They were on the whole a sturdy, virile people, fitted by nature and experience to meet the hardships of pioneer life. Pg 23 Southern Highlander
“Writing of this association in his Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt says: It is this fact of the early independence and self-government of the settlers along the headwaters of the Tennessee, (at that time North Carolina stretched over to the Mississippi River) that gives to their history its peculiar importance. They were the first men of American birth to establish a free and independent community on the continent. Even before this date there had been straggling settlements of Pennsylvanians and Virginians along the headwaters of the Ohio, but these settlements remained mere parts of the colonies behind them and neither grew into a separate community nor played a distinctive part in the growth of the west.”
Roosevelt: Winning of the West, Vol. I, p. 231
Long before independence was secured, settlers along the headwaters of the Tennessee River built something unprecedented—a free and self-governing community, the first of its kind in America. Theodore Roosevelt, in The Winning of the West, recognized that these men were not merely scattered pioneers but the earliest Americans to forge an independent society, distinct from the coastal colonies.
These frontier families were tough, self-reliant, and well accustomed to hardship. In John C. Campbell’s The Southern Highlander, they are remembered as “stalwart frontier fighters”—the so-called Rearguard of the Revolution—who helped open the West to American settlement and played a decisive role when the Revolution reached its darkest hour.
That moment came in 1780. British Major Patrick Ferguson, sent to crush resistance in the Carolina backcountry, threatened the frontier settlers with fire and slaughter unless they submitted. Their answer was immediate: they would take the fight to him.
At Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River, more than 1,200 riflemen assembled—hardened settlers from North Carolina, Virginia, and beyond. Before departing, they listened to the fiery words of Presbyterian minister Dr. Samuel Doak, who urged them to fight with the “sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” Then, mounted and armed with rifles, tomahawks, and hunting knives, they crossed the mountains to track down Ferguson.
Ferguson entrenched his men at King’s Mountain in South Carolina, boasting that “all the rebels outside of hell” could not move him. Yet the Overmountain Men proved otherwise. After thirty grueling hours on horseback in driving rain, they launched a bold assault. Using cover with the skill of hunters and the cunning of Indian fighters, they stormed the slopes until, after hours of smoke and thunder, Ferguson was killed and his army surrendered.
The victory at King’s Mountain electrified the cause of independence. It halted British advances in the South and rallied hope when American fortunes seemed near collapse. These same men soon pushed even farther west, clashing with Native forces at Boyd’s Creek in Kentucky less than a month later—an early sign of how the frontier spirit would shape the nation’s expansion.
The story of the Overmountain Men is more than regional folklore—it marks a turning point in the Revolution. Rugged, independent, and unwilling to bow, they not only defended their homes but changed the course of American history.