He who has never seen the effect of panic upon a multitude can have but an imperfect idea of such a thing.

From The Road to Guilford Courthouse by John Buchanan. Page 166.

American generals often had to rely for militia to make up the battlefield numbers, knowing that militia were especially subject to breaking when under fire. Without the disciplined training of the Line regiments, they would fire and, under attack, flee.

“Cornwallis, who stayed close to the action and did not need an adjutant to brief him on the situation, saw the movement of the Virginians. He wrote in his report of 21 August to Lord Germain, “I directed Lieutenant-Colonel Webster to begin the attack, which was done with great vigour.” The right wing advanced, he wrote, “in good order and with the cool intrepidity of experienced British soldiers.” On they came, 33rd, Fusiliers, light infantry, about 800 strong, shouting, a solid line of red with bayonets fixed closing the gap on some 2,500 Virginia and North Carolina militia. General Edward Stevens ordered his Virginians to prepare to use the bayonets they had never before used. They declined. Instead they stared briefly at the terrible sight confronting them, closing on them, and the effect was electric.

The American left wing collapsed. The Virginians went first, the North Carolinians on their heels. Before the British could even reach them almost 2,500 men dropped their weapons and fled.

Otho Williams, who had been forced back to the line of Virginians, watched helplessly and later described the British charge and the American flight: “the impetuosity with which they advanced, firing and huzzaing, threw the whole body of militia into such a panic that they generally threw down their loaded arms and fled in the utmost consternation. The unworthy example of the Virginians was almost instantly followed by the North Carolinians.” As Williams observed, the scene is difficult to picture. “The writer avers it of his own knowledge, having seen and observed every part of the army, from left to right, during the action. He who has never seen the effect of panic upon a multitude can have but an imperfect idea of such a thing.” He continued, “Like electricity, it operates simultaneously—like sympathy, it is irresistible where it touches.”

The 1st Maryland, standing in well-ordered ranks in reserve, was directly in the path of the fleeing militia. Their steadiness proved to be no example as they were thrown into disorder “created by the militia breaking pell-mell” through them. The Virginians, unfamiliar with the country, fled the way they had come, finally stopping at Hillsborough, North Carolina, 180 miles northward. The North Carolinians, wrote Williams, “fled different ways, as their hopes led, as their fears drove them.”

Four days after the battle General Edward Stevens, mortified at the behavior of his Virginians, wrote to his governor, Thomas Jefferson, that once they began to run “it was out of the power of man to rally them.” He asked Jefferson to “picture it as bad as you possibly can and it will not be as bad as it really is.”