The most aggravated case of murder on the American side was the shooting of the Tory Col. Grierson after his surrender, near Augusta. The murder was committed in broad day, yet Pickens declared that the murderer was not known.[1133]
King's Mountain.—There is very little original material in print bearing on Clarke's siege of Augusta. McCall's narrative (Georgia, ii. 321) has been very generally followed. An anonymous account from a British source is in the Remembrancer, xi. 28.
Lyman C. Draper,[1134] in his King's Mountain and its Heroes, gives nearly all the important documents relating to that action. Unfortunately, as its title indicates, there is too much hero worship[1135] in the volume, and Draper's own account is based too largely on tradition to be wholly trustworthy, and is too diffuse and intricate. As a repository of documents, however, the volume is of the first importance. I shall attempt only a summary of the documents bearing on the movement.
Shelby wrote to his father five days after the fight (Draper, 302), and later, on October 26th, to Col. Arthur Campbell (Draper, 524). The statements in the first letter as to losses, etc., are strangely at variance with those contained in an official report signed by Campbell, Shelby, and Cleveland on October 20th.[1136] Col. William Campbell also wrote to Arthur Campbell on the same day (Draper, 526; Gibbes, p. 140, and elsewhere). Draper gives several other accounts, the most important being "Battle of King's Mountain", probably written by Robert Campbell, "an ensign in Dysart's corps" (Draper, 537, from MS. in possession of the Tenn. Hist. Soc.). Gen. Joseph Graham, who had no part in the fight, being still confined in the hospital from the wound received at the defence of Charlotte, wrote a description.[1137] David Campbell, in a letter (Foote's Sketches of Virginia, 2d series, p. 126) dated Montcalm, Dec. 1, 1851,[1138] defended his ancestor. Still other accounts are in Draper, many of them reprints; and a letter from Iredell to his wife, dated Granville, Oct. 8, 1780 (McRee's Iredell, i. 463), should not be overlooked.
The most interesting description of the campaign from the British side is in the Diary of Anthony Allaire, of Ferguson's corps.[1139] The chronology is useful in fixing dates, and his narrative of his treatment while in captivity and during his successful attempt to escape is very interesting. He is also supposed to have been the author of a letter written by "an officer from Charleston, Jan. 30", which is printed in Rivington's Royal Gazette of Feb. 14, 1781, and reprinted in Draper, 516.[1140]
There are two interesting letters from Rawdon, showing the extent of the disaffection to the royalist cause in the Carolinas.[1141]
Cornwallis seems to have presented no detailed report; at least, none has been printed, to my knowledge. There are allusions to the affair which show how deeply he was impressed by the coming of the men from beyond the mountains. The effect it had upon the plans of the British can be learned from a letter from Germain to Clinton, dated Jan. 3, 1781, in which he regrets that Ferguson's defeat compelled Cornwallis to require Leslie to quit the Chesapeake.[1142]
There is also an anonymous memoir of A Carolina Loyalist in the Revolutionary War in Chesney's Essays in Modern Military Biography (London, 1874, pp. 461-468), which contains something of interest.
[The latest contribution to the story of the parts played by John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, and James Robertson in helping to work the discomfiture of the British in the Southern colonies is the Rear Guard of the Revolution by Edmund Kirke [J. R. Gilmore], N. Y., 1886. The author says "his materials were principally gathered from old settlers in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, one of whom was the son of a trusted friend of Sevier, Dr. J. G. M. Ramsey of Knoxville, the author of the Annals of Tennessee, who in his youth had known Sevier and Robertson, and who was nearly ninety years old when he was questioned by Gilmore."—Ed.]