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Cornwallis followed his 16 August victory at Camden, South Carolina, by invading North Carolina sooner than planned originally. His plan miscarried when vengeful Patriot militiamen destroyed Maj. Patrick Ferguson’s Loyalist militia corps at Kings Mountain on 7 October 1780. Cornwallis suspended his campaign for the season and withdrew most of his malaria-plagued army to Winnsboro, South Carolina. Continental forces under the command of Col. William Washington kept up the pressure on Cornwallis by defeating a Loyalist detachment at Hammond’s Store on 30 December, as Morgan’s corps raided pro-British farms near Ninety Six and Whig partisans attacked other Tory detachments. Cornwallis ordered Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his Loyalist cavalry to drive Morgan away from Ninety Six. If Tarleton conducted the maneuver properly, he and his British Legion dragoons would drive Morgan’s light troops to destruction against the bayonets of Cornwallis’s infantry advancing north from Winnsboro.
"I sent Haldane to you last night, to desire you would pass the Broad River, with the legion and the first battalion of the 71st, as soon as possible. If Morgan is still at Williams', or any where within your reach, I should wish you to push him to the utmost; I have not heard, except from [Major MacArthur, 71st Highlanders] of his having cannon: nor would I believe it, unless he has it from very good authority: It is however possible, and Ninety Six is of so much consequence, that no time is to be lost."
Lt. Gen. Cornwallis to Lt. Col. Banastre TarletonTarleton, Banastre. “A History of the Campaigns of 1780 And 1781 In the Southern Provinces of North America”. Spartanburg, S.C.: Reprint Co., 1967, pp. 244-245.