Lord Cornwallis’ Letter to Lieutenant Colonel Nisbet Balfour, Commander at Ninety Six:
I have the happiness to inform you, that on Wednesday the 16th instant, I totally defeated General Gates’s army. One thousand were killed and wounded, about eight hundred taken prisoners. We are in possession of eight pieces of brass cannon, all they had in the field, all their ammunition wagons, a great number of arms, and one hundred and thirty baggage wagons: in short, there never was a more complete victory. I have written to Lieutenant Colonel Turnbull, whom I sent to join Major Johnson on Little river, to push on after General Sumpter to the Wax-haws, whose detachment is the only collected force of rebels in all this country. Colonel Tarleton is in pursuit of Sumpter. Our loss is about three hundred killed and wounded, chiefly of the thirty-third regiment and volunteers, of Ireland. I have given orders that all the inhabitants of this province, who have subscribed and taken part in this revolt, should be punished with the greatest rigor; also, that those who will not turn out, may be imprisoned, and their whole property taken from them, and destroyed. I have also ordered that satisfaction should be made for their estates, to those who have been injured and oppressed by them. I have ordered, in the most positive manner, that every militia man who has borne arms with us and afterwards joined the enemy, shall be immediately hanged. I desire you will take the most rigorous measure to punish the rebels in the district in which you command, and that you will obey, in the strictest manner, the directions I have given in this letter, relative to the inhabitants of this country.
Cornwallis.
August, 1780.