My reading has led me to conclude that the allegiances (patriot/rebel, loyalist/tory, neutral) were not nearly so deep nor nearly so permanent as modern descendents would like to believe. The choice was not nearly so clear cut as our hindsight would lead us to believe. One's choice to be on one side or the other, in some cases, was not made voluntarily. It was not at all uncommon for persons to change sides, sometimes more than once. Sometimes when a person was captured by their opponents, an option was given them to switch sides. Since the alternatives were not very attractive, the option was frequently taken (even if only temporarily). Near the end of the conflict, in the South, anyway, a person who had been a Loyalist could "erase that record" by serving a certain number of months in the patriot/rebel militia. Even after such a vitriolic civil war, *most* loyalists, if they had done nothing really bad, stayed on their land (or returned to it, by community consent) and continued to attend the same church they had attended before (but perhaps not allowed to vote on church matters for 3 years!). The way they lived with it was to "agree not to talk about it". Many modern descendents of loyalists in the area are dumbfounded to discover their ancestors were loyalists (the grandchildren were not told which side granddaddy fought on, they has merely "assumed" he was a patriot). We are sometimes given the impression that after the war, all those who had been Loyalists lost everything they had and had to leave the country. This is believed to have been true for only one loyalist in five. Locally, in some cases, it could well have been five out of five, but overall, the fraction was much smaller. We often hear John Adams being quoted as an authority for saying that the population was divided evenly into thirds (for/against/neutral). If you dig deep enough into his writings, you can find him giving other breakdowns, dependent upon the point he was making. I have heard one unrepentant loyalist descendent use this breakdown in his chop-logic for declaring the US government being an "illegal" government (since 2/3 did not favot it)! I don't think anyone can argue with there being "some" for, "some" against, and "some" on the fence. It is far too simplistic to say that there were equal numbers of each, and that this distribution never changed during 7 or 8 years of conflict. There would have been a lot of ebb and flow into and out of these "camps". In 1775, I believe it would be hard to make a case that there was any substantial percentage of the population favoring independence, and that the vast majority of the population could have been placed in a category of "concerned about other things". As the war ground on, the percentage who came to conclude that independence was not only a viable option but the most viable option would have increased substantially. As the fortunes of one side or the other improved, there would have been some shifting of position among many who wanted to position themselves (and their property) "out of harm's way". It would seem reasonable to me that after Yorktown, if there had been a Gallup-type poll, it would have been found that there was a substantial increase in those favoring independence! So rather than there being some fixed distribution or allegiances, this would have been a dynamic ever-changing situation.

At 10:29 PM 6/8/2002 -0400, you wrote: >I seem to recall something about the "Regulators," maybe Scots >settlers in the backwoods down that way, and maybe fans of the British? There were NC Regulators who rebelled because of corrupt colonial government. In 1771, they were put down at the Battle of Alamance. Some of this number later felt they had made some agreement that made them honor bound to support the king. My 4-g-gf died 2 months after that battle, testate, and we suspect it may have been from wounds received in that battle. He lived about 15 miles s. of the presentday SC border, but the border was very fuzzy in those days. Some of them saw the same leadership in the patriot/rebel militia they had seen in the colonial militia that "put them down", probably contributing to their early reluctance to join them. However, this pattern is not consistent. Many of the ex-regulators were among those overmountain men who came down after Ferguson at Kings Mountain (my kin were among that number). There were, separately, at the same time, SC Regulators, who were up in arms about the "absence of government", and more than once were on the verge of moving militarily against the coastal "rice kings" who controlled and monopolized all governmental services. There were no courts in the backcountry of SC (where 90% of the white polpulation lived) before 1785, resulting in most upper SC land titles, wills, etc. prior to the Rev War being filed in NC courts simply because they were the only ones available. You can learn a lot about the "almost war" of the SC Regulators in "The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution", edited (Richard J. Booker) writings of Charles Woodmason, the Anglican minister, who personally acted as mediator to prevent it. They knew about each other and were sympathetic to each other, but different colonies, different grievances. Many believe that, had the SC Regulators actually attacked the rice kings, the NC group would have come to their assistance. If you are travelling on I-85, immediately south of Burlington NC, there is a neat little 10-mile detour that you can take that will take you by Tryon's Camp (prior to Alamance, 1771), a great little park at the Alamance Battle site, the site of Pyle's Defeat (just prior to Guilford Courthouse, 1781, just as much an atrocity as Waxhaws, but done this time by Light Horse Harry Lee), and a very attractive memorial to the Clapp's Mill skirmish site (also just before Guilford C.H.) which they don't get around to telling you is a half mile away at the bottom of a fairly new lake (why they built the nice little monument area)! If this is of interest to anyone, I can come up with more precise directions. John Robertson

