The committee of Safety, as soon as they heard of the Cunningham's resistance, sent off orders to General Richardson, of the militia, and to Colonel William Thomson, of the rangers, to march forward and suppress it. Richardson was already advancing with eleven hundred men, and his forces were increasing every day. The Patriots of North Carolina, with nine hundred men, under Colonels Polk, Rutherford, and Caswell, joined him after he crossed the Saluda, and with other reinforcements, gave him the command of more than four thousand men. All opposition was considered desperate, but the royalist continued in arms, retreating under Patrick Cunningham into the Indian Nation, whose neutrality they supposed might protect them. The power which they had seized was recovered, most of their leaders were arrested and
sent down to Charleston. Cunningham's party, when much reduced, was surprised in the Cherokee country, and many of his men captured; but he escaped on his horse, bare-backed.