Two forced marches, without sleep or rest, a winning battle against a superior force a

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 179.

Turning their tired horses to the northwest, with seventy prisoners in tow, the victors of Musgrove’s Mill traveled all that day and night, sometimes dismounting and trotting to spare their horses. One of Ferguson’s detachments, learning of their presence, pursued them and at one point on the evening of the battle was only thirty minutes behind, but according to Isaac Shelby “their horses broke down and could follow no further.” During the retreat, as on the advance, Shelby recalled, “the Americans never stopped to eat, but made use of peaches and green corn for their support.” On the 19th of August, sixty miles from Musgrove’s Mill, they finally halted. In forty-eight hours they had completed two forced marches, had neither slept nor rested, and had fought and won against a superior force an action renowned for its ferocity, “one of the hardest ever fought in the United States with small arms,” Isaac Shelby claimed. Shelby also recalled that “the excessive fateague . . . effectually broke down every officer on our side that their faces and eyes swelled and became bloated in appearance as scarcely able to see.”