King's Mountain (11 page)

There were Tory troops nearby, occupying a captured fort, originally built by the local population as a refuge against Indian attacks, much like our own Fort Watauga. The fort's commander didn't know that McDowell's militia was in the area, but he had already been given an earful about the deceitful Colonel Jones and his attack on the sleeping Loyalists. He dispatched a troop of dragoons and some regular soldiers to go after Jones.

The dragoons and infantry sent out by the fort commander arrived at the campsite on the North Pacolet in the dead of night, just as Jones had done the evening before. Intent upon repaying the raiders in kind, the Tories crossed the river, and launched their attack upon the sleeping encampment before the Burke militia's sentinel could sound the alarm.

Because the Georgia troops were the ones encamped closest to the river, Colonel Jones died early in the fighting, hacked to bits by the sabers of the dragoons. As the attackers fought their way forward toward McDowell's Burke County militia, the newly awakened soldiers, alerted by the sounds of the skirmish, grabbed their weapons on the run, and rallied to halt the charge, forming a line behind a nearby fence. Within moments they had organized themselves and were preparing to advance. By then the attackers from Fort Prince must have realized that the army they had encountered was larger than the one they had expected to find, because instead of a quick raid against thirty men or so, they found that the encampment stretched on and on, and that hundreds of soldiers were making ready to fight back.

Taking stock of the situation, their commander ordered them to fall back across the river, thus they exited the fray after suffering only a few casualties. This sudden encounter with many more of the enemy than expected was more of a battle than they had bargained for, and, having dispatched Jones, the object of the raid, they were ready to call it even, and head back to Fort Prince.

In the brief skirmish before they withdrew, they had managed to kill eight men and to wound another two dozen or so, but the one casualty for which that night would be remembered was young Noah Hampton, the son of the famed Burke County officer.

The boy had been asleep in his bedding on the ground, when he was awakened in the darkness with the point of a bayonet prodding his throat. Angry voices demanded his name.

“Hampton,” he murmured.

That name was well known to the area Loyalists, through the exploits his father, Col. Andrew Hampton, and others of the Hampton clan, who had done much to earn the hatred of their enemies, even as far back as the Moore's Creek battle, in which North Carolina's Highland Scots settlers were defeated, attempting to support the very king that they themselves had rebelled against thirty years earlier at Culloden Moor.

They say that young Noah Hampton had time to beg for his life before the dragoons pushed the bayonet point into his throat, but I hope it is not so. I hope he died as bravely as the rest of the Hamptons lived. I do know that his death was a loss deeply felt by his comrades, and tantamount to a wound to his grieving father.

Col. Andrew Hampton vowed to make the Tories pay for this outrage—most of those present did the same—but the bereaved parent did not reserve his anger for the attacking Loyalists, for, in war such acts constitute a soldier's duty, however much we may deplore them.

Now we come to it.

Andrew Hampton also blamed Charles McDowell for the death of his son, for letting it happen.

Why was McDowell so negligent about taking the most ordinary precautions during a bivouac? Why were there so few guards for a force of three hundred men, and none of them posted far enough from camp to sound an alarm in time for it to do any good?

Colonel Hampton confided to some of his fellow militia officers that he did not feel that McDowell could be trusted to command. According to Shelby, many Whigs believed that McDowell's overcautious actions in the aftermath of the Musgrove Mill battle corroborated that judgment of his unfitness to lead. Others said that he drank too much, clouding his judgment at crucial times.

But, putting all that to one side, I had to consider the fact that Charles McDowell had a few hundred troops at his command, and we sorely needed them. Shelby had confided all this to me during his recent visit to Plum Grove, although I had already heard a good bit of it from my brother, and we all agreed that, like him or not, we had to have the support of his militia in the coming venture.

Now, I had stayed home all summer, guarding the settlement against possible attacks from the Cherokee to the south, so I was not present for the fighting on the Pacolet or at Musgrove Mill. Any reservations I had about McDowell's ability were relayed to me at second hand, so it was decided that I should talk to him. I kept it uppermost in my mind that McDowell was on our side, capable or not. He might prove to be an encumbrance, but he was not the enemy.

