Pioneers of the Old Southwest

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rally to the King's standard whenever a King's officer should carry it through their midst. A large number of these Tories were Scotch, chiefly from the Highlands. In fact, as we have seen, Scotch blood predominated among the racial streams in the Back Country from Georgia to Pennsylvania. Now, to insure a triumphant march northward for Cornwallis and his royal troops, these sons of Scotland must be gathered together, the loyal

air. He had a serious unhandsome countenance which, at casual glance, might not arrest attention; but when he spoke he became magnetic, by reason of the intelligence and innate force that gl

rection of the natives on the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies. Later, at Woolwich, he took up the scientific study of his profession of arms. He not only became a crack shot, but he invented a new type of rifle which he could load

le rein, draw his pistol, toss it in the air, catch and aim it as it fell, and shoot the bird's head off. He was given command of a corps of picked riflemen; and in the Battle of the Brandywine in 1777 he rendered services which won acclaim from the whole army. For the honor of that day's service to his King, Ferguson

ll their foes as personally odious. We can read his quality of manhood in a few lines of the letter he sent to his kinsman, the noted Dr. Adam Ferguson, about an incident that occurred at Chads Ford. As he was lying with his men in the woods, in

lowly cantered away. As I was within that distance, at which, in the quickest firing, I could have lodged half a dozen balls in or about him before he was out of my reach, I had only to determine. But it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an unoffending individual who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty-so I let him alone. The day after, I had been telling this story to some wounded officers

lled the order to fire, and that De Lancey said he believed the officer was Count Pulaski. But, as Ferguson, according to his own account, "leveled his piece" at the officer, his arm evidently was not wounded until later in the day. T

y Hessians and Dragoons, he learned that some American women had been shamefully maltreated. He went in a white fury

r American-born officers such as De Peyster and Allaire. There were good honest men among the loyalists and there were also rough and vicious men out for spoils-which was true as well of the Whigs or Patriots from the same counties. Amo

o hundred of his troops; and Isaac Shelby, with a similar force from Sullivan County crossed the mountains to McDowell's assistance. These "overmountain men" or "backwater men," as they were called east of the hills, were trained in Sevier's method of Indian warfare-the secret approach through the dark, the swift dash, and the swifter flight. "Fight strong and run away fast" was the In

of bed to give fight or die. It was generally both fight and die, for these dark adventures of his were particularly successful. Ferguson knew no neutrals or conscientious objectors; any man who would not carry arms for the King was a traitor, and his life and goods we

lby's command came off victor and was about to pursue the enemy towards Ninety-Six when a messenger from McDowell galloped madly into camp with word of General Gates's crushing defeat at Camden. This was a warning for Shelby's guerrillas to flee as birds to their mountains, or Ferguson would cut them off from the nort

nd with a fair promise of victory. So keeping east of the hills but still close to them, Ferguson turned into Burke County, North Carolina. He sat him down in Gilbert Town (present Lincolnton, Lincoln County) at the foot of the Blue Ridge and indited a letter to the "Back Water Men," telling them that if they did not lay down their arms and r

d the officer on the white horse before it, the latter advised Mrs. Lytle to use her influence to bring her husband back to his duty. She became grave then and answered that her husband would never turn traitor to his country Ferguson frowned at the word "traitor," but presently he said: "Madam, I admire you as the handsomest woman I have seen in N

Mountain and its

who would not shoot an enemy in the back, who was ready to put the same faith in another soldier's honor which he knew was due to his own, yet in battle a wolfish fighter who lea

ier's idea that they should muster the forces of the western country and go in search of Ferguson ere the latter should be able to get sufficient reinforcements to cross the mountains. Sevier, like Ferguson, always preferred to seek his foe, knowing well the advantage of the offensive. Messengers were sent to Colonel William Campbell of the Virginia settlements on the Clinch, asking his aid. Campbell at first refused, thinki

into the caves of the Tennessee River. But the Indian prophecy still hung over them, and in this day with a heavier menace. Not with money, now, were they to seal their purchase of the free land by the western waters. There had been no women in that other picture, only the white men who were going forward to open the way and the red men who were retreating. But in this picture there were women-wives and children, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. All the women of the settlement were the

g into their saddles. And it is said that all the women took up his words and cried again and again, "With the sword of the Lord and of

of gayly fringed deerskin, or of the linsey-woolsey spun by their women. Their hunting shirts were bound in at the waist by bright-colored linsey sashes tied behind in a bow. They wore moccas

march, they left them behind on the mountain side. Their provisions thereafter were wild game and the

o that Ferguson should not have time to get reinforcements from Cornwallis; and they must make that extra speed by another trail than they had intended taking so that they themselves could not be intercepted before they had picked up the Back Country militia under Colonels Cleveland, Hampbright, Chronicle, and Williams, who were moving to join them. We are not told who took the lead when they left the known trail, but we may suppose it was Sevier and his Wataugans, for th

