Charles McDowell & The Kings Mountain Command

From "The McDowells of Burke County Divided Over Who Commanded at King's Mountain," A Sketch by Judge M. L. McCorkle, Charlotte Democrat, Charlotte, NC, 6 July 1894:

[Joseph] McDowell [b. 1715], of Quaker Meadows, married Margaret O'Neil. They were married in Ulster, Ireland. They determined to encounter all the perils in search of what better fortune might await them on this side of the broad ocean. They first settled in Pennsylvania. Thence they soon moved to Winchester, Va. There their sons, Charles and Joe, were born—the former in 1743; the latter in 1755. They removed to North Carolina and settled at Quaker Meadows. Their sons soon grew to manhood. Charles, afterwards General Charles, early embarked in the War of the Revolution. He was soon placed in command of Burke and Rutherford Counties, a large military district at that time. Stoutly he had held the mountain passes against the Indians, and had made several successful expeditions against the Cherokees; one called the Rutherford campaign, another the Stono expedition. He was engaged in a number of skirmishes with the Tories. He had a small force under him to resist Col. Ferguson. With this force he went across the mountains to obtain assistance, and was in consultation with Colonels Shelby and Sevier. It was decided that each should make an effort to raise all the men he could, and that they should meet on the Wautauga. Colonel Shelby informed Colonel William Campbell, of Washington County, Virginia, of their purpose and asked them to join them. They met on the Wautauga and were joined by Colonels Cleveland, Campbell, Sevier and others. They immediately crossed the mountains near the head of the Catawba river. They ascertained that they were nearly all of the same rank, and had no general officer to command them. It was decided to send Colonel Charles McDowell to Hillsboro, to see General Gates and procure a general officer to command the troops. In the meantime, they elected Colonel Campbell, the red-headed Argyle, as commander-in-chief of all the forces present.
It is said that Colonel Campbell was placed in command through courtesy, on account of his being from a sister State and also on account of his having the largest number of men under him. Colonel Charles McDowell turned his regiment over to the command of Major Joe McDowell, of Pleasant Garden, until he should return from his mission; but the great battle was fought before he returned. This was the last of Colonel Charles McDowell's military career. He lived many years after the war at his paternal home Quaker Meadows, and served his country and district many times in the Senate of North Carolina, from 1783 to 1788. He died at Quaker Meadows greatly beloved and respected by all who knew him. The following tablet was placed over his grave: "To the memory of General Charles McDowell, A Whig officer in the Revolutionary War, who died, as he had lived, a patriot, the 31st of March, 1815, aged about 70 years." 

"... the transmontane men..."

From History of the McDowells and Connections, by John Hugh McDowell, pub. 1918, C. B. Johnston, pp. 234-235:

On the 29th of August, 1780, Colonel Ferguson moved into Troy (now Rutherford County) and camped, first at Gilberttown, three miles north of Rutherfordton, with the purpose of capturing Charles McDowell and destroying his command, and ultimately crossing into Washington and Sullivan counties (now Tennessee) and dealing with Shelby and Sevier of the Watauga settlement. Ferguson left Gilberttown with a detachment in search of Charles McDowell, but McDowell laid in ambush at Bedford Hill, on Crane [sic, Cane] Creek, and fired upon his forces while crossing the creek at Cowan's Ford. Major Dunlap was wounded and Ferguson was forced to retire to Gilberttown.
After this affair, Charles McDowell retreated across the mountains to warn Shelby and Sevier of the threatened desolation of their country, and to invite their co-operation in an attack on Ferguson. It was agreed that the transmontane men should be gathered as expeditiously as possible, while McDowell should send messengers to Colonels Cleveland and Hernando, of Wilkes County, and Major Joseph Winston, of Surrey. The energies of Shelby, of Sullivan and Sevier, of Washington County, N. C., then embracing the present State of Tennessee, were quickened by the message which Ferguson had released a prisoner to convey, to the effect that he would soon cross the mountains, hang the leaders and lay that country waste with fire and sword.
The clans were summoned to meet at Quaker Meadows on the 30th of September, 1780. Meantime Charles McDowell returned to watch Ferguson, protect cattle by assailing foraging parties, and give information to Shelby and Sevier of Ferguson's movements.
Rev. Samuel Doak invoked the blessings of God upon the Watauga men, as they left for King's Mountain to meet Ferguson, whose blasphemous boast had been that God Almighty could not drive him from his position. Those trustful old Scotchmen afterwards believed in their hearts that the hand of God was in the movement which cost him his life and destroyed his force.

The Kings Mountain Surrender, per Col. Sawyers

Colonel John Sawyers' Certificate. 

