The result was a complete disaster.

Tarleton himself barely got away with two hundred and seventy men and left behind nearly nine hundred casualties and prisoners.
Cornwallis had lost one-third of his effective army.

There was nothing for him to do but to take his loss and still to press on northward in the hope that the more southerly inland posts could take care of themselves.

In the early spring of 1781, when heavy rains were making the roads difficult and the rivers almost impassable, Greene was luring Cornwallis northward and Cornwallis was chasing Greene.

At Hillsborough, in the northwest corner of North Carolina, Cornwallis issued a proclamation saying that the colony was once more under the authority of the King and inviting the Loyalists, bullied and oppressed during nearly six years, to come out openly on the royal side.