King's Mountain (42 page)

I went off to jail over the mountain in Morganton, knowing that the penalty from treason was hanging. But if I had enemies back in the western counties, I had friends in Burke County, those who had fought at my side at King's Mountain, and when my deliverers came to fetch me, my old comrades from the war let me go.

I spent the days of my Morganton captivity visiting with Charles and Joseph McDowell of Quaker Meadows. I take care not to make enemies needlessly, and this habit probably saved my life this time. Charles McDowell bore us no ill will for sending him off to Hillsborough and choosing another commander in his stead. We are all still friends and allies. Charles has married that brave young widow he so admired, Grace Bowman, and they are raising a new family of McDowells. They tell me that Frederick Hambright, that staunch German-born soldier who took command of Chronicle's militia, has enlarged his landholdings so that he now owns the acres of King's Mountain where the battle took place. I'll bet he got it cheap. McDowell says that the hastily buried bodies were soon dug up by the wolves and stray dogs in the area, and that the field is now strewn with human bones and still haunted by the wolves, so that the local people dare not go near it.

That arrogant little Scotsman Patrick Ferguson is still lying beneath a cairn of stones there on the battlefield, and if his ghost walks abroad, I reckon it must do it in his native Highlands, for he is as gone from here as the Union Jack, and good riddance to both. We have a nation to build, and we'll do it ourselves.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I studied American history at a North Carolina high school, the chapters on the American Revolution covered the war from Concord Bridge to Valley Forge, and, with the exception of the British surrender at Yorktown, the history book did not mention any events that took place farther south. Yet King's Mountain, a battle fought on the North Carolina/South Carolina border, was hailed by Thomas Jefferson, and by other scholars since then, as the turning point of the American Revolution.

In October 1780, in response to a belligerent letter from a British officer, a volunteer force composed of the militias of several states marched to King's Mountain, and accomplished in an hour what George Washington's Continental Army couldn't seem to do up north: they won.

These thousand men, who came from the mountains of North Carolina, South Carolina, north Georgia, southwest Virginia, and the territories that would later become Tennessee and Kentucky, were not soldiers in the Continental Army. They had no uniforms, no food, no horses, and no weapons supplied to them. No one ever paid them for their military service, nor did they expect to be paid. After the battle, the makeshift army dissolved, and its soldiers went home to their farms.

The 1780 victory of the Overmountain Men has long been a source of pride to the people of Appalachia, and I decided to tell the story for a wider audience. In addition to its importance in the course of the Revolutionary War, King's Mountain is a veritable “Who's Who” of the frontier South. The roster of the Overmountain Men included: the first governor of Tennessee; the first governor of Kentucky; the brother-in-law of Virginia governor Patrick Henry; Davy Crockett's father; Robert E. Lee's father; and the grandfather of North Carolina's Civil War governor, Zebulon Vance.

In researching this book I received help and encouragement from a number of people, many of whom are descendants of a soldier in that battle, as I am. My seven-time great-grandmother Keziah Robertson was married to Robert Sevier, who died from a wound incurred in the battle. A year later, Keziah married Maj. Jonathan Tipton, who had been second-in-command to John Sevier at King's Mountain, and I am descended from them.

I decided to write this book two years ago, when I spoke at the convention of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington. The enthusiasm and encouragement of the Virginia DAR convinced me that King's Mountain was a story that needed to be more widely known.

I began by consulting all the written records I could find about King's Mountain, as well as the many nonfiction books that have been written on the subject. If you are ever tempted to think that “nonfiction” means “gospel truth,” read three accounts of the same historic event and note all the discrepancies between one book and another. (For example, most books stated that William Campbell was the brother-in-law of Patrick Henry, but one book claimed that Campbell was Henry's son-in-law.) I sorted out the conflicting accounts with more research and more reading, but when I could not absolutely verify a disputed fact, I tended to believe the original source from which many of the subsequent books are derived:
King's Mountain and Its Heroes
by Lyman C. Draper (Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomason, 1881).