I, John Sawyers, of the County of Knox, and State of Tennessee, do certify, that Isaac Shelby, late Governor of Kentucky, held the command of Colonel at the battle of King's Mountain—that I was a captain in his regiment, and know that he first planned the expedition with John Sevier, who then held a similar commission—that said Shelby went courageously into the action—was the commander who rallied the Sullivan troops when broken—that I saw him and received directions from him frequently on the mountain in the heat of the action, and heard him animating his men to victory. He was also among the first at the surrender. I saw him and Col. Sevier when the enemy laid down their arms but did not see Colonel Campbell for some minutes afterwards. I also state, that Major Evan Shelby, brother of Isaac and not Isaac Shelby, Sevier or Campbell, as I have heard that some now state, received the flag and sword. I also state that from this circumstance I was led to think of Campbell at the time, looked for him amongst the other officers, and do believe that if he had been there, I should have seen him; and that he did not come up for fifteen or twenty minutes after the enemy had laid down their arms and been placed under guard. I also know that it was the general talk at the time, and that I have frequently since heard it spoken of by men who were in the action, as an indisputable fact, that he was not in the latter part of the action or at the surrender. I also recollect distinctly to have heard it said amongst the officers before we left the mountain, as well as on the way home and since, that Campbell himself admitted it, and in a private conversation with Colonel Shelby on the mountain had said that he could not account for it. I remember to have intended to have asked Shelby if this was so, but it so happened that I have never since named this subject to him or him to me. Given under my hand, 16th Feby., 1823.

JOHN SAWYERS.

(Source: The Magazine of American History with Notes and Queries, by John Austin Stevens, Benjamin Franklin DeCosta, Martha Joanna Lamb, Henry Phelps Johnston, Nathan Gilbert Pond, William Abbatt; Compiled by William Abbatt, Published 1880, A.S. Barnes )

The Call for the Overmountain Men

From King's Mountain and Its Heroes, by Lyman Copeland Draper, pub. 1881, P.G. Thomson, page 84:

"When Colonel [Charles] McDowell became convinced that Ferguson's movement to the north-western portion of South Carolina, threatened the invasion of the North Province also, he not only promptly raised what force he could from the sparsely populated settlements, on the heads of Catawba, Broad and Pacolet rivers, to take post in the enemy's front and watch his operations; but dispatched a messenger with this alarming intelligence to Colonels John Sevier and Isaac Shelby, on Watauga and Holston, those over-mountain regions, then a portion of North Carolina, but now of East Tennessee; urging those noted border leaders to bring to his aid all the riflemen they could, and as soon as possible.
Sevier, unable to leave his frontier exposed to the inroads of the Cherokees, responded at once to the appeal, by sending a part of his regiment under Major Charles Robertson; and Shelby, being more remote, and having been absent on a surveying tour, was a few days later, but joined McDowell, at the head of two hundred mounted riflemen, about the twenty-fifth of July, at his camp near the Cherokee Ford of Broad river."

Gen. John Sevier (1745-1815)

John Sevier, pioneer, soldier, statesman and a founder of the Republic, was Tennessee's first governor and one of its most illustrious citizens. Married and on his own at sixteen, he was in the vanguard of frontier life and accomplishment from his late teens until his death. First and only governor of the short-lived State of Franklin, six-term governor of Tennessee, and congressman for four terms from the eastern district, Sevier was also a formidable soldier, having risen to the rank of general in the North Carolina militia.
Born near the present town of New Market, Virginia, Sevier was the oldest of seven children of Valentine and Joanna Goad Sevier. His forebears–the Xaviers–were Huguenots who had fled France for England, anglicized their name, and become prosperous farmers. By 1740 Valentine had arrived in Virginia and settled in the Shenandoah Valley on Smith's Creek.
By 1773 he lived on the Holston River, but three years later he had moved to a farm on the Watauga River near the present town of Elizabethton, Tennessee. In the same year, North Carolina authorities created the Washington District, which included the Watauga settlements, and Sevier was sent to the Provincial Congress of North Carolina as representative.
When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, Sevier was named a lieutenant colonel of the North Carolina militia, and was initially assigned to protecting frontier settlements. He ultimately distinguished himself as one of the commanding officers of the Overmountain Men at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780, which took down the forces of British Col. Patrick Ferguson and figured prominently in turning the tide towards Patriot victory at Yorktown.
Soon after the Revolutionary War, Sevier became involved in a movement designed to secure separate statehood for the people living in Washington, Sullivan, and Greene Counties. The Continental Congress in 1780 had urged that lands claimed by North Carolina and Virginia should become states soon after hostilities might end. Thomas Jefferson had presented a plan whereby eighteen new states might be carved from the western territories. But North Carolina authorities objected vehemently when western leaders assembled in Jonesborough in August 1784 to make plans for statehood. When they chose Sevier as governor and drafted a constitution, claiming an "inalienable right" to form an independent state, Governor Alexander Martin threatened to "render the revolting territory not worth possessing" if North Carolina did not retain sovereignty over it. Attempts at conciliation divided the Franklin people into factions, and border warfare developed. Several men were killed or wounded, and two of Sevier's sons were captured, threatened, and held briefly.
Sevier's term as governor of Franklin expired in the spring of 1788, and for all practical purposes the state came to an end. Sevier was arrested and charged with treason but never tried. Within less than a year he had taken an oath of allegiance to North Carolina and was elected to the state Senate. A few months later he was restored to his rank of brigadier general in the North Carolina militia.
In March, 1809, a few months before his final term ended–Sevier ran before the legislature for the U.S. Senate but was defeated by Judge Joseph Anderson. Later in that year, voters in Knox County sent him to the state Senate. Then, in 1811, he was elected to Congress. His advanced years and his unfamiliarity with federal procedures resulted in his being an ineffective legislator on the national level, however.
John Sevier died on September 24, 1815, while on a mission to the Alabama territory where he had gone with U.S. troops to determine the proper location of the Creek boundary. He was buried on the eastern bank of the Tallapoosa River near Fort Decatur.

