After the war, he was for a long time known as “old Constable Withers,” was highly respected, and died at a good old age.

CHAPTER VII.

CLEAVELAND COUNTY.

Cleaveland county was formed in 1841, from Lincoln and Rutherford counties and derives its name from Col.  Benjamin Cleaveland, of Wilkes county, who, with a detachment of men from that county and Surry, under the commands of himself, and Major Joseph Winston, performed a magnanimous part in the battle of King’s Mountain.  Shelby, the capital of this county, derives its name from Col.  Isaac Shelby, a sketch of whose services with those of Colonels Campbell, Graham, Hambright and Williams will appear in the present chapter.

BATTLE OF KING’S MOUNTAIN.

     “O’er the proud heads of free men, our star banner waves;
     Men firm as their mountains, and still as their graves,
     To-morrow shall pour out their life-blood like rain;
     We come back in triumph, or come not again.”

After the defeat of General Gates at Camden, on the 16th of August, 1780, and the surprise and defeat of Gen. Sumter, two days after at Fishing Creek, by Col.  Tarleton, the South was almost entirely abandoned to the enemy.  It was one of the darkest periods of our Revolutionary history.  While Cornwallis remained at Camden, he was busily employed in sending off his prisoners to Charleston and Orangeburg; in ascertaining the condition of his distant posts at ninety-six and Augusta, and in establishing civil government in South Carolina.  Yet his success did not impair his vigilance in concerting measures for its continuance.  West of the Catawba river, were bands of active Whigs, and parties of those who were defeated at Camden, were harrassing their enemies and defending on every available occasion, the suffering inhabitants of the upper country.  Cornwallis, becoming apprised of this rebellious spirit of upper Carolina, detached Col.  Patrick Ferguson, one of his most favorite officers, with one hundred and ten regulars and about the same number of Tories, under captain Depeyster, a loyalist, with an ample supply of arms and other military stores.  He was ordered to embody the loyalists beyond the Catawba (or Wateree as the same river is called opposite Camden) and the Broad rivers; intercept the “mountain men”, who were retreating from Camden, and also, the Americans under Col.  Clarke, of Georgia, falling back from an unsuccessful attack upon Augusta.  Ferguson’s special orders were to crush the spirit of rebellion still too rife and menacing; and after scouring the upper part of South Carolina, toward the mountains of North Carolina, to join his Lordship at Charlotte.  He at first made rapid marches to overtake the mountain men—­the “Hornets,” from the “Switzerland of America,” and cut off Col.  Clarke’s forces.  Failing in this, he afterward moved more slowly and frequently halted to collect all the Tories he could persuade