An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America. J. P. Maclean
turn of life. The people formed themselves into an association "for regulating public grievances and abuse of powers." The royal governor, Tryon (the same who later originated the infamous plot to poison Washington), raised an army of eleven hundred men, and marched to inflict summary punishment on the defiant sons of liberty. On May 16, 1771, the two forces met on the banks of the Great Alamance. After an engagement of two hours the patriots failed. These men were sturdy, patriotic members of three Presbyterian churches. On the field of battle were their pastors, graduates of Princeton. Tryon used his victory so savagely as to drive an increasing stream of settlers over the mountains into Tennessee, where they made their homes in the valley of the Watauga, and there nurtured their wrongs; but the day of their vengeance was rapidly approaching.
View of Battle Field of Alamance.
The stirring times of 1775 found the North Carolinians ready for revolt. They knew from tradition and experience the monstrous wrongs of tyrants. When the people of Mecklenburg county learned in May, 1775, that parliament had declared the colonies in a state of revolt, they did not wait for the action of congress nor for that of their own provincial legislature, but adopted resolutions, which in effect formed a declaration of independence.
The power, valor and uncompromising conduct of these men is illustrated in their conduct at the battle of King's Mountain, fought October 7, 1780. It was totally unlike any other in American history, being the voluntary uprising of the people, rushing to arms to aid their distant kinsmen, when their own homes were menaced by savages. They served without pay and without the hope of reward. The defeat of Gates at Camden laid the whole of North Carolina at the feet of the British. Flushed with success, Colonel Furguson, of the 71st Regiment, at the head of eleven hundred men marched into North Carolina and took up his position at Gilbert Town, in order to intercept those retreating in that direction from Camden, and to crush out the spirit of the patriots in that region. Without any concert of action volunteers assembled simultaneously, and placed themselves under tried leaders. They were admirably fitted by their daily pursuits for the privations they were called upon to endure. They had no tents, baggage, bread or salt, but subsisted on potatoes, pumpkins and roasted corn, and such venison as their own rifles could procure. Their army consisted of four hundred men, under Colonel William Campbell, from Washington county, Virginia, two hundred and forty were under Colonel Isaac Shelby, from Sullivan county, North Carolina, and two hundred and forty men, from Washington county, same state, under John Sevier, which assembled at Watauga, September 25, where they were joined by Colonel Charles McDowell, with one hundred and sixty men, from the counties of Burke and Rutherford, who had fled before the enemy to the western waters. While McDowell, Shelby and Sevier were in consultation, two paroled prisoners arrived from Furguson with the message that if they did not "take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword." On their march to meet the army of Furguson they were for twenty-four hours in the saddle. They took that officer by surprise, killed him and one hundred and eighty of his men, after an engagement of one hour and five minutes, the greater part of which time a heavy and incessant fire was kept up on both sides, with a loss to themselves of only twenty killed and a few wounded. The remaining force of the enemy surrendered at discretion, giving up their camp equipage and fifteen hundred stand of arms. On the morning after the battle several of the Royalist (Tory) prisoners were found guilty of murder and other high crimes, and hanged. This was the closing scene of the battle of King's Mountain, an event which completely crushed the spirit of the Royalists, and weakened beyond recovery the power of the British in the Carolinas. The intelligence of Furguson's defeat destroyed all Cornwallis's hopes of aid from those who still remained loyal to Britain's interests. The men oppressed by British laws and Tryon's cruelty were not yet avenged, for they were with Morgan at the Cowpens and with Greene at Guildford Court House, and until the close of the war.
In the settling of South Carolina, every ship that sailed from Ireland for the port of Charleston, was crowded with men, women and children, which was especially true after the peace of 1763. About the same date, within one year, a thousand families came into the state in that wave that originated in Pennsylvania, bringing with them their cattle, horses and hogs. Lands were allotted to them in the western woods, which soon became the most popular part of the province, the up-country population being overwhelmingly Scotch-Irish. They brought with them and retained, in an eminent degree, the virtues of industry and economy, so peculiarly necessary in a new country. To them the state is indebted for much of its early literature. The settlers in the western part of the colony, long without the aid of laws, were forced to band themselves together for mutual protection. The royal governor, Montague, in 1764, sent an army against them, and with great difficulty a civil war was averted. The division thus created reappeared in 1775, on the breaking out of the Revolution. The state suffered greatly from the ravages of Cornwallis, who rode roughly over it, although her sons toiled heroically in defence of their firesides. The little bands in the east gathered around the standard of Marion, and in the north and west around those of Sumter and Pickens. They kept alive the flame of liberty in the swamps, and when the country appeared to be subdued, it burst forth in electric flashes striking and withering the hand of the oppressor. Through the veins of most of the patriots flowed Scotch-Irish blood; and to the hands of one of this class, John Rutledge, the destinies of the state were committed.
Georgia was sparsely settled at the time of the Revolution. In 1753 its population was less than twenty-four hundred. Emigration from the Carolinas set in towards North Georgia, bringing many Scotch-Irish families. The movement towards the mountain and Piedmont regions of the southeast began about 1773. In that year, Governor Wright purchased from the Indians that portion of middle Georgia lying between the Oconee and the Savannah. The inducements he then offered proved very attractive to the enterprising sons of Virginia and the Carolinas, who lived in the highlands of those states. These people who settled in Georgia have thus been described by Governor Gilmer: "The pretty girls were dressed in striped and checked cotton cloth, spun and woven with their own hands, and their sweethearts in sumach and walnut-dyed stuff, made by their mothers. Courting was done when riding to meeting on Sunday, and walking to the spring when there. Newly married couples went to see the old folks on Saturday, and carried home on Sunday evening what they could spare. There was no ennui among the women for something to do. If there had been leisure to read, there were but few books for the indulgence. Hollow trees supplied cradles for babies."
A majority of the first settlers of East Tennessee were of Scotch-Irish blood, having sought homes there after the battle of Alamance, and hence that state became the daughter of North Carolina. The first written constitution born of a convention of people on this continent, was that at Watauga, in 1772. A settlement of less than a dozen families was formed in 1778, near Bledsoe, isolated in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, with no other protection than a small stockade enclosure and their own indomitable courage. In the early spring of 1779, a little colony of gallant adventurers, from the parent line of Watauga, crossed the Cumberland mountain, and established themselves near the French Lick, and planted a field of corn where the city of Nashville now stands. The settlement on the Cumberland was made in 1780, after great privations and sufferings on the journey. The settlers at the various stations were so harassed by the Indians, incited thereto by British and Spanish agents, that all were abandoned except Elatons and the Bluffs (Nashville). These people were compelled to go in armed squads to the springs, and plowed while guarded by armed sentinels. The Indians, by a well planned stratagem, attempted to enter the Bluffs, on April 22d, 1781. The men in the fort were drawn into an ambush by a decoy party. When they dismounted to give battle, their horses dashed off toward the fort, and they were pursued by some Indians, which left a gap in their lines, through which some whites were escaping to the fort; but these were intercepted by a large body of the enemy from another ambush. The heroic women in the fort, headed by Mrs. James Robertson, seized the axes and idle guns, and planted themselves in the gate, determined to die rather than give up the fort. Just in time she ordered the sentry to turn loose a pack of dogs which had been selected for their size and courage to encounter bears and panthers. Frantic to join the fray, they dashed off, outyelling the savages, who recoiled before the fury of their onset, thus giving the men time to escape to the fort. So overjoyed was Mrs. Robertson