of his staff into North Carolina and was not far off. It then occurred to Sevier and Shelby, evidently for the first time, that Gates, on receiving such a request, might well ask why the Governor of North Carolina, as the military head of the State, had not provided a commander. The truth is that Sevier and Shelby had been so busy drumming up the militia and planning their campaign that they had found no time to consult the Governor. Moreover, the means whereby the expedition had been financed might not have appealed to the chie

the Country, we think such a body of men worthy of your attention and would request you to send a General Officer immediately to take the command.... All our Troops being

bell, as the only Virginian, was the appropriate choice. The sweet reasonableness of selecting a commander from such a motive appealed to all, and Campbell became a general in fact if not in name! Shelby's principal aim, however, had been to get rid of McDowell, who, as their senior, w

aste out of Gilbert Town and was marching southward to get in touch with Cornwallis. His force was much reduced, as some of his men were in pursuit of Elijah Clarke towards Augusta and a number of his other Tories were on furlou

itants of No

who by their shocking cruelties and irregularities give the best proof of their cowardice and want of discipline: I say if you wish to be pinioned, robbed and murdered, and see y

o that you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be degraded forever and ever by a set of mong

n, Major 71s

Mountain and it

Cornwallis's headquarters, was only sixty miles distant. We have seen something of Ferguson's quality, however, and we may simply take it that he did not want to escape. He had been planning to cross the high hills-to him, the Highlander, no barrier but a challenge-to fight these men. Now that they had taken the initiative he would not show them his back. He craved the battle. So he sent out runners to the main army and rode on along the eastern base of the mountains, seekin

e immediate, wooded territory, might easily fail to discover a small army nesting sixty feet above the shrouding leafage. Word was evidently brought to Ferguson here, telling him

spies, in the assumed r?le of a Tory, learned Ferguson's plans, his approximate force, his route, and his system of communication with Cornwallis. The officers now held council and determined to take a detachment of the hardiest and fleetest

rses mired, but they were pulled out and whipped forward again. The wild horsemen made no halt for food or rest. Within two miles of King's Mountain they captured Ferguson's messenger with the letter that told of his desperate situation. They asked this man how they should know Ferguson. He told them that Ferguson was in ful

ng horses. Orders were given that every man was to "throw the priming out of his pan, pick his touchhole, prime anew, examine bullets and see that everything was in readiness for battle." The plan of battle a

burst upon the hill. With fixed bayonets, some of Ferguson's men charged down the face of the slope, against the advancing foe, only to be shot in the back as they charged. Still time and time again they charged; the overhill men reeled and retreated; but always their comrades took toll with their rifles; Ferguson's men, preparing for a mounted c

to bayonets, raised above the rocks; and then they saw Ferguson dash by and slash them down with his sword. Two horses we

neers began to give way. But it was only the galloping horses of their own comrades; Tarleton had not come. Nolichucky Jack spurred o

that were at Musgrove's Mill," sa

The buckskin-shirted warriors leaped the rocky barriers, swinging their tomahawks and long knives.

ter, his second in c

those damned b

him. An iron muzzle pushed at his breast, but the powder flashed in the pan. He swerved and struck at the rifleman with his broken hilt. But the other guns aimed at him spok

the killing did not yet cease. It is said that many of the mountaineers did not know the significance of the white flag. Sevier's sixteen-year-old son, having heard that his father had

for eighteen hours. They dug shallow trenches for the dead and scattered the loose earth over them. Ferguson's body, stripped of its uniform and boots and wrapp

isoners and the wounded who were able to walk were marched off carrying the

other twenty-one. Among those who thus weighted the gallows tree were some of the Tory brigands from Watauga; but not all the victims were of this character. Some of the troops would have wreaked vengeance on the two Tories from Sevier's command who had betrayed their army plans to Ferguson; but Sevier

, perhaps to the ears of the marching men came faintly through the night's stillness the howl of a wolf and the answering chorus of the pack. For the wolves came down to King's Mountain from all the surrounding hills, following the s

succeeded to the command of the Southern Patriot army which Gates had led to defeat. Greene's genius met the rising tide of the Patriots' courage and hope and took it at the flood. His strategy, in dividing his army and thereby compelling the division of Cornwallis's force, led to Daniel Morgan's victory at the Cowpens, in the Back Country of South Carolina, on January 17, 1781-another frontiersmen's triumph. Though the British won the next engagement betwe

ute lay down through the Clinch and Holston valleys to the settlement at the base of the mountains. Sevier and his Wataugans had gone by Gillespie's Gap, over the pathway that hung like a narrow ribbon about the breast of Roan Mountain, lifting i

from the Unakas of Tennessee into the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky; and they have remained to this day what they were then, a primitive folk of strong and fiery men and brave women living as their forefathers of Watauga and Holston lived. In the log cabins in those mountains today are heard the same ballads, sung still to the dulcimer, that entertained the earliest settlers. The women still turn the old-fashioned spinning wheels. The code of the men is still the code learned perh

Thames is kept in one of the favorite names for mountain girls-"Lake Erie." In the Civil War many volunteers from the free, non-slaveholding mountain regions of Kentucky and Tennessee joined the Union Army, and it is said that they exceeded all others in stature and