Colonel Edmund Fanning,
From the Informations I have received of the Insurgents determination to march to Newbern, I am induced to extend my Orders to you of the 26th December and 2nd of February (limiting you to two hundred men) to any number you can raise with Officers and Non Commission Officers in proportion (that is a Captain, Lieutenant and Ensign, two Serjeants, two Corporals and a Drummer to every fifty men) to carry into execution the purposes intended by those Orders; and I do hereby authorize you to take up on the Public Credit all the Ammunition you can procure in Hillsborough, or the adjacent parts, for the use of the men you may march with, and
to satisfy the expence thereof I will give you Drafts on the Treasurers for the sum it may amount to, and also to satisfy the expence of what waggons and Provisions may be requisite for your Detachment.