USA > Tennessee > History of Tennessee the making of a state > Part 5
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a proof of guilt, which was all but conclusive. The prisoner who " failed to give a good account of himself," or to give security for his appearance before the committee, was summarily dealt with, shot, hanged, whipped, branded, or drowned, according to circumstances. A heavy fine was the lightest punishment inflicted. A few purchased freedom with infamy, and as the price of liberty betraved the names of their associates. The punishments were severe, and ruthlessly inflicted. The forger was branded, the murderer was whipped, the horse thief was hanged. It is needless to say that in a short time law and order, according to the Watauga idea of what constituted law and order, were restored. True to tradition, the vigilance committee was dissolved, or dissolved itself, as soon as its work had been performed.
The main strength of the Tories and robbers (the terms were almost synonymous in the backwoods) being broken, the individual offenders were left to the regular tribunals of the country, who it is to be feared exercised power that would have made Lord Strafford himself stand aghast. One indictment, the caption of which has been preserved, is against the defendant, "in toryism." The judgment of the court was that the culprit be kept prisoner until the termination of the war then raging, and that one half of his goods, which must be valued by a jury at the next court, "be kept by the sheriff for the use of the State, the rest to go to the family of the offender." Ramsey, with unconscious irony, says, "the court thus exhibited a marked instance of judgment and mercy in the same order, combining patriotism with justice and humanity." On another occasion a certain J. H., " for his ill practices in harboring and abetting disorderly persons who are prej- udicial and inimical to the common cause of liberty, and frequently disturbing our tranquillity in general," is by the court " duly considering the allegations alleged and objected against the said J. H. imprisoned for the term of
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one year." This action was taken on motion of E. Dunlap, state attorney. The most remarkable exercise of power by this remarkable court is the order granted upon motion of this same E. Dunlap that the property of one II. be retained in the hands of some debtor because "there is sufficient reason to believe that the said H.'s estate will be confiscated to the use of the State for his misdemeanors, etc." The humorous records of the judiciary show noth- ing equal to this. The settlers had scarcely restored order before they were again called on to invade the territory of their implacable foes. The Chickamaugas, a tribe of the Cherokees of peculiar ferocity and daring, who had formed a settlement on the Tennessee about fifty miles below the creek which bears their name, were notorious above all the aboriginal inhabitants of Tennessee soil for their fierceness, their treachery, their love of danger, th daring exploits, and their implacable hatred of the parc face. In the general councils of the nation they were the first to call for revenge, and the last to consent to the treaties by which the white race attempted to put some moral facing upon their spoliation of the red. They eagerly accepted the gifts which tickled their fancy with the tinsel of color, or alleviated the squalid discomfort of their miserable wigwams. But gratitude was an emotion which had never stirred the heart of a Chickamauga brave. In bands of two and three they would lurk on the outskirts of the white settlements, and frequently one of them under the guise of a desire to trade, would gain admittance to the cabins of the settlers. He used the opportunities which hospitality had offered to observe the easiest ingress, and would return the night following with his associates, to burn the cabin, scalp its inmates, plunder its contents, and escape into the patliless wilds of of the Cumberland Hills before pursuit could be organ- ized. At times they came in larger bands and wrought greater destruction. They dwelt upon the banks of the
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river above the rapids, where the current had cut numer- ous gorges through the mountains. The vulture's nest was not regarded as half so secluded, as half so hedged in with security by the safeguards which steep ascents and narrow paths and cavernous cul-de-sacs had thrown around them. Their incursions were quiet, stealthy. and terrible, their retreat was the flight of the fox to his hole.
