Hildreth is an honorable exception.

Most of the British historians of the same events are even more rancorous and less trustworthy than the American writers; and while fully admitting the many indefensible outrages committed by the whigs, a long-continued and impartial examination of accessible records has given me the belief that in the districts where the civil war was most ferocious, much the largest number of the criminal class joined the tories, and the misdeeds of the latter were more numerous than those of the whigs.

But the frequency with which both whigs and tories hung men for changing sides, shows that quite a number of the people shifted from one party to the other; and so there must have been many men of exactly the same stamp in both armies.

Much of the nominal changing of sides, however, was due to the needless and excessive severity of Cornwallis and his lieutenants.] The Americans were discovered by their foes when only a quarter of a mile away.

They had formed their forces as they marched.