USA > Texas > Border fights & fighters; stories of the pioneers between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi and in the Texan republic > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
63
64
Border Fights and Fighters
series which professes to discuss his achievements with authority is interesting but highly traditional and little to be depended upon.
Save perhaps in the great state of Tennessee he is more or less unknown or forgotten. Even his decisive connection with one of the most notable battles of our Revolution is obscured by the reflection cast by men of less fame. To the trio of great Tennesseans, Crockett, Houston, and Jackson, with whose career the world is familiar, must be added the name of Sevier. He may dispute pre-eminence fairly enough with all but a man of such colossal characteristics as Andrew Jackson.
Crockett and Jackson came from the same people. Their origin was humble, their opportunities limited, and the success they achieved the more creditable. Hous- ton was a man of fairly good family of the middle class, Sevier, in the original sense of the term, when the word specified degree instead of character, was a gentleman; yes, a gentleman in modern sense, as well. His family, it is claimed, was an ancient one in France and his name was derived from the town of Xavier in Navarre at the foot of the French Pyrenees, where his family had an considerable estate and an old chateau. Possibly, as is sometimes urged, the name may have been originally de Xavier.
Sevier came naturally by his love for the mountains, for his people had for centuries dwelt on the slopes of that forbidding range. It is alleged that there was a relationship between his family and that of the great Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, than whom no more heroic soul ever lived; but be that as it may, unlike their Spanish namesake the French Xaviers were Huguenots, who fled the country when Louis XIV perpetrated that atrocious
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 65
blunder-nay, that ineffable crime-known as the Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes.
Abandoning their home the family went first to Lon- don and then migrated to America, seeking freedom in the land across the sea. The Old Dominion opened hospitable arms to people of their gentle blood, and as they had saved something from the wreck of their fortunes they presently became people of prominence among the planters of Virginia. There in 1745 young John Sevier, for so the family name became anglicized, was born. He was given the best education which it was possible to receive in Virginia, and of which, with his usual ambition, he made the most of in his life.
He was twenty-seven years of age, therefore, when he rode up to Robertson's house on the Watauga. He had been married some years at that time and was the father of two promising sons. While a mere boy he had made a name for himself as a hunter, trader, and pioneer, and now held a commission as captain in the Virginia line, the same corps in which Washington was afterward a colonel. He had come across the Alleghenies to the settlement on the Watauga to build himself a new home in this recently opened country.
I cannot doubt but that God led him across the hills, for charmed by what he saw, he determined to cast his lot with the people there, of whom he speedily became the idol and leader. His two companions, the elder a grizzly veteran, who also held the rank of captain in the Virginia line, were Evan and Isaac Shelby, father and son, two sterling patriots of Welsh descent. Evan Shelby rose to the rank of general in the Revolution and although he had a distinguished career, may be dis- missed from our consideration. Isaac Shelby, the son,
5
66
Border Fights and Fighters
however, reappears again in this narrative, and was asso- ciated with Sevier in many heroic undertakings.
When Daniel Boone, redoubtable hunter, explorer, adventurer, man of heroic mould, first toiled over the tree-crested summits of the Alleghenies and surveyed the vast expanse of mountain and valley and river stretch- ing illimitably before him toward the setting sun, country which no white man had ever trod, a doubtful legend says that he gave vent to his feelings in an outburst of enthusiasm to his comrades, in these words: "I am richer than the man in Scripture, who owned cattle on a thousand hills. I own the wild beasts in a thousand valleys!" Whether he said it or no, he probably thought it.
It is characteristic of the genius of the white race, that to see a place, to set foot upon it, was sufficient to establish a claim to any domain, any aboriginal inhabi- tants to the contrary, notwithstanding. The great waste of territory between the Ohio and the Tennessee, which the English claimed had been ceded to the king in the famous treaty of Fort Stanwix by the Iroquois,-who had no more right nor title to it than Germany has to France, for instance,-was the hunting ground, the place of resort, of great tribes of the most enlightened and warlike savages south of the Six Nations, upon the continent.
