The country was very thinly settled, and provisions could not be had for love or money.

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 237. After the Battle of Kings Mountain.

=The morning after the battle was a scene of frenetic activity. While Tory women and children went from body to body searching for loved ones, the colonels prepared to march, for they were aware how close they were to Cornwallis and the British army. So were the men. During the battle a rumor suddenly arose that Tarleton and the Legion were upon them, and John Sevier had to quickly squelch it. A similar rumor, also untrue, circulated the morning after the battle. But the possibility that a British relief force was on the way had to be taken seriously. The British wagons used to carry tents and other baggage were set afire before they left. They would only slow the march. Colonel Campbell stayed behind to supervise the burial detail. The Rebel wounded who could travel were placed on litters of tent cloth suspended on poles between horses.

About 10 o’clock on Sunday morning “we marched at a rapid pace towards Gilbert’s Town between double lines of mounted Americans,” wrote Alexander Chesney. The Rebels had captured 1,500 stand of arms, and with the firing locks removed each Tory prisoner was forced to carry two muskets. The column stopped for the night at Fondren’s plantation, where there was a good camping ground, enough dry fence rails for fires, and, wrote Benjamin Sharp, “a sweet potato patch sufficiently large to supply the whole army. This was most fortunate, for not one in fifty of us had tasted food for the last two days and nights, that is, since we left the Cowpens.” But according to Alexander Chesney the prisoners were not fed until Monday night, when each was given an ear of raw Indian corn. There was, in fact, little food available for either the victors or the vanquished, and treatment of the latter was harsh. Chesney reported being “stripped of my shoes and silver buckles in an inclement season,” and Draper repeats a secondhand story of Colonel William Brandon hacking to death with his sword a Tory who tried to escape by hiding in a hollow sycamore tree.

Certainly the prisoners were being plundered of personal belongings and treated harshly, and evidence of helpless men being killed is provided in a General Order issued by Colonel Campbell on 11 October in camp south of Gilbert Town. “I must request the officers of all ranks in the army to endeavor to restrain the disorderly manner of slaughtering and disturbing the prisoners. If it cannot be prevented by moderate measures, such effectual punishment shall be executed upon delinquents as will put a stop to it.”

The hastily assembled little army was falling apart, and the situation would get much worse. Thomas Young claimed that by the time they reached Cane Creek “we all came near starving to death. The country was very thinly settled, and provisions could not be had for love or money. I thought green pumpkins, sliced and fried, about the sweetest eating I ever had in my life.” The footman John Spelts told Draper that the prisoners were thrown raw corn on the cob and raw pumpkins, just as farmers throw feed to their hogs.