Although the Americans won the war against Great Britain, immediate peace did not come to South Carolina. The Tories in the State kept up a constant warfare upon their Whig neighbors, and in March of 1782, General Greene, who, not long after the battle of Guilford Courthouse had won a decisive victory at Eutaw Springs, was still in South Carolina. General Greene sent the alarming intelligence to the towns on the coast that the British had sent four vessels from Charleston harbor to plunder and burn New Bern and Edenton in South Carolina.
To meet this sudden emergency, General Rutherford was ordered to quell the Tories in the Cape Fear section, who were terrorizing the people in that region. And during April of 1782, General Gregory received orders from General Burke to take 500 men to Edenton for the defense of that town, and to notify Count de Rochambeau as soon as the enemy should appear in Albemarle Sound. In August no sign of the British ships had as yet been seen, though the coast towns were still dreading their arrival. Governor Martin wrote Gregory to purchase whatever number of vessels the Edenton merchants considered necessary for the protection of the town, to purchase cannon, and to draft men to man the boats.
But Edenton was spared the horror of a second raid such as she had suffered in 1781. In December of 1782, the British Army in South Carolina, which since the battle of Eutaw Springs had been hemmed in at Charleston by General Greene, finally embarked for England. The ships that had been terrorizing the towns near the coast in North Carolina, departed with them. Thus, ending the bitter struggle.
Source: In Ancient Albemarle by Catherine Albertson.
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