge, but was pressed by Cornwallis.” It was most tantalizing, at such an hour, not to be able to improve this victory. The Southern army, including Morgan’s force, numbered, all told, including four hundred militia, only twenty-one hundred and three men, of whom the artillerists were but forty-seven, and the cavalry only one hundred and twenty. Greene wrote to Sumter, on the fifteenth of January, two days before the Battle of Cowpens: “More than half our numbers are in a manner naked, so much that we cannot put them on the least duty. Indeed, there is a great number that have not a rag of clothing on them, except a little piece of blanket, in the Indian form, about their waists.” But Greene put this force in the best possible order; and on the twenty-eighth, accompanied by a single guide, one aide-de-camp, and a sergeant’s party of twenty troopers, he started to join Morgan. On the night of the thirtieth, after a ride of one hundred and twenty-five miles, he was with him. The crisis was immediate. Greene wrote to Varnum, then in Congress; to Gist, Smallwood, Rutledge, Washington, and others, appealing for five thousand infantry and from six to eight hundred horse. It seemed as if this very victory would only precipitate disaster. Washington thus replied: “I wish I had it in my power to congratulate you on the brilliant and important victory of General Morgan without the alloy which the distresses of the department you command, and apprehensions of posterior events, intermix.... I lament that you find it so difficult to avoid a general action; for our misfortunes can only be completed by the dispersion of your little army, which will be the most probable consequence of such an event.” This letter reflects the wise policy of Washington throughout the war; ever to reserve in hand a sufficient force to control the time and place for battle; while incessantly weakening that of his adversary and compelling him, finally, to flight “against odds.” As the mind reverts to the contentions for high command which characterized the early years of the war; and as one officer after another disappears from the battle record, it would seem as if the officer who sat by the side of Morgan on the banks of the Catawba, on the thirtieth of January, 1781, must have felt as if a new generation had taken the place of the old comrades of 1776, and that he was simply waiting to pass away also.