De Soto had visited it in 1540, and an Irish trader, named Dougherty, had settled within its confines within the latter part of the seventeenth century, but no one had ever presumed to attempt to colonize, or hold it, not even the Cherokees, whose country lay adjacent to the beautiful valley of the Watauga.
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 67
II. "The Rear Guard of the Revolution "
The first actual settlement was made in 1769-70 by Robertson and a party of North Carolinians, who climbed the mountains and built their huts in the fertile valley on the other side. There in a well-watered plateau, some two thousand feet above the level of the sea, in a coun- try which was remarkable for the fertility of its soil and the salubrity of its climate, they purchased land from the Cherokees, erected cabins, and endeavored to make the place a home. Thither Sevier resorted. Possessed of ample means, indeed, being a man of wealth for the time and place, his house became the resort of the hardy settlers, whom he received with true Virginia hospitality.
A man of urbane and charming disposition, gay and debonair, yet of inflexible resolution and matchless daring, he became the idol of the settlers. Thenceforward for " forty-three years he led them in all their enterprises and undertakings; he conducted thirty-four battles against the Indians and met no defeat; he participated as the ani- mating spirit in one great expedition against the British, with overwhelming success. In 1772, he and his asso- ciates in the trans-mountain settlements, organized the first free and independent government on this continent, administering the laws of their agreement and dealing justice in the vast region across the Alleghenies.
During the Revolutionary War many times he broke up the plans of the British for launching the savages upon the borders and thus overwhelming the American colonists; plans which, had they succeeded, might have been as fatal to American hopes of independence as would have been the success of Burgoyne's expedition.
68
Border Fights and Fighters
He and his men-Gilmore felicitously calls them "The Rear Guard of the Revolution "-kept the Indians in check, dauntlessly interposing their scanty numbers be- tween the fierce warriors and the unprotected settlements on the hither side of the Alleghenies, performing service incalculable thereby. The borders were free, the patri- ots could leave their families without fear of savage foray because they were watched over by Sevier and his men.
It was given to him at one of the turning points of the Revolution to inspire, and in large measure to strike the blow which determined that the south land should be free.
III. The State of Franklin and its Governor
After the Revolution, under Sevier's leadership, North Carolina having cast them off, the mountaineers organ- ized within the limits of the present commonwealth of Tennessee, the state of Franklin,* named for the wise old philosopher, and Sevier was its first governor.
He administered its financial affairs with a currency of coon skins! When North Carolina withdrew the act of cession, by which she had turned the territory over to Congress and sought to assume her state rights again, Sevier conducted himself in the trying crisis with discre- tion and firmness, and had it not been for the machina- tions of some bitter enemies-this is the penalty of great- ness, always to make enemies-he might have succeeded in preserving the integrity of the state he had founded.
It is interesting to note that North Carolina, which was quick to follow the lead of her southern sisters in
* Commonly and erroneously called the state of Frankland, i.e., land of the Franks or Freemen !
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 69
seceding from the Union in 1861, pointed out at this ancient date that if different communities were permit- ted to withdraw from a mother state and organize states of their own, at their own volition, the result would be the disintegration of the Republic. North Carolina was right in this instance, and Sevier was wrong in attempt- ing to maintain his commonwealth.
He was treacherously betrayed, captured, and after- ward tried at Morgantown, North Carolina, for high treason. Fifteen hundred men of the trans-Allegheny region, assembled to take him back, and a war between the sections was imminent. Aided by some of his old comrades in arms he made a romantic escape from the custody of the officers; whereupon the people of the Watauga district, having submitted to the inevitable, promptly elected him to the North Carolina legislature, in which, after some feeble protests, he took his seat.
When the state ratified the constitution and became thereby a member of the Federal Union, one congress- man was apportioned to the district across the Alle- ghenies. Sevier was unanimously elected and was the first man to sit in Congress from that great region be- yond the mountains.
He was made general of the militia when Tennessee was a territory, and when she became a state he was chosen governor without opposition. For three succes- sive terms he was elected, and then being ineligible con- stitutionally, for a period of two years, he was thereafter elected for three more successive terms, after which he was sent back to Congress and thrice re-elected !