In 1779 Virginia and North Carolina determined to destroy their settlements. The leader chosen was Evan Shelby, who had served under Braddock at Fort Du Quesne, and who with fifty Tennesseans had withstood the impetuous assaults with which the fearless chief of the Indians, Cornstalk, had vainly attempted to break the line of the Virginians at Point Pleasant during the Kanawha campaign. Shelby lacked the brilliant rapidity of action which made the name of Sevier an evil omen to the Cherokees, but he was peculiarly fitted to the task assigned him. He was eminently cautious, and he under- stood the habits of the Indians, as the trapper under- stands the habits of the beaver. He was given about two thousand men. part of whom had originally been designed for the western service under John Montgomery, who was marching to join Colonel Clark in his expedition against Vincennes and Detroit. Haywood gives to Isaac Shelby, the son of Evan, the credit of furnishing the army trans- portation and supplies. Shelby descended the river in canoes and pirogues from the mouth of Big Creek, and came upon the enemy with the swiftress and silence learned from the Indians themselves. He took them completely by surprise. They were unable to offer resist- ance. They fled to the woods without striking a blow. Shelby destroyed their towns and their crops and carried off everything of value which could be carried off, includ- ing large supplies which the British had collected at that point for distribution among their allies. Shelby was promoted to a generalship in the Virginia military service.
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In the same year a new county was taken from Wash- ington, and named in honor of General Sullivan. Among the first commissioned justices of the peace was Isaac Shelby, who was also appointed colonel of the county militia. In this year also was laid out the first town of the State. Jonesboro, named after William Jones, a North Carolina statesman, was made the county seat of Washington County, and John Wood, Jesse Walton, George Russell, James Stewart, and Benjamin Clark were appointed commissioners to make a plat of the ground, erect public buildings, and to sell lots. The unchinked and clapboarded cabin which had served as the temple of justice for the old Watauga people was ordered to be torn down and in its place it was suggested should be built a court-house of hewn logs, and with shingled roof. In 1783 a new county was formed from Wash- ington County and named Greene, in honor of General Greene, and two years later Greeneville, the county seat, was laid off. This, however, was after the termination of the war.
CHAPTER VII.
KING'S MOUNTAIN.
THE part played by the inhabitants of Tennessee in the war for independence was active, and in one instance decisive. Their operations were chiefly of a desultory, guerrilla kind, under the leadership of Sevier, who had been commissioned colonel-commandant of Washington County, and Shelby, who held the same position in the newly formed county of Sullivan.
Their distant and inaccessible position among the fast- nesses of the mountains and hidden away among the valleys of the Holston was eminently favorable for a sud- den attack, a quick blow, and a hasty retreat. In 1780 Governor Rutherford of South Carolina issued a requisi- tion on Washington and Sullivan counties for one hun- dred men each. Two companies were promptly raised, but too late to render any assistance to Charleston, for whose defense they had been required. Shortly after, however, twice the number called for joined McDowell, who was trying to stem the advance of Cornwallis through South Carolina. McDowell was one of the first of the guerrilla captains who so often have redeemed the bitter- ness of defeat by expeditions of personal daring, and substituted quickness of movement, dauntless courage, and unexpected attack for the more ponderous operations of regular warfare. He had under him Clark, Williams, Sevier, and Shelby, all of whom were brave to reckless- ness, as fertile in resources as Sumter, and as stealthy as the swamp-fox. McDowell, after the formation of his
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troops, detached Clark, Sevier, and Shelby to attack and disperse a force of Tories who, under Patrick Moore, had intrenched themselves in a fort on the Pacolet. Within less than twenty-four hours, although Moore was twenty miles distant, they had performed their mission and returned. Shelby and Clark not long after this had a brush with Ferguson himself, the gallant, fearless, and unfortunate hero of King's Mountain, and withdrew with small loss before a force four times their strength under a leader who combined the noblest qualities of Cornwallis and Tarleton both as soldier and commander. During the latter part of the year, Shelby, Clark, and Williams were sent to scatter a party of Tories on the Enoree. They pushed forward rapidly from McDowell's encamp- ment on Broad River, made a wide detour around Fergu- son's camp, who lay between McDowell and the Tories with a large force with which he had vainly been attempt- ing to bring MeDowell to a decisive battle, and riding hard all night, arrived about daybreak within a short distance of the enemy's camp. The Tories fled without offering resistance, and the Americans were pressing them hotly, when a farmer informed their leader that a large body of regular troops was near with reinforcements for the enemy. Retreat was impossible. The men were tired, the horses were jaded. Breastworks were hastily impro- vised. Preparations were made for a desperate resist- ance. In a short time Colonel Innes of the British army arrived with six hundred regulars and a rabble of Tories. He immediately attacked and put to flight a small detach- ment of troops, which had been thrown forward to try to prevent his crossing the Enoree. The Americans held their position and drove back the assailants time after time. They were just begining to yield before the stub- born onslaughts of the British, when Innes was danger- ously wounded. His fall was the signal for retreat to the Tories, and their flight demoralized the regular troops.
