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
Confirming Teddy Roosevelt’s observation about a “sturdy and virile people,” the story of the Overmountain Men is described in this story by John C Campbell in his book “The Southern Highlander”. pg 30-31
We must look deeper into the actions of “those stalwart frontier fighters, who in 1780, the darkest year for American independence, went out by forest trail and gap to dislodge the British from King’s Mountain and stem the tide of war. 2 ” Rearguard of the Revolution,” they have been called, and America owes to them the opening and possession of the great West. Movement through the mountains had continued even during the Revolution, but at its close; the western settlements drew to themselves from all our reservoirs of the population; they drew even from the territory north of Pennsylvania, sweeping in their streams, some from the frontiers of New York and New England
“ In 1778-9 Jonesboro, the oldest town in Tennessee, and county-seat of Washington County, was laid out, and court-house and jail erected.” Rule, William: History of Knoxville. Chicago, Lewis Publishing Co., 1900. 2 Major Ferguson, dispatched by Cornwallis into the western part of North Carolina to “subdue the back counties,” sent word to the Watauga settlers that if “they did not desist from their opposition to the British Arms, he would cross the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste the country with fire and sword.” In characteristic fashion, the frontiersmen determined to attack Ferguson at once, before he could move upon them. At Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River they gathered, over 1,200 men, including some 400 from the Virginia frontier. A draft was taken to provide a guard for the home settlements. Then, after a powerful sermon by the famous Presbyterian pastor, Dr. Doak, in which he exhorted them to “go forth with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon/’ they set out to cross the mountains. All were armed with the usual rifle, tomahawk, and hunting-knife, and wore sprigs of evergreen in their coon-skin caps; nearly all were well mounted. Ferguson, forewarned of their approach, discreetly retired from Gilbert Town in Rutherford County, and entrenched himself just over the border in South Carolina, on King’s Mountain, from which he, stoutly asserted that neither “God Almighty nor all th’e rebels outside hell, could dislodge him.” The frontiersmen, under William Campbell, John Sevier, and Isaac Shelby, after thirty hours in the saddle, drenched by rain, and with inferior numbers, proceeded at once to storm the stronghold. They fought with a combination of tactical skill and Indian cunning, taking advantage of every bit of cover. The battle lasted for some hours, during which, the old chronicler tells us “the whole mountain was covered with smoke and seemed to thunder”; but at last Ferguson was killed and his men who were left alive surrendered. Not more than a month later part of this same band of frontiersmen fought the Indians at Boyd’s Creek, Kentucky, more than three hundred miles away across the mountains.