The Battle of King's Mountain Eyewitness Accounts
by Robert M. Dunkerly (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2007) provided valuable insight into the minds of the soldiers themselves. For the general reader, who wants a clear and engaging account of the battle, I recommend
King's Mountain
by Hank Messick (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1976).

My thanks to the many people who enriched the book with their advice and expertise. The parks at Sycamore Shoals in Tennessee and the King's Mountain National Battlefield Park have excellent exhibits, helpful to anyone trying to understand the particulars of the battle. My husband, David, and I walked the battlefield, figuring out which militia attacked from which position, so that I could visualize the terrain in the context of the battle.

Blair Keller, a Revolutionary War reenactor in Virginia showed me how to load and fire a flintlock. Leigh Anne Hunter, director of Abingdon Muster Grounds, gave me a tour of the site and provided information on William Campbell's southwest Virginia militiamen, who began their journey there. Librarian Mary Gavlik took me on an expedition near Jonesborough, Tennessee, in search of John Sevier's house, Plum Grove, now only a lone chimney in the weeds. She also took me to the grave of Mary Patton, the woman who made the black powder for the troops of Sevier and Shelby. My distant cousin Alan Howell took me to Elizabethton, Tennessee, to show me the place on the creek where the Pattons' powder mill once stood. Research librarian Robin Caldwell searched historical and genealogical records for the story of Grace Bowman. Bill Carson, at the Orchard in Altapass
—
where the Overmountain Men camped—is a descendant of Robert Young, the man credited with shooting Major Ferguson, and I am grateful for his advice and encouragement. North Carolina historian Michael C. Hardy helped me to trace the first days of the 1780 journey—from the first night's encampment at the shelving rock to the trek over Roan Mountain on Bright's Trace, and along the road that is now U.S. 19 to Spruce Pine, where the militias of Shelby, Sevier, and Campbell left the mountains for the river valleys of the Carolina piedmont. Musician Richard Cunningham traced the eighteenth-century song “Barnie O'Linn,” the all-clear signal from the scouts to the militias.

Dr. Randy Joyner of Wilkes County, North Carolina, showed me the spot by the Yadkin River where Benjamin Cleveland's house, Roundabout
,
was once located. The house itself disappeared long ago. We also traced the route taken by the Wilkes County militia, who joined up with the Overmountain Men in Morganton: they traveled down the same river road, where some eighty years later, Thomas Dula—Tom Dooley—lived.

Finally, I thank all those descendants of the Overmountain Men who shared their family stories, their genealogical records, and their enthusiasm with me. This is a story that needed to be told.

Also by Sharyn McCrumb

THE BALLAD NOVELS

If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

She Walks These Hills

The Rosewood Casket

The Ballad of Frankie Silver

The Songcatcher

Ghost Riders

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

The Ballad of Tom Dooley

THE NASCAR NOVELS

St. Dale

Once Around the Track

Faster Pastor
(with Adam Edwards)

EARLY WORKS
ELIZABETH MACPHERSON NOVELS

Sick of Shadows

Lovely in Her Bones

Highland Laddie Gone

Paying the Piper

The Windsor Knot

Missing Susan

MacPherson's Lament

If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him

The PMS Outlaws

THE JAY OMEGA NOVELS

Bimbos of the Death Sun

Zombies of the Gene Pool

SHORT STORY COLLECTION

Foggy Mountain Breakdown

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sharyn McCrumb is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Ballad of Tom Dooley
and other acclaimed Ballad novels. Her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by
The New York Times
and the
Los Angeles Times
. She lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge, less than a hundred miles from where her family—kinsmen of the Seviers—settled in 1790.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

KING'S MOUNTAIN.
Copyright © 2013 by Sharyn McCrumb. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Ervin Serrano

Cover photographs: woman and field by Meaghan Browning/Getty Images; mountains and soldiers by
Shutterstock.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

McCrumb, Sharyn, 1948–

King's mountain: a ballad novel / Sharyn McCrumb.

    p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-01140-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-02270-7 (e-book)

1.  Mountain life—Fiction.   2.  United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3563.C3527K56 2013

813'.54—dc23

2013020530

e-ISBN 9781250022707

First Edition: September 2013