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The Americans saw their opportunity and seized it. They won a decided victory, and captured two hundred of Innes' men. The Tories all escaped.
The victors, flushed with success and eager for new exploits, were on the point of making an incursion towards the sea-coast, for the double purpose of harrying the Tories and avoiding Ferguson, when they received the news of the defeat of General Gates at Camden, and the probable downfall of the American cause. Advance was impossible, and Ferguson's neighborhood rendered retreat hazardous and difficult. Their fears of danger from this source were not without foundation. Ferguson sent a detachment after them, well accoutred, and mounted on fresh horses. The Americans were ineumbered with two hundred prisoners. A forced march alone held out pros- peets of escape to the captors. The prisoners were distrib- uted among the men, one prisoner to three horsemen, who carried him in rotation. In this way they marched two days and one night without intermission, and thus eluded pursuit and reached the mountains in safety, where they were joined by MeDowell himself. The defeat of Gates and the misfortune of Sumter cast a cloud of apprehen- sion over the spirits of the partisan leaders, and Mc- Dowell's command was dissolved. he and his men crossing the mountains with the mountaineers.
The next movement of the Watauga people was made under Sevier and Shelby. They raised a body of five hundred troops with the hope of surprising and over- powering Ferguson, who was making threatening demon- strations against the settlements of the border. They induced Colonel William Campbell of Virginia to join them. Campbell had under him a body of four hundred men, and Sevier and Shelby, to gain his hearty coopera- tion, elected him commander of the united forces. Under his leadership, and after having received reinforcements sufficient to give them about fifteen hundred men, they
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performed one of the most brilliant feats of the - Ferguson was at . Gilbert-town when he heard of the impending onslaught of the enraged mountaineers. He had threatened to burn their houses and destroy their settlements unless they returned to their allegiance, and had advanced as far as Gilbert-town in the apparent execution of his threats. Campbell's command consisted of four hundred Virginians which he had raised, about five hundred men under Sevier and Shelby, about four hundred under Colonel Cleveland, of Wilkes County, N. C., and nearly four hundred under James Williams from South Carolina. Ferguson was almost entirely dependent upon Tory troops. Appreciating the danger of an encounter between a body of men smarting under defeat and notorious for their bravery and a body of men notorious for their lack of it, Ferguson manœuvred to gain time for reinforcements to arrive from Cornwallis, to whom he wrote praying for assistance. He retreated from Gilbert-town to the Cowpens, crossing the main Broad River and again at Dear's Ferry, and pushed forward to King's Mountain, hoping to unite with Cornwallis. Campbell pursued him without intermission, stopping but once for refreshments, in the face of a driving rain that drenched his men to the skin. Ferguson had selected his position with admirable foresight. It was a compara- tively isolated point, whose crest could not be approached from any side without encountering the direct fire of those on top. One who had been in the wars of Napoleon praised the skill of the officer who selected a place for which nature had provided such strategic advantages. Ferguson himself gave it the name of King's Mountain in honor of his sovereign, and declared that all the " rebels out of hell " could not drive him from it. Camp- bell's plan of attack was to surround Ferguson on all sides and prevent him from concentrating an army. The two regiments of Shelby and Campbell himself were sent
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directly up the sides of the mountain to divert the enemy, while Sevier and the rest surrounded them. Ferguson, finding himself in the midst of a baptism of fire, unable to keep his men steady, realized the hopelessness of resist- ance. But his courage was as desperate as his generalship was skillful. Time after time he rallied his men. The well-practiced aim of the American marksmen mowed them down. He charged with the bayonet, but his men refused to follow. He ordered them to mount and rode himself along the line, but they fell as fast as they mounted, and the survivors finally refused to move. Fer- guson had only been wounded in the hand. He carried a silver whistle as a signal of encouragement to his soldiers. Resistance became hopeless. De Peyster, his second in command, prayed him to surrender, but he refused. A white flag was raised and he pulled it down. A second time it was lifted and he cut it down. De Peyster again entreated him to surrender, but he declared he would never surrender to "a damned set of banditti." The Americans soon noticed that the whistle was the centre of the most active resistance, and in a few minutes afterwards it was silenced forever. Ferguson was killed and De Pey- ster almost immediately surrendered. All the British were captured, about eight hundred in all, and fifteen hundred stands of arms. The wagons and supplies were burnt, and fearing Cornwallis, who was in Mecklenburgh County near the Catawba, the mountaineers made a forced march and escaped to the mountains. They had, however, struck a decisive blow, and the battle of King's Mountain has always figured in American history as the turning-point of the war for independence. It came after the disas- ters of Charleston and Savannah and Camden, and was the cause that the advocates of American freedom did not despair of the republic. It threw Cornwallis back upon his base of supplies in South Carolina, and it forced the evacuation of North Carolina. Time was gained for