He died in harness and in the field, in 1815, in a tent on a surveying expedition for the government, sur- rounded as he had lived, by his soldiers.
.
70
Border Fights and Fighters
He lost his first wife in 1774 and was living at his home on the Nolichucky, from which, by the way, he was sometimes called in border parlance, "Nolichucky Jack," or "Chucky Jack," in 1775, when the Revolu- tionary War broke out. One of the first of the British attempts was to assemble the savages on the Watauga frontier, especially in the southern territory, sweep in- land and ravage the settlements, while Sir Peter Parker and his fleet attempted to capture Charleston, thus plac- ing the colonists between two fires and making their downfall apparently certain.
Moultrie and his little handful beat off Parker, and Sevier and a still smaller handful broke up the plan in the west by routing the Indians in a brilliant campaign terminating in the siege at Fort Lee, a rude timber en- closure which had been erected on the banks of the Watauga. The fort was closely beleaguered by the sav- ages for some forty days without a casualty among the defenders, the Indians losing so severely in their attacks that old Oconostota, their head war chief, the inveterate enemy of the Americans so long as he lived, finally with- drew his force in dismay and abandoned the campaign.
It was at this siege that there occurred a romantic episode in the life of the young woman who became the second wife of Sevier. In defiance of warnings some of the people of the fort, irked by the confinement, had gone beyond the limits of the walls. A party of savages suddenly appeared and attempted their capture. The people fled to gain the stockade, which was crowded with women and children.
It would have risked everything to have left the gate open, indeed there was no time for it. Sevier sent his men to the walls to cover the escaping fugitives by a
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 71
smart rifle fire, and drive back the Indians till the set- tlers could be taken in. One young girl, Katharine Sherrill, in her terror actually leaped to the top of the palisade and fell over the wall into the arms of the com- mander. She leaped into his heart at the same time and they were soon married. Bonny Kate is reported to have said,
" I would take a leap like that every day to fall into the arms of a man like my gallant husband."
The handsomest man in Tennessee, they called him, and the bravest and best; tall, just under six feet, blue- eyed, sunny-haired, graceful, he was a man to win any woman's heart, and his qualities were equally attractive to men. He was a glutton for work, a giant for endur- ance, a very paladin of courage.
After twenty-eight days of marching and fighting in the King's Mountain expedition, with scarcely any rest he set out for another campaign in the wilds of the mountains against the restless Cherokees. Another inveterate ene- my of the white settlers was the chief of the Chicka- maugas, named Dragging Canoe. When the British at- tempted a second time to combine the savages and hurl them upon the backs of the colonists, it was Sevier's brilliant expedition in the heart of the Indian country which broke the spirit of the Cherokees, " Sons of Fire," and their allies. They smouldered thereafter and until the state of Franklin was organized gave but little trouble.
Such was the personal courage of Sevier that in this expedition he slew Dragging Canoe with his own hand, in a terrific hand-to-hand conflict. In thirty-four en- counters with the Indians he was invariably successful.
It is difficult to describe any of these actions. They
72
Border Fights and Fighters
did not rise to the dignity of pitched battles, but gener- ally consisted of a swift, noiseless approach, a surprise, a wild desperate charge upon the Indians, driving them into headlong rout, a destruction of their villages and crops and then a quick withdrawal to the settlements. Again and again were these tactics pursued.
Sevier had many qualities of Francis Marion, another great American of French descent, who fought in the Revolution. Instead of the slow, stealthy concealed ad- vance, the hidden ambush, which the Indians made use of, Sevier adopted other tactics and depended upon audacity and speed. The Napoleonic idea of the value of a small mobile concentrated body hurled swiftly upon a slow-moving scattered if superior force, was exempli- fied in his attempts before the Corsican was born. It was exemplified nowhere so strikingly as in that most remarkable battle of King's Mountain, which, for origi- nality of conception, boldness of execution, success in completion, stands among the most picturesque battles of the world; and with the story of that battle in which he won so many of his laurels, we will leave the old hero.
