By all accounts, it was bitterly cold in the wee hours of Feb. 27, 1776, when loyalists, soaked to the bone from enduring days of rainfall, began a 6-mile march through swampy muck and dense brush in present-day Pender County to seize a patriot camp on the west bank of Moores Creek Bridge.
The move to confront the patriots at the Black River Road bridge that crosses Moores Creek was an unplanned step in a larger strategy for England to recapture North Carolina, a plan British Royal Governor Josiah Martin coordinated when he lost control of the colony and was exiled in the first half of 1775, according to the National Park Service.
After Martin convinced his superiors that his plan to raise an army of 10,000 and march to the coast to join with British forces would restore royal rule to the colony, he began recruiting at Cross Creek, now known as Fayetteville, in early 1776.
He ended up with 1,600 loyalists, mostly Scottish immigrants, marching east, but patriots thwarted their attempts to reach the coast…