CHAPTER I.

EARLY HISTORY--THE FRONTIER--PATRIOTIC SPIRIT--CALL TO ARMS--MARCH TO BATTLE.

“Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain; * * * * * These constitute a State.” SIR WILLIAM JONES.

The hardy and brave settlers on the Watauga, Holston and Nolachucky rivers, among lofty mountains, dwelt in such peace as their savage neighbors permitted, and in contentment with their great distance from the busy world. Having leased the territory from the Indians, they proceeded to organize the

FIRST REPUBLIC EVER FORMED IN AMERICA.

There was no established government of any kind within their reach, whose protection they could enjoy while they owned its authority. Therefore, under the pressure of a civil necessity, they met in convention, entered into a written association, prescribed laws and elected commissioners for the administration of justice and the conduct of public affairs. Their commonwealth existed for several years.

In 1774 the Shawnees and other Indian tribes assailed the western frontier of Virginia. Lord Dunmore, Governor of that State, called for volunteers to resist the invasion, and of those enlisted from southwestern counties of the colony, a regiment under Col. Christian assembled at New River. To it a company of more than fifty men from Sullivan and Carter counties (East Tennessee), commanded by Capt. Evan Shelby, joined themselves, and with it went to Greenbrier, where Gen. Lewis, commander in chief, assembled his forces. From there the army marched with difficulty for twenty-five days through the wilderness, along the rugged banks of the Kanawha River, to Point Pleasant on the Ohio. Two of Capt. Shelby’s men were instrumental in preventing the Indians, before day on the 10th of October, from surprising and probably overthrowing the army of Gen. Lewis. In the hotly contested battle which immediately followed, some of the same company dislodged a body of the savages from an important vantage ground, and thus ensured victory to the Americans. The defeat of the Indians was so complete that they were subdued into a peace which lasted for two years. Judge Haywood, in commenting upon the unexpected discovery of the enemy by men from East Tennessee, to the salvation of the whole army of the provincials, remarks: “Thus it has happened that East Tennessee, in the earliest stages of her infancy, has been called on to contribute all in her power to the common defense, and seems to have been made much less for herself than for the protection of her neighbors.”

In the resistance made by the American Colonies to the Government of Great Britain, these settlers early expressed their sympathy. Important events touching the welfare of a people may be remotely separated in space while they are closely related in time. On the fifth day of September, 1774, when the army of Gen. Lewis at Greenbrier was about starting on its hard march down the Kanawha River, to win a victory that would compel the Indians into peace, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, to deliberate for the liberty and welfare of the American people. The King of Great Britain rejected the offers of that Congress. The British Parliament met in November, and again after the holidays. The twentieth day of January was the first day of the session in the House of Lords. On the very same day the men of the settlements beyond the Alleghanies, where the Watauga and the Holston flow to the Tennessee, united with the men of the southwestern corner of Virginia in council near Abingdon. On hearing what Congress had done, they unanimously declared their adhesion to it. To the Virginia delegates in Congress they wrote:

“We explored our uncultivated wilderness, bordering on many nations of savages, and surrounded by mountains almost inaccessible to any but these savages. But even to these remote regions the hand of power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, nature and the rights of humanity have vested us. We are willing to contribute all in our power, if applied to constitutionally, but cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to a venal British Parliament or a corrupt ministry. We are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender any of our inestimable privileges to any power upon earth, but at the expense of our lives. These are our real though unpolished sentiments of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die.”

The War of the American Revolution began at Lexington and Concord April 19, 1775 (on the anniversary of which day, eighty-six years afterwards, was the fight at Baltimore). In describing the swift travel of the war message from Massachusetts throughout the Colonies, the historian Bancroft represents it as overleaping bays and rivers and the Dismal Swamp, passing through pines and palmettoes, and transcending hills and mountains. “The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia.” And westward still: “The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the ‘loud call’ might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga and the French Broad,” who, for some years after the beginning of the war, knew that it was going on, but the scenes of its battles were far removed from their secluded homes. The echoes of their wooded hills were now and then awakened by the notes of the “spirit-stirring drum and ear-piercing fife,” but never by any martial sounds from conflicts with arms in the American Revolution. Georgia, in 1779, was brought into subjection to the King. About a hundred patriots, led by Col. Clarke, had fled to the mountaineers for refuge, and obtained helpers in their conflict with the British, in order to renew which, they returned home. Refugee Whigs had also come from east of the Alleghanies to the Washington District, into which North Carolina in 1777 organized the Watauga and adjacent settlements. The accounts given by all these of the persecutions and cruelties inflicted by the British and Tories, had moved the frontier men to friendly sympathy with the sufferers, and to slumbering wrath against the oppressors, and they only needed opportunity to actively join their brethren in the struggle of the Colonies for independence. The summer of 1780 had opened, and that opportunity was soon offered.