IV. The Assembling of the Mountaineers
One of the most distinguished officers of the king in America during the Revolution was Major Patrick Fer- guson of the Seventy-first Foot, the Royal Americans. He was a brother of Adam Ferguson, the celebrated Scottish philosopher, and in his own way quite as gifted. To a reputation for bravery earned in Europe, he had added new laurels, notably at the Brandywine, receiving there a wound which permanently deprived him of the full use of an arm thereafter, and at the battle of Camden,
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 73
where the Seventy-first under his leadership, displayed such splendid courage and where he was again wounded.
He was a man of an ingenious turn of mind and had invented a breech-loading rifle, in the use of which he became very expert. Upon one occasion it is claimed that he had a reconnoitring party of Americans headed by a general officer within range of his rifle, and that from motives of humanity he refrained from killing the unsuspecting officer, which he could easily have done. He afterward learned that the man he had spared was George Washington.
For a time, after the overwhelming and disgraceful defeat of Gates at Camden, South Carolina, August 16, 1780, Cornwallis virtually had the whole south at his mercy. He moved slowly northward with the main body of his army, sending out columns on either flank, and in all directions in fact, endeavoring to occupy and pacify the country he fondly considered permanently subdued.
To Ferguson was given command of the various oper- ations upon the left of the main advance. To him were assigned one hundred and twenty of his own regular regiment, and he was given power to embody and take command of all the Tory volunteers he could win to his following.
The Carolinas, be it remembered, with the exception of New Jersey-and New York in part-were the only states which were entirely swept from border to border by the besom of war. There was scarcely a nook or a corner in either one in which the rifle shot was not heard, the torch was not lighted, in which the passions of Hell were not let loose. The rancorous hatreds of civil strife in no section were more in evidence than in these two
74
Border Fights and Fighters
brave little southern colonies. Even the animosities en- gendered in central New York between the Whigs and Tories were not so persistent, so rigorous, so bitter, or so desolating in their effects.
Cornwallis soon awoke from his dream; for, while partisan bands sprang up on either side and attacked each other without mercy, success generally inclined to the Americans. The British found they could only hold the ground occupied by their armies. In their exasperation, they and the Tories resorted to ferocious cruelties, which were promptly met by reprisals in kind. Many of Corn- wallis' parties and bodies of Tories were cut off without mercy. In fact, except under Cruger, Tarleton, and Ferguson, the British were defeated again and again by Sumter, Marion, Pickens, Davie, McDowell, and Williams.
Ferguson had experienced some reverses, but on the whole had been very successful. He succeeded in em- bodying some two thousand Tories, whom he organized into regiments, which he trained and drilled in British tactics with energy and success.
He had been brought in contact with a few of the trans-Allegheny men, the first settlers of Virginia west of the mountains and the pioneers of Tennessee; the " Back Water Men," he called them on several occa- sions and knew their quality, especially from one bloody skirmish at Musgrove's Mills. Seeking to keep them quiet he released a prisoner and sent him across the range to inform the people there that if they did not " desist from their opposition to British arms, he would march his army across the mountains, hang the leaders, and lay the country waste with fire and sword."
In Ferguson's army, which was then about sixty miles
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 75
from the Watauga, where was the principal settlement in East Tennessee, were several Tories, who had been expelled from the mountain region and who were thor- oughly conversant with the passes through the moun- tains. It was possible for him to have made the attempt, although it is extremely doubtful that he ever had the slightest idea of doing so; for, as he well knew, his chances of success would have been of the very smallest. It is probable that the threat was merely intended to frighten the mountaineers into keeping quiet. They were not the kind to be frightened by idle threats, and Ferguson was to learn that it was a dangerous thing to threaten to do the impossible, or at least he would have learned it if the mountaineers had not killed him trying to teach him the lesson.
" Never was threat so impotent, and yet so powerful." Ferguson's messenger went first to Shelby, who acted with instant promptitude. Sixty miles to the south was the residence of Sevier on the Nolichucky. Throwing himself upon his horse, Shelby tore down the valley to apprize his friend and colleague of the news and to con- cert as to the best course of action.
