etaliated. Ferguson's troops
themselves had hung some of their prisoners. [Footnote: Allaire's Diary,
entry for Aug. 20th; also see Aug. 2d. He chronicles these hangings with
much complacency, but is, of course, shocked at the "infamous" conduct
of the Americans when they do likewise.]

All this was fresh in the minds of the Americans who had just won so
decisive a victory. They were accustomed to give full vent to the
unbridled fury of their passions; they with difficulty brooked control;
they brooded long over their own wrongs, which were many and real, and
they were but little impressed by the misdeeds committed in return by
their friends. Inflamed by hatred and the thirst for vengeance, they
would probably have put to death some of their prisoners in any event;
but all doubt was at an end when on their return march they were joined
by an officer who had escaped from before Augusta, and who brought word
that Cruger's victorious loyalists had hung a dozen of the captured
patriots. [Footnote: Shelby MS.] This news settled the doom of some of
the tory prisoners. A week after the battle a number of them were tried,
and thirty were condemned to death. Nine, including the only tory
colonel who had survived the battle, were hung; then Sevier and Shelby,
men of bold, frank nature, could no longer stand the butchery, and
peremptorily interfered, saving the remainder. [Footnote: _Do._] Of the
men who were hung, doubtless some were murderers and marauders, who
deserved their fate; others, including the unfortunate colonel, were
honorable men, executed only because they had taken arms for the cause
they deemed right.

Leaving the prisoners in the hands of the lowland militia, the
mountaineers returned to their secure fastnesses in the high
hill-valleys of the Holston, the Watauga, and the Nollchucky. They had
marched well and fought valiantly, and they had gained a great victory;
all the little stockaded forts, all the rough log-cabins on the
scattered clearings, were jubilant over the triumph. From that moment
their three leaders were men of renown. The legislatures of their
respective states thanked them publicly and voted them swords for their
services. Campbell, next year, went down to join Greene's army, did
gallant work at Guilford Courthouse, and then died of camp-fever. Sevier
and Shelby had long lives before them. [Footnote: Thirty years after the
battle, when Campbell had long been dead, Shelby and Sevier started a
m