(Source: The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, Tennessee Historical Society, Nashville, Tennessee; http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagegallery.php?EntryID=S023#)

Col. Isaac Shelby (1750-1826)

Born in Frederick County, Maryland, near Hagerstown, Isaac Shelby was the son of Evan Shelby and Letitia (Cox) Shelby. The family moved to western Virginia in 1772 and ran a trading post. He was a lieutenant in Lord Dunmore's War in 1774. The next year he surveyed land in Kentucky and settled there in 1776. During the American Revolutionary War, Patrick Henry, Governor of Virginia, appointed Shelby to secure provisions for the army on the frontier. He was elected to the Virginia legislature in 1780. He served as a lieutenant, captain, and colonel in the War and fought with distinction, particularly at the Battle of Kings Mountain.
Along with James Williams and Elijah Clarke, Col. Shelby led a force of Overmountain Men from Fort Watauga (near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee) to victory at the Battle of Musgrove's Mill in South Carolina on August 19, 1780. By securing their defensive patriot position on the banks of the Enoree River, Shelby, Williams, and Clarke were able to defeat a much larger force consisting of two hundred British Loyalists and three hundred British provincial regulars.
On September 26, 1780, a greater number of the Overmountain Men again assembled at Fort Watauga and formed a militia under Col. John Sevier and Col. Shelby. These Patriot troops days later crossed the Appalachians at Roan Mountain and successfully engaged the Ferguson's Loyalists at Kings Mountain, a southern battle recognized as one of the turning points of the American Revolution. In an address before this October 1780 battle, Col. Shelby encouraged his men to fight in frontier fashion: "Let each one of you be his own officer, taking every care you can of yourselves, and availing yourselves of every advantage that chance may throw in your way. If in the woods, shelter yourselves and give them Indian play! Advance from tree to tree, pressing the enemy and killing and disabling all you can."
After the creation of the Southwest Territory and the State of Kentucky during the early 1790s, Isaac Shelby enjoyed an even more prominent Kentucky career. He was chosen governor in 1792 and again in 1812. Between his terms as state executive, he served as sheriff of Lincoln County, Kentucky, from 1796 to 1798. His last significant contribution to the region came in 1818 when he, Andrew Jackson, and others negotiated the "Jackson Purchase," which removed control of the western districts of Kentucky and Tennessee from the Chickasaw Indians. To honor this service, the Tennessee General Assembly named Shelby County (Memphis) for him. He died in Lincoln County, Kentucky, in 1826.