The " tall Watauga boys," as they were called, were having a jollification at the time at Sevier's; oxen were being roasted for a barbecue, horse-racing was going on, and rustic sports were being enjoyed. Sevier was keep- ing open house to all comers. One authority says that the occasion was the marriage of the great pioneer to the girl of the stockade episode, but other investigators claim that the marriage occurred in the stockade during the siege, or shortly after, and it is probable that this was a rustic gathering to celebrate the garnering of the harvest. But from whatever cause, a great many of the
76
Border Fights and Fighters
inhabitants, men, women, and children, were assembled there having a good time, when Shelby dashed up on his sweat-lathered horse and stopped the merriment in- stantly by the sight of his grim, anxious, and troubled face.
The two leaders retired at once for consultation, while the people suspended their sports and with deepening anxiety awaited the results of the deliberation. What was to be done? Should they bid defiance to Ferguson, occupy the mountain passes, and await attack there? This was believed to be Shelby's idea. Sevier was more audacious. They should not wait to be attacked, they should assemble the men, cross the range and fall upon the unsuspecting partisan before he realized that they had more than received his message. His bold counsels prevailed. The news was immediately circulated, and the men and women assembled for the merrymaking received the decision with shouts of approval. A ren- dezvous was appointed at Sycamore Shoals on the Wa- tauga, on the 25th of September.
Taking a fresh horse Shelby rode north to enlist for the enterprise Campbell and his Virginians, settled about the head waters of the Holston. Sevier sent messengers to McDowell, who, with a small band of North Carolin- ians, had been chased over the mountains by Ferguson. Sevier was to assemble the Watauga men as well.
Campbell at first refused to participate in the expedi- tion, but upon being further approached by argument and appeal, finally consented. Expresses were de- spatched over the mountains and one of the most cele- brated partisans of North Carolina, Colonel Benjamin Cleaveland, promised to join the assemblage with such men as he could secure. On the 25th of September,
The Pioneers of East Tennessee 77
Campbell, Shelby, and Sevier, reached the rendezvous at the appointed time.
The situation was peculiar. On one side of the little settlement were hordes of savages who had only been kept in check by severe campaigning and constant watch- fulness, and who wanted but an opportunity to fall upon the settlements. On the other side, with the mountains between, were over two thousand well-trained British troops, under a veteran officer. Yet so eager were the men to go on the expedition that they resorted to a draft to see who should stay behind to protect the women and children from the red peril so dangerously near.
Four hundred and eighty of the Watauga men were selected and divided into two regiments, commanded by Sevier and Shelby. In Sevier's regiment were no less than six persons who bore his name, including his two sons. Two of his brothers were captains. The Wa- tauga boys were joined by one hundred and sixty of McDowell's men and two hundred Back Water Presby- terians under stout old William Campbell, presently re- enforced by two hundred more of the same sort under Arthur Campbell, his brother.
The assemblage, though small, was remarkable for its quality; tall, sinewy, powerful, brave, dead shots, accus- tomed to the fatigues and hardships of frontier life, it would be hard to match this body of borderers on the continent. The little army was without baggage, with- out equipment, without provisions, without everything but arms. Most of the men had no horses, although all were provided with the Deckhard rifle, a piece re- markable in that day for the precision of its shot and the length of its range.
Sevier and Shelby had long since exhausted their
,
78
Border Fights and Fighters
private resources, and they were hard put to know where to find money to buy horses and equipments for those who were without them, for they had determined that the expedition should consist only of mounted riflemen. There was one officer of North Carolina, however, on their side of the mountains, who had money. This was John Adair, the entry taker, whose business it was to receive the payments of the settlers for the land which they took up.
Sevier and Shelby went to him and asked him for the money in his hands, some twelve thousand dollars, pledging their personal honor and credit that thereafter he should be paid back every farthing-a pledge they scrupulously redeemed. Adair rose to the measure of the situation with true patriotism, as may be seen by his splendid answer to the demand.
" Colonel Sevier," he said, " I have no right to make any such disposition of this money; it belongs to the impoverished treasury of North Carolina. But, if the country is overrun by the British, liberty is gone. Let the money go too. Take it. If by its use the enemy is driven from the country, I can trust that country to justify and vindicate my conduct. Take it !"
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.