People say that I have charm, perhaps from my French heritage. I can get along with almost anybody, unlike these brooding Scots and Irishmen, who store their grudges in the cellar with the winter apples. If ever I do harbor any ill will toward a fellow man, I hope I am careful not to show it, for to let an enemy see your feelings is to disarm yourself. Enemies are a luxury, and I try to choose them sparingly, because between the Indians and the British I generally have all I can handle.

Perhaps, for all his resentment of McDowell, Col. Andrew Hampton felt the same, for when Ferguson raided his home territory around Gilbert Town, Hampton, too, had gathered some of his followers and come over the mountain to take refuge along the Watauga. So he and McDowell were neighbors, maintaining an awkward truce perhaps, but, because there was still a war to be fought, they would be forced to coexist in peace for yet a while longer. We knew that we all must put aside our differences and work together for the common cause as best we could.

So I rode off to the Burke encampment that morning, as bright and welcoming as the September sunshine, bearing what I hoped would be good news for the colonel: another chance to engage the enemy. I had been a visitor there before, of course. McDowell was a man of substance, and we had all gone to pay our respects at one time or another in the past few weeks as a matter of courtesy as well as prudence. I had sent supplies from Plum Grove to help them settle in to a bearable exile.

I found McDowell in camp, alone, eating his midday meal of stew and beans off a dented tin plate. Charles McDowell had been a lifelong bachelor, and perhaps solitude and the enforced idleness of temporary exile from his plantation weighed upon him, for he seemed even more somber than usual. Still, he managed a taut smile as he padded forward to meet me, and to bid me welcome with starched courtesy, proffering a dipper gourd of water, which was most welcome after my journey on that hot morning. Then he hovered close to my horse's withers, making inconsequential pleasantries while I watered the animal at the creek, unsaddled it, and saw to its tethering in a patch of grass.

When I had completed these small tasks, Colonel McDowell led me to a fallen log in the shade of a sycamore tree, and we sat down there together, a stone's throw from Buffalo Creek. Other militiamen in the camp had seen me when I arrived, and some of them waved as I rode past. I decided that after I'd had my talk with Charles McDowell, I would seek out Andrew Hampton and perhaps David Vance, another able officer from Burke County, to apprise them of what had transpired. Some of the exiled militiamen gathered to watch me pass, but none of them approached when I sat down to confer with Colonel McDowell.

They knew at once—as did he—that I had not made the long ride merely to pass the time of day with him. Colonel McDowell might have had idle days to fill, but I—with a farm to run, ten children and a new wife to see to, and the ever-present threat of Indian attacks to occupy my thoughts—had no time at all for aimless social calls. I hope I was cordial and unhurried that morning, but I was not without purpose.

All pretense of bonhomie aside, McDowell fixed me with a grave stare, and murmured, “Is there news?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir. I have lately had a visit from Isaac Shelby. He came bearing a letter that was just delivered by a kinsman of his, a prisoner freed by the enemy for the express purpose of carrying this missive to Shelby. It was from Maj. Patrick Ferguson. He orders us to keep out of the war.”

“Ferguson?” McDowell's answering smile had not an ounce of mirth in it. “Orders us? That man would take a battling stick to a beehive, wouldn't he?”

“I think it amounts to that. We aim to sting him, anyhow.”

Idly, he picked up a stone and tossed it in a lazy arc toward the creek. “You'd better make that sting a deadly one, then, for Ferguson is already a menace in the territory south of here. If you stir him up and then leave him at large, you will only make a misery for those of us whose holdings are there.”

“Oh, we mean to end it, Colonel McDowell. I promise you that. We were fed to the teeth with Ferguson already, for all his cattle raids, and for turning his horses loose to forage in Whig cornfields, but now with that letter of his, he has made it personal. We mean to stop him, but the task will take all of us working together to accomplish. I know that you and your men can be counted on to join us.”

