ely with
similar bands of tories, sometimes one side winning sometimes the other.
Having reduced South Carolina to submission the British commander then
threatened North Carolina; and Col. 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 Carolinians; 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.
On July 30th a mixed force, under Shelby and two or three local militia
colonels, captured Thickett's fort, with ninety tories, near the
Pacolet. They then camped at the Cherokee ford of Broad River, and sent
out parties of mounted men to carry on a guerilla or partisan warfare
against detachments, not choosing to face Ferguson's main body. After a
while they moved south to Cedar Spring. Here, on the 8th of August, they
were set upon by Ferguson's advanced guard, of dragoons and mounted
riflemen. These they repulsed, handling the British rather roughly; but,
as Ferguson himself came up, they fled, and though he pursued them
vigorously he could not overtake them. [Footnote: Shelby's MS.
Autobiography, and the various accounts he wrote of these affairs in his
old age (which Haywood and most of the other local American historians
follow or amplify), certainly greatly exaggerate the British force and
loss, as well as the part Shelby himself played, compared to the Georgia
and Carolina leaders. The Americans seemed to have outnumbered
Ferguson's advance guard, which was less than two hundred strong, about
three to one. Shelby's account of the Musgrove affair is especially
erroneous. See p. 120 of L. C. Draper's "King's Mountain and Its Heroes"
(Cincinnati, 1881). Mr. Draper has with infinite industry and research
gathered all the published and unpublished accounts and all the
traditions concerning the battle; his book is a mine of information on
the subject. He is generally quite impartial, but some of his
conclusions