In 1779, Sullivan County having been recognized as a part of North Carolina, Governor Caswell appointed Anthony Bledsoe colonel, and Isaac Shelby lieutenant-colonel, of its military company.  About the beginning of July of the following year, General Charles McDowell, who commanded a district east of the mountains, sent to Bledsoe a dispatch, giving him an account of the condition of the country.  The surrender of Charleston had brought the State of South Carolina under British power; the people had been summoned to return to their allegiance, and resistance was ventured only by a few resolute spirits, determined to brave death rather than submit to the invader.  The Whigs had fled into North Carolina, whence they returned as soon as they were able to oppose the enemy.  Colonels Tarleton and Ferguson had advanced towards North Carolina at the head of their soldiery; and McDowell ordered Colonel Bledsoe to rally the militia of his county, and come forward in readiness to assist in repelling the invader’s approach.  Similar dispatches were sent to Colonel Sevier and to other officers, and the patriots were not slow in obeying the summons.

While the British Colonel Ferguson, under the orders of Cornwallis, was sweeping the country near the frontier, gathering the loyalists under his standard and driving back the Whigs, against whom fortune seemed to have decided, a resolute band was assembled for their succor far up among the mountains.  From a population of five or six thousand, not more than twelve hundred of them fighting men, a body of near five hundred mountaineers, armed with rifles and clad in leathern hunting-shirts, was gathered.  The anger of these sons of liberty had been stirred up by an insolent message received from Colonel Ferguson, that, “if they did not instantly lay down their arms, he would come over the mountains and whip their republicanism out of them;” and they were eager for an opportunity of showing what regard they paid to his threats.

At this juncture, Colonel Isaac Shelby returned from Kentucky, where he had been surveying land for the great company of land speculators headed by Henderson, Hart, and others.  The young officer was betrothed to Miss Susan Hart, a belle celebrated among the western settlements at that period, and it was shrewdly suspected that his sudden return from the wilds of Kentucky was to be attributed to the attractions of that young lady; notwithstanding that due credit is given to the patriot, in recent biographical sketches, for an ardent wish to aid his countrymen in their struggle for liberty by his active services at the scene of conflict.  On his arrival at Bledsoe’s, it was a matter of choice with the colonel whether he should himself go forth and march at the head of the advancing army of volunteers, or yield the command to Shelby.  It was necessary for one to remain behind, for the danger to the defenceless inhabitants of the country was even greater from the Indians than