On the 11th of May, Charleston was surrendered by General Lincoln to Sir Henry Clinton. Shortly afterwards the British power was so triumphantly extended over South Carolina as to rally to its support all timid, wavering and disaffected people. North Carolina was in danger of being conquered. Col. Ferguson, of the British army, was marching towards it and threatening it with invasion. Col. Charles McDowell, temporarily chief commander of the Whig forces in North Carolina, called on Colonels John Sevier and Isaac Shelby, of Washington District, for help, “as soon as possible,” against the invader. They promptly responded, and in July, Sevier, with two hundred mounted riflemen from Washington County, and Shelby, with an equal number from Sullivan County, joined McDowell’s camp on Broad River, South Carolina. They did good service in several conflicts with the enemy, in capturing the fort held by Col. Moore on the Pacolet River and its garrison, and in winning the battle at Musgrove’s Mill, where more than two hundred British prisoners were taken. Upon the heels of this victory came news to McDowell of Gen. Gates’ defeat at Camden and Sumter’s disaster. This disheartened the army; it was in a position of danger and could only withdraw. So great indeed were its apprehensions and sense of inability to hold its own in the field, that it fairly dissolved. Shelby and Sevier, with their regiments, returned at once to their distant homes, yet ready of mind soon to renew the warfare. Not long after, McDowell, with a company of several hundred men, sought refuge in the same hospitable region.

Meanwhile, Cornwallis, flushed with his victory over Gates (August 16) at Camden, was eager for other triumphs, and by his direction Ferguson and his troops pressed their way up to the present Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The result was to encourage the Tory inhabitants and rally them to his support. Already, to his displeasure, the mountaineers had given him lessons of their prowess in battle. In September he sent a message to the officers on the western rivers that “if they did not quit their opposition to the British Government, he would march over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword.” This fierce missive did not frighten or deter those to whom it went. It rather incited them to hostile action. The presence in their country of refugee Whigs, some of whom had but recently arrived, was a constant reminder of the bitter and relentless hate of their enemies, that provoked them to sturdy resistance. Their patriotic spirits only needed an incentive to go forth to war, and Ferguson’s threat furnished it. Col. Shelby, on receiving it, immediately rode fifty miles to confer with Col. Sevier. They determined to anticipate Ferguson, to call their riflemen to arms and march unexpectedly upon his camp. Col. Wm. Campbell, of Washington County, Virginia, near by, was asked and consented to join the expedition. Sycamore Shoals, Carter County, Tennessee, was chosen as the place, and September 25, as the time, for assembling the forces. On the appointed day, one thousand and forty men met at the Watauga River, armed with Deckard rifles--many of them with their feet in moccasins. Officers and men wore hunting-shirts; every soldier had a shot-pouch, knife, tomahawk, knapsack and blanket. Four hundred men under Campbell were from Washington County, Virginia, two hundred and forty under Shelby were from Sullivan County, North Carolina, and the same number under Sevier, from Washington County, North Carolina. One hundred and more, under Col. McDowell, were exiles from east of the Alleghanies.

The scene was picturesque in its natural features. In the valley and on the surrounding hills the thick woods were no longer dressed in summer green. Their leaves, touched by the first frosts, had begun to put on their autumnal coats of yellow, orange and red, mingled with the perpetual verdure of cedars and pines. In the midst stood a thousand men in simple, homely attire. They were healthy, because of the pure, tonic air they breathed--strong, by physical exercise among the hills--alert, by living in dangers from savage foes--equipped with guns, which their sharp eyes and skillful fingers made sure of aim and deadly in effect. Altogether, there were plentiful materials present for the pencil of an artist. The patriotic enthusiasm that filled the hearts of the gathered mountaineers, in harmony with the natural surroundings, gave a nobility to the scene that could not be portrayed on canvas or described but imperfectly in verse.

