Not long before the Revolution began some treacherous whites in the western country had murdered the whole family of the friendly Indian chief, Logan. This aroused the tribes and led to war. A piece of flat land runs out between the two streams where the Great Kanawha river joins the Ohio, in what is now West Virginia. Here, on a day early in October, 1774, twelve hundred frontiersmen were gathered under the command of an officer named Andrew Lewis.
These backwoods soldiers were attacked by a thousand of the bravest Indian warriors, commanded by Cornstalk, a Shawnee chief. It was a fierce struggle and both sides lost many men, but the pioneers held their ground, and the red men, when they had had enough fighting, went away. This battle at Point Pleasant finished what is sometimes known as Lord Dunmore’s War, so called because it was carried on under Lord Dunmore, the last governor that the English king sent out to Virginia.
The successful white men were now free to go down the Ohio river and settle on the Kentucky lands. Among the patriots fighting for their frontier homes were our old friends James Robertson and John Sevier of Watauga, and another young man, Isaac Shelby. We are to hear again about all these, for they were men likely to be found whenever something important was to be done.
The Great Kanawha is the same stream that we have called the New river where it crosses the Great Valley in Virginia. We are learning how many great rivers help to make up the Ohio, and what an important region the Ohio valley was to the young country east of the mountains.
The settlements of which we have just read were all south of the Ohio river, for north of the river the Americans did not possess the land. This means that the country which now makes up the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois was in foreign hands. The people were largely French and Indians, but they were governed by the British.
In order to defeat the Americans, the British, in all the years of the Revolutionary War, were stirring up the Indian tribes against the patriots. Just as St. Leger had Indian allies in New York, so British agents bribed the Indians of the West and South to fight and make as much trouble as possible.
George Rogers Clark was a young Virginian who had gone out to Kentucky, which then belonged to the mother state. He heard that Colonel Henry Hamilton, who commanded the British at Detroit, was persuading the Indians of that region to attack the frontier. He set out for Virginia, saw Patrick Henry, the governor, Thomas Jefferson, and other leading men, and gained permission to gather an army. This was in 1777, the year of Oriskany and Saratoga. He spent the winter enlisting soldiers, gathering his forces at Pittsburg.
Late the next spring they went in boats down the Ohio to the point where the muddy waters of the Mississippi come in from the north. This alone was a journey of a thousand miles.
Up the Mississippi from that place was Kaskaskia, on the Illinois side. It is now a very small village, but it is the oldest town on the Mississippi river and was the first capital of Illinois. In the time of the Revolution it was governed by the British, although most of the people were French. Clark and his little army soon seized the place and made the people promise obedience to the new government.
There was another important old place called Vincennes, on the Wabash river, in what is now Indiana.
When Colonel Hamilton heard what Clark was doing he led an army of five hundred men, many of whom were Indians, from Detroit to Vincennes. It took them more than two months to make the journey. Clark sent some of his men with boats and provisions and cannon down the Mississippi, up the Ohio, and up the Wabash. He, with most of his little force, went across the prairie. It was a winter march and they had to wade through flood waters for a part of the way.
He found the food and the guns and soon captured Hamilton and his army. This was the last of British government between the Ohio river and the Great Lakes. At the close of the war the American messengers, who were in Paris arranging for peace, could say that they already had possession of all the land this side of the Mississippi, so no excuse was left for the British to claim it. In this way one frontier soldier saved several great states for his country.
The frontiersmen had beaten Cornstalk at Point Pleasant in 1774. Clark had won the prairie country five years later; and the next year, 1780, saw the great victory of Kings Mountain.
Lord Cornwallis was now chief general of the British. He had conquered the southern colonies, the Carolinas and Georgia. Two of his officers, Tarleton and Ferguson, were brave and active commanders, and they were running over the country east of the mountains keeping the patriots down. Ferguson gathered together many American Tories and drilled them to march and fight.
The Watauga men, just over the mountains to the west, were loyal patriots. Ferguson heard of them and sent them a stormy message. He told them to keep still or he would come over and scatter them and hang their leading men.
They were not used to talk of this kind and they determined to teach Ferguson a lesson. Isaac Shelby rode in hot haste from his home to John Sevier’s log house on the Nolichucky river. When he arrived he found all the neighbors there; for Sevier had made a barbecue, and there was to be a big horse race, with running and wrestling matches. Shelby took Sevier off by himself and told him about Ferguson. They agreed to call together the mountain men and go over the Great Smokies to punish the British general.
On September 25, 1780, they came together at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga river. Almost everybody was there, women and children as well as men. Four hundred sturdy men came from Virginia under William and Arthur Campbell. These two leaders and most of the men in the valley were sons of old Scotch Covenanters, and they were determined to win. A stern Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Samuel Doak, was there. He had as much fight in him as any of them, and as they stood in their rough hunter’s garb he called upon God for help, preaching to them from the words, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.”
They set out at once through the mountains, driving beef cattle for part of their food supply, and every man armed with rifle, tomahawk, and scalping knife. Roosevelt says there was not a bayonet or a tent in their army. The trail was stony and steep, and in the higher mountains they found snow. They marched as quickly as they could, for they wanted to catch Ferguson before Cornwallis could send more soldiers to help him.
On the way several hundred men from North Carolina, under Benjamin Cleveland, joined them. They had appointed no commander when they started, but on the march they chose one of the Campbells from Virginia.
When Ferguson found that they were pursuing him and that he must fight, he took up a strong position on Kings Mountain, in the northwest corner of South Carolina. This hill was well chosen, for it stood by itself and on one side was too steep for a force to climb.
Ferguson called his foes a “swarm of backwoodsmen,” but he knew that they could fight, or he would not have posted his own army with so much care. He felt sure of success, however, and thought that Heaven itself could hardly drive him off that hill.
