There was one dark deed of vengeance.  It had come to be common for the victors on both sides to hang those whom they regarded as the chief offenders among their conquered opponents.  As the different districts were alternately overrun, the unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to swear allegiance in succession to Congress and to king; and then, on whichever side they bore arms, they were branded as traitors.  Moreover, the different leaders, both British and American, from Tarleton and Ferguson to Sumter and Marion, often embodied in their own ranks some of their prisoners, and these were of course regarded as deserters by their former comrades.  Cornwallis, seconded by Rawdon, had set the example of ordering all men found in the rebel ranks after having sworn allegiance to the king, to be hung; his under-officers executed the command with zeal, and the Americans, of course, retaliated.  Ferguson’s troops themselves had hung some of their prisoners. [Footnote:  Allaire’s Diary, entry for Aug. 20th; also see Aug. 2d.  He chronicles these hangings with much complacency, but is, of course, shocked at the “infamous” conduct of the Americans when they do likewise.]

All this was fresh in the minds of the Americans who had just won so decisive a victory.  They were accustomed to give full vent to the unbridled fury of their passions; they with difficulty brooked control; they brooded long over their own wrongs, which were many and real, and they were but little impressed by the misdeeds committed in return by their friends.  Inflamed by hatred and the thirst for vengeance, they would probably have put to death some of their prisoners in any event; but all doubt was at an end when on their return march they were joined by an officer who had escaped from before Augusta, and who brought word that Cruger’s victorious loyalists had hung a dozen of the captured patriots. [Footnote:  Shelby MS.] This news settled the doom of some of the tory prisoners.  A week after the battle a number of them were tried, and thirty were condemned to death.  Nine, including the only tory colonel who had survived the battle, were hung; then Sevier and Shelby, men of bold, frank nature, could no longer stand the butchery, and peremptorily interfered, saving the remainder. [Footnote:  Do.] Of the men who were hung, doubtless some were murderers and marauders, who deserved their fate; others, including the unfortunate colonel, were honorable men, executed only because they had taken arms for the cause they deemed right.

Leaving the prisoners in the hands of the lowland militia, the mountaineers returned to their secure fastnesses in the high hill-valleys of the Holston, the Watauga, and the Nollchucky.  They had marched well and fought valiantly, and they had gained a great victory; all the little stockaded forts, all the rough log-cabins on the scattered clearings, were jubilant over the triumph.  From that moment their three leaders were men of renown.  The legislatures of