Your Petitioners were the first militiamen of this state who were ever ordered into service at such a distance as South Carolina. That on our arrival at Hillsborough we staid but a few days to rest before we marched to the south, from which time (except a few days halt that we made at Deep River) we were marched almost night and day and kep on half allowance of flour for eight or ten days before the battle. That from these circumstances, and being wholly unacquainted with military discipline, which we had not had time to learn; greatly exhausted by fatigue at that hot season, which we had not been inured to; dispirited for want of Rest and Diet; and Panic-Struck by the Noise and Terror of a Battle which was entirely New to most of us; We (amongst others, officers and privates) were so unhappy as to abandon the Field of Battle.

From "Petition of Samuel Dinwiddie, Landon Carter, and other Amherst County militiamen, dated November 9, 1780, ms. in Virginia State Library, Richmond. A summary of this petition is in a "Calendar of Legislative Petitions" in the Virginia State Library Report for 1908. Submitted by John Maass.