As the patriot leaders drew near the British camp they saw that many of their men were too weary to overtake the swift and wary Ferguson, should he try to get away. So they picked out about half of the force, nearly a thousand mounted men. These men rode all night, and the next day approached the hill. Those who had lost their horses on the way hurried on afoot and arrived in time to fight. When close at hand the riders tied their horses in the woods, and the little army advanced to the attack on foot.
They moved up the three sides of the hill. Ferguson was famous for his bayonet charges, and the patriots had no bayonets. So when the British rushed down on the center of the advancing line the mountaineers gave way and the enemy pursued them down the hill. Then the backwoodsmen on the flanks rushed in and poured shot into the backs of the British. Turning to meet these new foes, the regulars were again chased up the hill and shot by the men who had fled from their bayonets. Thus shrewd tactics took the place of weapons. At length the gallant Ferguson was killed, the white flag was hoisted, and the firing stopped. Many British were slain, and all the rest, save a very few who escaped in the confusion, were made prisoners.
It was a wonderful victory for the men from the valley. They had come from a region of which Cornwallis had hardly dreamed, and they had destroyed one of his armies and killed one of his best commanders. The battle turned the tide of the Revolution in the South, but the victors hurried back as quickly as they had come. They were not fitted for a long campaign, and, besides, they had left their homes dangerously open to attacks from savages. It was, however, the one battle of the Revolution against white foes alone that was planned, fought, and won by the men of the frontier.
As soon as John Sevier returned to the valley he found plenty of Indian fighting to do. He was skilled in this, and with the Watauga men, who called him “Chucky Jack” and were devoted to him, he was a terror to the red men of the southern mountains. He knew all their tricks and how to give them back what he called “Indian play.” At one time he took a band of his followers and made a daring ride into the wildest of the Great Smokies, to attack some hostile tribes. He burned their villages, destroyed their corn, killed and captured some of their warriors, and got away before they could gather their greater numbers to crush him.
We must not forget James Robertson, who all this time was doing his part of the farming and the fighting and the planning for the new settlements. Already the Watauga country began to have too many people and was too thickly settled to suit his temper, and he was thinking much about the wilderness beyond, near the lower part of the Cumberland river. In a great bend on the south bank of that stream he founded Nashborough in 1779, naming it in honor of Oliver Nash, governor of North Carolina. Five years later it became Nashville, and now we do not need to explain where it was.
Robertson went out by the Cumberland Gap, but soon left Boone’s road and went toward the west, following the trails. When he and his followers reached the place and decided upon it as suitable for settlement, they planted a field of corn, to have something to depend on for food later.
The next autumn a large party of settlers went out to Nashborough. Robertson’s family went with them. They did not go through the woods, but took boats to go down the Tennessee river. Their course led them along the Tennessee to the Ohio, then up the Ohio a few miles to the mouth of the Cumberland, and up the Cumberland to their new home. They had a long, dangerous voyage, and some of the party were killed, for the savages fired on them from the banks.
One of the boats, carrying twenty-eight grown people and children, had a number of cases of smallpox on board. The Indians attacked this boat and killed or captured the four sick travelers. For their deed the savages were badly punished, for they took the disease, which soon spread widely among the tribes.
For a long time after Nashville was begun the pioneers had fierce encounters with the Indians, and in spite of all their care many lives were lost. Robertson was the strong man of the place, and was rewarded with the confidence of the people.
When Tennessee became a state he helped to make its constitution. He was a member of the state Senate in 1798, and lived long enough to keep some of the Indians from helping the British in the War of 1812. He died in 1814.
He was brave, and willing to endure hardship, discomfort, and suffering in a good cause. He went alone over the snows to Kentucky to get powder, and returned in time to save the little town from destruction. The Indians killed his own son, but he would not give up the settlement. Plain man though he was, he gained honor from the men of his time, and wrote his name on the pages of American history.
We must learn a little more of Isaac Shelby, whom we have seen fighting hard at Point Pleasant and Kings Mountain. He was born in the Great Valley, at Hagerstown. When he was twenty-one years old he moved to Tennessee and then across to Kentucky. He fought in the Revolution in other battles besides that of Kings Mountain, and before he went to Kentucky he had helped to make laws in the legislature of North Carolina.
It is rather strange to read that Kentucky was made a “county” of Virginia. This was in 1776. In 1792, largely through Shelby’s efforts, Kentucky was separated from Virginia and became a state by itself. It was the first state beyond the mountains, being four years older than Tennessee and eleven years ahead of Ohio.
Isaac Shelby was the first governor of Kentucky, from 1792 to 1796, and years later he was governor again. He fought in the War of 1812, and his name is preserved in Shelbyville, a town of Kentucky. The Blue Grass region has been called the “dark and bloody ground” from the strifes of the red tribes and the troublous days of the first settlers, but Shelby lived to see it the center of a prosperous state.
John Sevier, too, had more honors than those of a noble soldier. In front of the courthouse at Knoxville is a plain stone monument raised in his memory (Fig. 64), and down a side street is an old dwelling, said to be an early statehouse of the commonwealth which is still associated with his name. In 1785 the state of “Franklin” was organized and named in honor of the illustrious Benjamin; but North Carolina, being heartily opposed to the whole proceeding, put an end to it without delay. Sevier, as governor of the would-be state, was imprisoned, but escaped, to the delight of his own people, who were always loyal to him. They sent him to Congress in a few years and in 1796 made him the first governor of Tennessee. He enjoyed many honors until his death in 1815, which came soon after that of his more quiet friend, James Robertson. Both of these wilderness men had much to do with planting the American flag between the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi river.