en
for defense against attack by troops employing regulation
tactics; but, never dreaming of the possibility of sudden
investment, Ferguson had erected no fortifications for his
encampment. His frenzied efforts on the battlefield seem like a
mad rush against fate; for the place was indefensible against the
peculiar tactics of the frontiersmen. While the mountain flamed
like a volcano and resounded with the thunder of the guns, a
steady stricture was in progress. The lines were drawn tighter
and tighter around the trapped and frantically struggling army;
and at last the fall of their commander, riddled with bullets,
proved the tragic futility of further resistance. The game was
caught and bagged to a man. When Winston, with his fox-hunters of
Surry, dashed recklessly through the woods, says a chronicler of
the battle, and the last to come into position,

Flow'd in, and settling, circled all the lists,

then

From all the circle of the hills death sleeted in upon the
doomed.

The battle was decisive in its effect--shattering the plans of
Cornwallis, which till then appeared certain of success. The
victory put a full stop to the invasion of North Carolina, which
was then well under way. Cornwallis abandoned his carefully
prepared campaign and immediately left the state. After
ruthlessly hanging nine prisoners, an action which had an
effectively deterrent effect upon future Tory murders and
depredations, the patriot force quietly disbanded. The brilliant
initiative of the buckskin-clad borderers, the strenuous energy
of their pursuit, the perfection of their surprise--all
reinforced by the employment of ideal tactics for meeting the
given situation--were the controlling factors in this
overwhelming victory of the Revolution. The pioneers of the Old
Southwest--the independent and aggressive yeomanry of North
Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina--had risen in their might.
Without the aid or authority of blundering state governments,
they had created an army of frontiersmen, Indian-fighters, and
big-game hunters which had found no parallel or equal on the
continent since the Battle of the Great Kanawha.

CHAPTER XIX. The State of Franklin

Designs of a more dangerous nature and deeper die seem to glare
in the western revolt .... I have thought proper to issue this
manifesto, hereby warning all persons concerned in the said
revolt ... that the honour of this State has been particularly
wounded, by seizing that