A sensitive understatement to describe some of the unruliest men in America

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 217.

“As the political battle of which they were unaware was being waged, the combined force of 1,390 mountaineers and Back Country militia left Quaker Meadows on 1 October and marched eighteen miles south to a gap in South Mountain near the head of Cane Creek, where they camped that night and the next. There were now five colonels in camp but no commanding officer, for which the colonels felt a need. Most of the men might be seasoned fighters, but they were also militiamen, who were prey, noted Shelby, to “the little disorders and irregularities which began to prevail among our undisciplined troops,” which is a sensitive understatement to describe some of the unruliest men in America. This “created much uneasiness in the commanding officers—the Colonels commanding the regiments."