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hope, for thought, for reorganization, for renewed resist- ance. The battle of King's Mountain connects the history of Tennessee with Bunker Hill and the ancient history of the United States. A sword and a pair of pistols were by the General Assembly of North Carolina voted to Sevier and Shelby for their part in this memorable affair. A more substantial recognition of their services was the resolution passed by the General Assembly in February, 1781, calling on them by name to urge those who had for- merly served under them again to take up arms for their native State and the common cause. But the latter were unable to heed the call. They were in the midst of a war with the Indians, and could not leave their homes. Subse- quently General Greene entered into correspondence with Sevier with a view to securing the Watauga soldiers for his army. Eventually Sevier raised two hundred men and joined Marion. Later still, Shelby and the Sullivan County men joined their old friends under the Swamp Fox, and both took part in the closing scenes of the great war.1
1 Ramsey's indignation is excited by a sneer of Sims, that Shelby and his men left Marion before the object of the war was attained. This was scarcely a matter of reproach in view of the fact that the war was generally regarded as practically at an end, that Shelby's men had only been enlisted for sixty days, that they had already overstayed their time by several weeks, and that the Indians were threatening their homes with destruction. In addition to this, a large number of them actually did stay.
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CHAPTER VIII.
SEVIER'S INDIAN WARS.
AFTER the battle of King's Mountain in 1780, Sevier, whose ever watchful eye was never allowed to wander from the settlements of which he may have been considered in lawyer's phrase the guardian ad litem, sent forward a messenger to ascertain the condition of those at home and the attitude of the Indians. He was informed that a large body of them were preparing to invade the set- tlements. He at once marched hurriedly home, made preparations for organizing a large force, and taking with him a company of a hundred men, pushed forward the day after his return to meet the main body of the invad- ers. He came upon them at Boyd's Creek and routed them. The promptness of the act saved the settlement from an Indian warfare and made their country the field of battle. He formed a camp on French Broad and waited for reinforcements. He crossed the Little Tennessee, and burned every town between the Hiwassee and the Tennessee rivers, including Chilhowee. At Tellico a treaty of peace was made as to the adjacent villages; but Sevier had passed through all the phases of Indian warfare, and he understood all the intricacies of Indian subtilty and In- dian cunning. From Tellico he pushed forward to the vil- lage of Hiwassee and found it deserted. He destroyed it. He pushed forward to the Look-Out towns, the scattered villages where dwelt the bulk of the Chickamaugas, and destroyed them. He also destroyed all crops and sup- plies and drove off or killed all living animals. From the
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Chickamauga towns he continued his march southward towards the mouth. of the Coosa and to the flats of pine and cypress that are found upon its lower banks. He found it a country of surpassing beauty and filled with clusters of wigwams, known to the earlier chroniclers as towns. They had not expected to be approached by the whites. Sevier had a large force under him. Perhaps years might elapse before the opportunity would be so favorable for striking a blow-one which would crush and annihilate. He laid his hand heavily upon them. It was a barbarous mode of warfare. This he knew. No one, indeed, was more generous and kind-hearted than he. In many respects he is one of the heroes of our history, a veritable Knight Templar. But this was not a contest of knight errantry. It was the grim struggle for existence. The fittest alone could survive. If his mode of warfare was barbarous, he was waging war against barbarians, brave, cruel, relentless, and treacherous, without any of the things which civilization gave except its engines of destruction. Sevier was not the man to trifle with his task. Indian incursions could only be stopped by exterminating the In- dians. Hence he tried to exterminate them. General Sheridan in the valley of Virginia was not more thorough. Every grain of corn was destroyed. Everything which could be used was burned, broken, or carried away. Every wigwam received the torch. Every boat was sunk. Noth- ing was spared except a few helpless human lives. A British agent was shot and his body left unburied. But few prisoners were taken; enough to exchange, but no more. The Indians soon made peace. Sevier, however, knew that the end would never be until the Indians were no more, and he established and garrisoned stations or forts along the frontier.