They who led in the enterprise had reverence of mind. It was a bold undertaking for a body of raw militia to encounter trained and tried soldiers in deadly fray, but their trust was not chiefly in themselves. There were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians among them who had strong faith in God, and the influence of their teaching and life had been felt by other settlers. Before the march began, prayer was offered by the Rev. Samuel Doak to Him who is supreme in heaven and earth. The minister associated the occasion and its purpose with the wars of Israel, under a departed dispensation of religion. One historian relates that the petitions were “accompanied with a few stirring remarks befitting the occasion, closing with the Bible quotation, ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,’ when the sturdy Scotch-Irish Presbyterians around him, clothed in their tidy hunting-shirts and leaning upon their rifles in an attitude of respectful attention, shouted in patriotic acclaim: ‘The sword of the Lord and of our Gideons!’”[12]

Buoyant with hope of triumph they went forward: on over the Little Doe and Big Doe rivers,--then through a gap between the Yellow and the Roan mountains,--then down along Roaring Creek and Big Toe River, following ravines, over stony ground. All around them from the start, the mountains stood, sublime in grandeur,--one, not far distant, higher than any other in the Atlantic States,--and mountains were ahead of them. On they went,--through the Blue Ridge at Gillespie’s Gap,--then over Silver and Linville mountains to the Catawba River,--along its bank and across Linville River to Quaker Meadows. There Col. Cleveland and Maj. Winston, with three hundred and fifty North Carolinians, joined them.

When encamped in the gap at South Mountain, they supposed Ferguson to be at Gilbert-town, about eighteen miles distant, and for the impending conflict with him, it was needful they should have a commander. Who should it be? Their choice fell upon Col. Campbell, who had the largest regiment. Cleveland, McDowell and Shelby encouraged the men in brief and pithy words, and every one unwilling to go into battle was allowed to withdraw, but no one left. The march was resumed. They soon learned that the enemy had retreated.

On top of the Yellow Mountain, the second night after leaving Watauga River, two men had deserted from Sevier’s regiment, and carried word to Ferguson that the mountaineers were advancing. He was alarmed, because, not only that he knew their mettle in fight, but that he had furloughed many Tory soldiers to visit their homes. Three days before, he had changed his camp a short distance (from Gilbert-town to Green River), in the hope of capturing Col. Clarke and his men, on their way from Georgia to Nolachucky. Quickly, upon learning that “the Back-water men,” as he called them, were on the way to assail him, he sent word (September 30) to Lord Cornwallis, sixty miles distant, whom the message did not reach for a week. To the British commander at Ninety-Six he also wrote for reinforcements, which could not be given. In beginning to retreat, he went, not towards Charlotte, Cornwallis’ headquarters, but southward, as if his destination were, as he said it was, Ninety-Six; and by this attempt to deceive, revealed his sense of danger.

Military prudence required that he should call the Tories to his help. Accordingly, on the second day of the retreat, there went out from his camp a circular to “the inhabitants of North Carolina,” in which he described the on-coming descent of Whigs from the hills as “an inundation of barbarians.” “If you wish,” he said, “to be pinioned, robbed, and murdered ... by the dregs of mankind; ... if you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of men, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp. The Back-water men have crossed the mountains. McDowell, Hampton, Shelby and Cleveland are at their head, so that you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be degraded forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once, and let your women turn their backs upon you and look out for real men to protect them.”

The next day, changing the direction of retreat, he went a few miles, watched all night for an attack, then marched twenty miles and halted forty-eight hours, with only thirty-five miles between him and Cornwallis. In a dispatch to that General, he spoke of his enemy as “of some consequence” by reinforcements, and of his hopefulness, yet doubt, of success. “Three or four hundred good soldiers--part dragoons,” he said, “would finish the business. Something must be done soon.” Sixteen miles more of travel brought him to King’s Mountain, a ridge sixty feet high, six hundred yards long by two hundred and fifty wide at its base, and from sixty to one hundred yards wide on top. Upon it he encamped, October the sixth. Without fortifying the position, he expressed entire confidence in maintaining it. Several Whig leaders in their narratives attribute sayings to him on the subject that are boastful and blasphemous.