George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 8

The first return to Martin represented that the loyalists were in high spirits; that their force would amount even to six thousand men; that they were well furnished with wagons and horses; and that by the twentieth or twenty fifth of February at furthest they would be in possession of Wilmington, and within reach of the king's ships. On receiving their commission, William Campbell, Neil MacArthur, and Donald Macleod issued circular letters, inviting all their associates to meet on the fifth of February at Cross Creek, or, as it is now called, Fayetteville. At the appointed time all the Scots appeared, and four only of the rest. The Scots, who could promise no more than seven hundred men, advised to await the arrival of the British troops; the other royalists, who boasted that they could bring out five thousand, of whom five hundred were already embodied, prevailed in their demand for an immediate rising. But the Highlanders, whose past conflicts were ennobled by their courage and fidelity to one another, whose sorrows, borne for generations with fortitude, deserved at last to find relief; were sure to keep their word: from a blind instinct of kindred, they took up arms for a cause in which their traditions and their affections had no part; while many of the chiefs of the loyalists shrunk from danger to hiding places in swamps and forests. Employing a few days to collect his army, which was composed chiefly of Highlanders and remnants of the old Regulators, Macdonald, on the eighteenth, began his march for Wilmington, and at evening his army, of which the number was very