The year following, depredations were committed upon the settlements by bands of Indians from a region where Sevier had not before penetrated. He immediately col-
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leated a force to invade their country again. He pene- trated to the head-waters of the Little Tennessee and sur- prised and captured a town called Tackasejah. He slew fifty Indian braves and captured a large number of women and children. Following his invariable rule of warfare, he destroyed all their corn and burnt all their villages. The settlement of the country was progressing with steady regularity. When Sevier returned from his campaign of 1780 against the Indians, he found along the banks of the French Broad numbers of new cabins and tracts of freshly cleared lands. The limits of the three original settlements were being broadened. The lines of division established by treaty for Indian lands were being over- stepped, and each encroachment excited the same feelings of revenge and hatred which had already made red the annals of American colonization. The frontier settle- ments had no desire to put a stop to them. The State was unable to do so. North Carolina was forced by the logie of circumstances to adopt the same line of policy towards the Indians which the United States have since adopted. Individual settlers were allowed to encroach until they became too powerful to remove, and gifts and treaties were then resorted to in order to remove the In- dians. In 1782, Governor Martin. in a letter to Colonel Sevier, says : " I am distressed with the repeated com- plaints of the Indians respecting the daily intrusions of our people on their lands beyond the French Broad River. The Indian goods are not yet arrived from Philadelphia, through the inclemency of the late season ; as soon as they will be in the State, I'shall send them to the Great Island and hold a treaty with the Cherokees." This was in 1782, in the spring. In the autumn of the same year, the Indians still complained to Governor Martin that the people from Nollichucky were daily pushing them out fo their lands, and that they had built houses with a one day's walk of their towns. They said with pathetic
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HISTORY OF TENNESSEE.
directness and simplicity, "We don't want to quarrel with our elder brother; we therefore hope our elder brother will not take our lands from us that our father gave us because he is stronger than we are. We are the first peo- ple that ever lived on this land; it is ours, and why will our elder brother take it from us?" They complained that those who encroached had not been removed, and they pray that Colonel Sevier, " who is a good man," be sent to have them all removed. But those who encroached were not removed, the goods were not sent, and in the same month Sevier retaliated for some minor aggression of a few straggling Chiekamangas by again invading the Cher- okee country with rifle and flame.
But not all recorded events of those times were of such evil complexion. The better instincts which nature has implanted in every human bosom occasionally asserted themselves, and in the general gloom we occasionally catch glimpses of things that are gentler and more humane. On one occasion the supply of corn in the Nollichucky settle- ment gave out. Two adventurous oarsmen went down in canoes for the purpose of bartering supplies and trinkets for maize. They reached a village called Coiatee in safety and went ashore. They were stopped by some Indians, who received them with evident surprise and suspicion, still further increased by finding rifles hidden under some clothing in the boat. It is probable that JJeremiah Jack and William Rankin would never have related the adven- ture but for the interposition of Nancy Ward, the same who had saved the settlement on a previous occasion. She succeeded in placating the Indians, who, with the impulse of children, went to the opposite extreme, loaded the canoe with corn, and sent them rejoicing to their friends.
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