Mr. Draper has with infinite industry and research gathered all the published and unpublished accounts and all the traditions concerning the battle; his book is a mine of information on the subject.  He is generally quite impartial, but some of his conclusions are certainly biassed; and the many traditional statements, as well as those made by very old men concerning events that took place fifty or sixty years previously, must be received with extreme caution.  A great many of them should never have been put in the book at all.  When they take the shape of anecdotes, telling how the British are overawed by the mere appearance of the Americans on some occasion (as pp. 94, 95, etc.), they must be discarded at once as absolutely worthless, as well as ridiculous.  The British and tory accounts, being forced to explain ultimate defeat, are, if possible, even more untrustworthy, when taken solely by themselves, than the American.]

On the 18th of the month the mountain men, assisted as usual by some parties of local militia, all under their various colonels, performed another feat; one of those swift, sudden strokes so dear to the hearts of these rifle-bearing horsemen.  It was of a kind peculiarly suited to their powers; for they were brave and hardy, able to thread their way unerringly through the forests, and fond of surprises; and though they always fought on foot, they moved on horseback, and therefore with great celerity.  Their operations should be carefully studied by all who wish to learn the possibilities of mounted riflemen.  Yet they were impatient of discipline or of regular service, and they really had no one commander.  The different militia officers combined to perform some definite piece of work, but, like their troops, they were incapable of long-continued campaigns; and there were frequent and bitter quarrels between the several commanders, as well as between the bodies of men they led.

It seems certain that the mountaineers were, as a rule, more formidable fighters than the lowland militia, beside or against whom they battled; and they formed the main strength of the attacking party that left the camp at the Cherokee ford before sunset on the 17th.  Ferguson’s army was encamped southwest of them, at Fair Forest Shoals; they marched round him, and went straight on, leaving him in their rear.  Sometimes they rode through open forest, more often they followed the dim wood roads; their horses pacing or cantering steadily through the night.  As the day dawned they reached Musgrove’s Ford, on the Enoree, having gone forty miles.  Here they hoped to find a detachment of tory militia; but it had been joined by a body of provincial regulars, the united force being probably somewhat more numerous than that of the Americans.  The latter were discovered by a patrol, and the British after a short delay marched out to attack them.  The Americans in the meantime made good use of their axes, felling trees for a breastwork,