When Cornwallis invaded North Carolina he sent Ferguson into the
western part of the State to crush out any of the patriot forces
that might still be lingering among the foot-hills. Ferguson was
a very gallant and able officer, and a man of much influence with
the people wherever he went, so that he was peculiarly fitted for
this scrambling border warfare. He had under him a battalion of
regular troops and several other battalions of Tory militia, in
all eleven or twelve hundred men. He shattered and drove the
small bands of Whigs that were yet in arms, and finally pushed to
the foot of the mountain wall, till he could see in his front the
high ranges of the Great Smokies. Here he learned for the first
time that beyond the mountains there lay a few hamlets of
frontiersmen, whose homes were on what were then called the
Western Waters, that is, the waters which flowed into the
Mississippi. To these he sent word that if they did not prove
loyal to the king, he would cross their mountains, hang their
leaders, and burn their villages.

Beyond the, mountains, in the valleys of the Holston and Watauga,
dwelt men who were stout of heart and mighty in battle, and when
they heard the threats of Ferguson they burned with a sullen
flame of anger. Hitherto the foes against whom they had warred
had been not the British, but the Indian allies of the British,
Creek, and Cherokee, and Shawnee. Now that the army of the king
had come to their thresholds, they turned to meet it as fiercely
as they had met his Indian allies. Among the backwoodsmen of this
region there were at that time three men of special note: Sevier,
who afterward became governor of Tennessee; Shelby, who afterward
became governor of Kentucky; and Campbell, the Virginian, who