The expedition offered a striking example of the individual initiative so characteristic of the backwoodsmen.  It was not ordered by any one authority; it was not even sanctioned by the central or State governments.  Shelby and Sevier were the two prime movers in getting it up; Campbell exercised the chief command; and the various other leaders, with their men, simply joined the mountaineers, as they happened to hear of them and come across their path.  The ties of discipline were of the slightest.  The commanders elected their own chief without regard to rank or seniority; in fact the officer [Footnote:  Williams.] who was by rank entitled to the place was hardly given any share in the conduct of the campaign.  The authority of the commandant over the other officers, and of the various colonels over their troops, resembled rather the control exercised by Indian chiefs over their warriors than the discipline obtaining in a regular army.  But the men were splendid individual fighters, who liked and trusted their leaders; and the latter were bold, resolute, energetic, and intelligent.

Cornwallis feared that the mountain men would push on and attack his flank; but there was no such danger.  By themselves they were as little likely to assail him in force in the open as Andreas Hofer’s Tyrolese—­with whom they had many points in common—­were to threaten Napoleon on the Danubian plains.  Had they been Continental troops, the British would have had to deal with a permanent army.  But they were only militia [Footnote:  The striking nature of the victory and its important consequences must not blind us to the manifold shortcomings of the Revolutionary militia.  The mountaineers did well in spite of being militia; but they would have done far better under another system.  The numerous failures of the militia as a whole must be balanced against the few successes of a portion of them.  If the States had possessed wisdom enough to back Washington with Continentals, or with volunteers such as those who fought in the Civil War, the Revolutionary contest would have been over in three years.  The trust in militia was a perfect curse.  Many of the backwoods leaders knew this.  The old Indian fighter, Andrew Lewis, about this time wrote to Gates (see Gates MSS., Sept. 30, 1780), speaking of “the dastardly conduct of the militia,” calling them “a set of poltroons,” and longing for Continentals.]after all, however formidable from their patriotic purpose and personal prowess.  The backwoods armies were not unlike the armies of the Scotch Highlanders; tumultuous gatherings of hardy and warlike men, greatly to be dreaded under certain circumstances, but incapable of a long campaign, and almost as much demoralized by a victory as by a defeat.  Individually or in small groups they were perhaps even more formidable than the Highlanders; but in one important respect they were inferior, for they totally lacked the regimental organization which the clan system gave the Scotch Celts.