Gen. Joseph Graham, re: Kings Mountain

"Colonel Charles McDowell, of Burke county, on the approach of Ferguson with so large a force, had gone over the mountains to obtain assistance, and was in consultation with Colonel John Sevier and Colonel Isaac Shelby what plan should be pursued, when the two paroled men spoken of arrived and delivered their message from Colonel Ferguson. It was decided that each of them should use his best efforts to raise all the men that could be enlisted, and that this force, when collected, should meet on the Wataga, on the 25th of September. It was also agreed that Colonel Shelby should give intelligence of their movements to Colonel William Campbell, of the adjoining county of Washington, in Virginia, with the hope that he would raise what force he could and co-operate with them. They met on the Wataga the day appointed, and passed the mountains on the 30th of September, where they were joined by Colonel Benjamin Cleaveland, and Major Joseph Winston, from Wilks and Surry counties, North Carolina. On examining their force, it was found to number as follows, viz:

"From Washington county, Virginia, under Col. Wm. Campbell 400
"From Sullivan county, North Carolina, under Col. Isaac Shelby 240
"From Washington county, North Carolina, under Col. John Sevier 240
"From Burke and Rutherford counties, North Carolina, under Col. Charles McDowell 160
"From Wilks and Surry counties, North Carolina, under Col. Cleaveland and Major James Winston 350
Total 1390

"Col. Ferguson having accurate intelligence of the force collecting against him, early on the 4th of October, ordered his men to march, and remained half an hour after they had started writing a despatch to Lord Cornwallis, no doubt informing him of his situation and soliciting aid. The letter was committed to the care of the noted Abraham Collins (him of counterfeit memory) and another person by the name of Quinn, with injunctions to deliver it as soon as possible. They set out and attempted to pass the direct road to Charlotte, but having to pass through some whig settlements, they were surprised and pursued, and being compelled to secrete themselves by day and travel by night, they did not reach Charlotte until the morning of the 7th of October, the day of the battle. Colonel Ferguson encamped the first night at the noted place called the Cowpens, about twenty miles from Gilbertstown. On the 5th of October he crossed the Broad River, at what is now called Dear's Ferry, sixteen miles. On the 6th, he marched up the Ridge Road, between the waters of King's and Buffalo creeks, until he came to the fork, turning to the right across King's Creek, and through a gap in the mountain towards Yorkville, about fourteen miles. There he encamped on the summit of that part of the mountain to the right of the road, where he remained till he was attacked on the 7th.
"When the troops from the different counties met at the head of the Catawba river, the commanding officers met, and finding that they were all of equal grade, and no general officer to command, it was decided that Col. Charles McDowell should go to headquarters, supposed to be between Charlotte and Salisbury, to obtain Gen. Sumner or Gen. Davidson to take the command. In the meantime, it was agreed that Col. William Campbell, who had the largest regiment, should take the command until the arrival of a general officer, who was to act according to the advice of the colonels commanding, and that Major McDowell should take the command of the Burke and Rutherford regiment until the return of Col. McDowell."

(Source: Sketches of North Carolina, Historical and Biographical, Illustrative of the Principles of a Portion of Her Early Settlers, by Rev. William Henry Foote, New York, Robert Carter, 58 Canal Street, 1846)

The Sycamore Shoals Muster

Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River was a favorite rendezvous point for early settlers of northeastern Tennessee. In summer of 1776, the site was made a defensive strong point by the construction of Fort Caswell, later called Fort Watauga.
On 25 September 1780, a great muster of the militia was held, including forces from (present-day) Washington County, Tennessee, commanded by Col. John Sevier, and (present-day) Sullivan County, Tennessee, commanded by Col. Isaac Shelby. (These areas were then still a part North Carolina.) To this group was added several hundred militia from Washington County, Virginia, under the command of Col. William Campbell.
The purpose of the muster was to form an army to cross the mountains, join with Col. Charles McDowell's forces, and defeat the Loyalist forces commanded by British Maj. Patrick Ferguson. The resulting engagement, and ultimate Patriot victory, would become known as the Battle of Kings Mountain, fought 7 October 1780.
On 26 September 1780, after selection of the soldiers for the campaign, a sermon and prayer were given by the local Presbyterian minister, Rev. Samuel Doak.

"The Mountain Men," per Teddy Roosevelt

From The Winning of the West, Vol. 3, by Theodore Roosevelt, published 1900, G.P. Putnam's Sons:

"Having reduced South Carolina to submission, the British commander [Ferguson] then threatened North Carolina; and Col. [Charles] McDowell, the commander of the whig militia in that district, sent across the mountains to the Holston men praying that they would come to his help. Though suffering continually from Indian ravages, and momentarily expecting a formidable inroad, they responded nobly to the call. Sevier remained to patrol the border and watch the Cherokees, while Isaac Shelby crossed the mountains with a couple of hundred mounted riflemen, early in July. The mountain men were joined by McDowell, with whom they found also a handful of Georgians and some South Carolinans; who when their States were subdued had fled northward, resolute to fight their oppressors to the last. The arrival of the mountain men put new life into the dispirited whigs."

Kings Mountain Regimental Positions

Initial patriot militia positions at the base of Kings Mountain, 7 October 1780, according to regimental commanding officers:

(click image to enlarge)