Be Your Own Officer

When the shooting began, rough woodsmen from beyond the Blue Ridge pushed through the forest and up the slope as fierce individual fighters shaped by frontier life and long experience in Indian warfare. Not much inclined to take directions from others, they fought by sheltering in the woods, advancing from tree to tree, and shouting as they aimed, fired, dashed, and ducked. These Whigs, though their small farms lay far away in mountain strongholds, took seriously Major Ferguson's threat to cross the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword, enough to tramp over the Blue Ridge twice to stop him. Colonel Shelby's militia from the Watauga River Valley in eastern Tennessee was already known to the Crown forces atop Kings Mountain, because six weeks earlier Shelby's men had ambushed and bloodied Ferguson's troops at Musgroves Mill.

Smyrna, South Carolina · United States