Their job was to soften up the British before they hit the main line of resistance

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 317. On one of the more famous tactical innovations of the Revolution, though coming late in the war.

“So far there was nothing remarkable about Morgan’s disposition of troops. It was what he did with the bulk of his militia that was quite unorthodox. Many of these men were expert riflemen, and the man who had once been a rifleman himself, who had commanded the Virginia riflemen who had done such terrible damage to the British at Saratoga, wanted to get the best that he could out of them without asking the impossible. About 150 yards in front of Howard’s main line he would place 300 North and South Carolina and Georgia militia under Andrew Pickens. To support Pickens’s right he would position 100 riflemen from Augusta County, Virginia, commanded by Captain Tate and Captain William Buchanan. From Pickens’s command he would deploy 120 picked Georgia and North Carolina riflemen another 150 yards forward to act as a skirmishing line, to engage and then fall back and rejoin Pickens as the British advanced. He neither expected nor wanted the militia in the first two lines to stand their ground before a British bayonet charge. Their job was to soften up the British before they hit the main line of resistance—Howard’s regulars and the veteran Virginians. All he would ask for were two volleys at fifty yards, with special attention paid to officers and sergeants. Then Pickens’s militia would fall back across the left front of Howard’s regulars and form on Howard’s left to be held as a reserve. If necessary during their withdrawal, Washington’s cavalry would come to their assistance. Morgan drew a rough map to illustrate the plan to his officers. Then he dragged his rheumatic-ravaged body from campfire to campfire to explain personally to the militia what he expected of them. One story has it that an aid helped him raise his shirt so the men could gaze on the ridges of scars that covered his back while Morgan told the tale of the terrible lashing he had received from the British over twenty-five years before. Whatever the details of that night before battle, his was a brilliant performance. Thomas Young described it:

“It was upon this occasion that I was more perfectly convinced of General Morgan’s qualifications to command militia than I had ever before been. He went among the volunteers, helped them fix their swords, joked with them about their sweethearts, told them to keep in good spirits, and the day would be ours. And long after I laid down, he was going about among the soldiers encouraging them and telling them that the old wagoner would crack his whip over Ben in the morning, as sure as they lived.

“Just hold up your heads, boys, three fires,” he would say, “and you are free, and when you return to your homes, how the old folks will bless you, and the girls kiss you for your gallant conduct.
“I don’t believe he slept a wink that night.”

When he was not moving among the troops Morgan monitored patrols and scouts, who were kept moving all night, and sent messages by couriers to various militia units reported to be in the countryside. He ordered the militia to prepare twenty-four rounds of ammunition per man. And it was to Morgan about two hours before daybreak that a scout galloped with news he probably expected. Tarleton was five miles away and “marching very Rapidly.” Morgan mounted and with Andrew Pickens rode through the camp, past the huddled forms rolled in their blankets on the ground. That stentorian voice the Pennsylvania rifleman John Joseph Henry had first described in the Maine wilderness now echoed far and wide over a frosty Carolina field.

“Boys, get up, Benny’s coming!”