“You have settled on a course of action, then?”

“We have, sir. We are mustering at Fort Watauga on the twenty-fifth of this month, and then marching over the mountains to hunt down Ferguson. I can vouch for Shelby's men and mine.”

McDowell digested this information for a moment, and then he growled, “And what about Campbell and his Virginia militia?”

“Yes. That is—I hope so. Colonel Shelby has gone home to write to him, setting out the reasons for him to cast his lot with us. Surely he'll see the sense of the plan and join us.”

“Sevier, Shelby, McDowell, Campbell.” He ticked off the names on his fingers. “I make it fewer than a thousand men. What about Benjamin Cleveland of the Yadkin, then, and the other militias farther to the east around the Moravian settlements, and what about the South Carolinians? Are they with us?”

“Yes, of course, sir. All the Carolina commanders we can persuade to fall in with us. We hope to have all of them.”

McDowell grunted, which meant that he could find no fault with my answer. “I don't doubt you will need them all. The twenty-fifth of September, eh? We can all meet up at Quaker Meadows and unite our forces there with those of Cleveland and Winston and the rest.”

I hesitated. Meeting at McDowell's plantation would further solidify his position as commander, but I did not object.
He sounds as if he is taking charge already,
I thought, but I resolved to overlook his preemptory attitude, and to respond with a civil answer, for his was indeed a reasonable suggestion. By the time we reached that point in the journey, we would be in need of more provisions, and it made sense to head for a place where we could be sure of getting them.

“Well, I hope you may persuade the other militias to join you in this venture. I don't doubt you will need them all. Perhaps my influence can be useful in asking them to join.”

“I came here to enlist your support,” I told him. “Well, more than that, for I know that you need no urging to lead your troops for the fight. But what we also need is information. Once we get over the mountains, we will be heading into your territory, and you know it better than any of us. The rivers. The fords. The location of the homes of Whig sympathizers. And where the enemy strongholds lie.”

McDowell raised his eyebrows. “But I will be with you, Sevier. I can show all of that to the rest of you when the time comes.”

I was on shaky ground here, and so I chose my words carefully and bound them up in a smile. “Of course you will be with us, Colonel, but we must be prepared for every contingency. Our forces could become separated. People could be lost to ambush or illness. It's best that we not keep the keys to our survival locked in the head of just one man. The risk is too great.”

He saw the sense of that, and indeed it was true enough, as far as it went. I would not want such details to be the sole property of any one member of the party, for that would put us one bullet away from disorder and defeat.

After a long appraising look at me—for, after all, who completely trusts anybody these days?—McDowell nodded. “Very well, then. Have you a bit of paper with you? Well, we can find some in my cabin, I expect. I will draw up maps and make lists. You will want to commit all of it to memory and destroy the notes, of course, but at least you will have a few weeks to learn the information as best you can. I hope you will not have to rely upon your memory for these matters, though. I mean to be with you and Shelby, every mile of the way.”

I smiled, which seemed safer than saying anything.

As if reading my thoughts, McDowell said, “I am the senior commander, you know. I have been a colonel longer than any of you, and so, when we do unite our forces, by rights I should be the one in charge of this campaign.”

I did know it. Shelby and I had talked about it at length, looking for some way around that disagreeable fact. The solution we finally agreed upon was not ideal, but it was better than the alternate, which was to give the reins over to McDowell and let him have sole command. I willed myself to keep smiling. As gently as I could, I said, “We think it best if we rotate the command every couple of days, instead of having just one leader. We are not a regular army, you know. Our soldiers are volunteers, and they follow us at their own pleasure. We think it more likely that the militias will come willingly if each one's own trusted leader is in charge of the campaign at least part of the time.”

His eyes widened and his lip curled in scorn. “
Come willingly,
Sevier? These men in the militias are soldiers. They have taken an oath. They ought to do as they are told—obey orders from superior officers and trust their betters to decide on the strategy of the campaign. Choice does not come into it.”