Colonel Davie After His Brillance At Charlotte

Source

See earlier post from A biography of General Davie (1756 - 1820) which was found in the Magazine Of America here.


Generals Sumner and Davidson continued their retreat across the Yadkin, while [Colonel William Richardson] Davie returned towards Charlotte, and he so vexed the British by cutting off the forage parties, and beating up their advanced posts, that Cornwallis began to feel great distress for want of forage and supplies.* [*Tarleton's Campaigns] 

When General Greene took command of the southern army in December, 1780, he met Colonel Davie for the first time. The commissary department became vacant by the resignation of Colonel Thomas Polk. The subsistence of the army had become very difficult, and Colonel Polk declared that it had become impossible. General Greene having formed a high estimate of Colonel Davie's abilities, earnestly and in most flattering terms solicited him to relinquish his hopes of brilliant service in the field, and accept the vacant office. At the call of patriotism he abandoned the tempting career which lay before him, and assumed the not less important but more unpleasant and arduous duties of a station which offered no distinctions. General Greene had himself set the example, having relinquished a brilliant career in the field to assume for years the duties of quartermaster-general of the army. Colonel Davie assumed the duties of his new post in January, 1781, and continued with the army for the next five months. Hardly any combination of circumstances could exist presenting greater difficulties to the commissary of an army than those under which he began.