Being chagrined and mortified at not overtaking their commanding general in so long a retreat, expressed themselves with great disgust and freedom.

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 172.

If one were cruel, one might suggest that Major General Horatio Gates should instead have fallen on his sword. It must be added, of course, that for public consumption far better generals than he, such as Nathanael Greene and Daniel Morgan, defended his behavior, questioning only his decision to fight at all. But generals are very much like doctors and lawyers: when one of theirs gets into trouble they close ranks against the outside world and deny that anything untoward has occurred, for who knows what fortune may bring. Junior officers, on the other hand, despite the trite charge that they lack knowledge of the “big picture,” in private at least unleash their bitterness at superiors who fail them. There is a rarely quoted comment in Otho Williams’s “Narrative” bearing precisely on the reaction of officers who had been in the battle. From Salisbury, Williams wrote, “many officers wrote to their friends . .. and being chagrined and mortified at not overtaking their commanding general in so long a retreat, expressed themselves with great disgust and freedom.” Otho Williams’s own criticism was indirect. “The only apology that General Gates condescended to make to the army for the loss of the battle was, ‘a man may pit a cock, but he cant make him fight’—‘the fate of battle is uncontrolable’—and such other common maxims as admit of no contradiction."