Existing comment:
Carolina Backwoodsmen
"This distinguished race of men are more savage than the Indians,and possess every one of their vices, but not one of their virtues. I have known...these fellows(to) travel 200 miles through the woods never keeping any road or path, guided by the sun by day, and the stars by night, to kill a particular person of the opposite party."
-- George Hanger, British Officer formerly attached to Ferguson's Provincial corps
Many British leaders, like Major Hanger, had little hesitation in voicing low opinions of the pioneers who lived on the farthest edges of the Empire. As the first shots rang out, the woods to your were filled with 160 such men, who had indeed traveled more than 200 miles of roadless wilderness to oppose the King.
Leaving their hard-ridden horses tied a mile from Kings Mountain, rough riflemen rushed along the slope take up their assigned place here. Their job-to block the Tories should they try to escape to rejoin Lord Cornwallis.
Major McDowell's militia - Burke & Rutherford Counties, western North Carolina
In late September,these western Carolina Whigs had ridden over the highest mountains in the East to answer the call for patriots to rally at Sycamore Shoals, Tennessee. As these over-mountain men crossed 4,700-foot-high Roan Mountain coming back east, they rode through snow that was already "shoe-tongue deep." |