This Day in History: May 9

Another version, and the one most popular with Patriot writers, is that Tarleton tricked Buford by offering the Colonials quarter, and when they laid down their arms, Tarleton ordered the British troops to attack without mercy. Alexander Garden of Charleston wrote that it was "one of Tarleton's most atrocious acts of barbarity, yet it exalted him in the favour of Lord Cornwallis, and raised his military reputation, in the opinions of the British nation, to the most exalted degree of perfection." [More]