Just some facts from the book The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania by Wayland F. Dunaway. (If they came from Scotland they were Scots, if they lived in Ireland for a few generations they were Scotch-Irish) The resettlement of the Scots into Ireland was started mainly in the time of James the First. It was to repopulate a part of Ireland that had been decimated by war. The Scots who received land were not allowed to hire the native Irish, most of whom were very poor and uneducated. The two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with one another. Even then the seeds for the present troubles in northern Ireland were being sown. As has been said the British Government began to tax them unfairly, and caused the ruination of the weaving trade among others. During the British Civil Wars Cromwell also caused devastation,thus setting the stage for the immigrations of the 1700s. "It is computed that from 1728 to 1750 Ulster lost one-fourth of her manufacturing population, and that the counties of Down, Antrim, Armagh, and Londonderry "were almost emptied of their protestant inhabitants" In the great exodus of beginning 1771, Ulster is said to have lost one fourth of its population and one fourth of its trading cash within five years." In another place in the book the estimate is given at 250,000 immigrants, and the overwhelming majority were protestants. Most of them came to Pennsylvania. After the French and Indian War many of them went south along the Great Wagon Road to cheaper lands in North and South Carolina. Another book on this subject, which I cannot at the moment find, talked about how the Penn brothers and the other PA leaders were so appalled at the amount of Scotch-Irish that were pouring into PA that they were afraid they would be overwhelmed. The Penn brothers actively encouraged them to settle along the frontier. Since the earlier PA settlers were Quakers and peaceful German farmers they felt that the more "aggressive" Scotch-Irish would provide a buffer zone against the Indians, and help to secure western PA from the claims by Maryland and Virginia. The Scotch-Irish were attracted to PA because this colony had the most religious freedom during this time period. Betty

In a message dated 6/8/02 4:06:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time, AMERICAN-REVOLUTION-D-request@rootsweb.com writes: Hi: I read something not long ago on one of the sites in New York State regarding the Palatines who came to America. These came from (what is now) Germany. They were brought here by the Crown to help with a project the British government was doing. These people were indentured. Upon the completion of the project, they were promised land. Well, the project was not completed (thru no fault of their own) and those people did not receive the land they were promised. This really sounds like what the Crown did in Ulster - promised all those lowland Scots land and then didn't keep the promise. My family went in Pennsylvania with no love of England because of that. Annie ><< The Loyalist characters in my book loved America. I have no reason >to think >they were atypical. They loved their homes, their way of life and their >patriotic kin and neighbors. But they ended up having to leave it all >forever and live out their lives in alien lands. > I might add, I don't see how they could have acted other than they did, or >how the patriots could have treated them other than they did. >> You make a good point, Anne... There were two sides to that issue - at least two sides! <g> In a tiny pocket of (beautiful!) countryside on what is now the state line between NY and VT there was a group of Irish and Irish Palatine immigrants living in a tiny settlement called Ashgrove. The Palatines had been brought out of the Palatinate torn by famine and war, and the one who "saved" them was none other than the English queen. She brought thousands of families to England, and then sent most to the Colonies (for her own less-than-altruistic motives). Hundreds of other Palatine families were sent north to Ireland to live as tenant farmers on estates owned by wealthy landlords. Later, when those same families immigrated to the Colonies to better their lives and to own their own land, they felt a great debt to the Crown. Ira and Ethan ALLEN, who lived in the same 'hood, began raiding, harassing, beating, stealing the animals and burning the homes of anyone who did not declare himself to be a rebel. These Irish Palatines were torn... they, too, loved their new homes and homeland, but they could not fight against the Crown that had given them their freedom and indeed their very lives. Some did not necessarily view themselves as Loyalists, but they could not bring themselves to take up arms against the British. In that particular area and probably in many others it was pretty nearly impossible to stay neutral. Many of these Irish Palatines were driven out and they ended up moving north to Ontario. Susan ______________________________ X-Message: #3 Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 08:57:47 -0400 From: "The Dour Celt" <mcginley@chartertn.net> To: AMERICAN-REVOLUTION-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <003601c20eec$1d9b8f80$7fbb9f18@chartertn.net> Subject: >>

Quite often, those unwilling or unable to declare themselves Patriots were looked upon as Tories. It occurs to me to wonder what I would have done, or any of us, clear as the choice seems with 225 years of hindsight.

How funny that I just ran a across a website that reminded me of the discussion here of late. I have been reading this little book that was my father's, called "A Short History of the Revolution" by John Hyde Preston, and decided to do a google search on it. I came up with this page. Here's a quote: >Now it is very hard indeed to get at a clue to the actual character >of the enlisted men. Literacy was so rare among the common men in >the Midlands, native or foreign, that from the whole of the >Pennsylvania Line only one apparently authentic account survives, A >History of the Life and Services of Captain Samuel Dewees, who was >an enlisted man, not an officer, when he served in the foreign >brigades. This book appeared in 1844, and was written - edited, it >is claimed - by one John Smith Hanna, and as sixty-three years had >passed since the revolt of the Line, its accuracy is open to >question. Aside from this, there are the host of books published in >the first five decades of the nineteenth century and a considerable >number of manuscript papers and letters. But all of these books are >open to question; they are poorly written, full of homilies, and >without exception contain no real people. In the Parson Weems >tradition, they simply make the problem of investigation more >difficult. The manuscript papers are better, but they rarely >originate in the Pennsylvania Line. http://www.trussel.com/hf/reply.htm The Preston book, by the way, is quite amusing. Julianne

Hi, The Dour Celt wrote: > I hope that this brief essay will add a bit of clarity and ease some > of the frustration experienced by researchers, but I doubt it. <snip> > yet > what I am able to learn of him I get from other frontiersmen's > accounts because he was apparently too modest to record his own > exploits. How very fortunate to have your ancestor mentioned in others writings. What I have been struck by are the Journals that were kept by 'very' young men, just '19' years of age. They were not speaking of themselves but recording history for us. Examples I know about are the Charles Herbert Diary while at Mills Prison which Ed St Germain has up on his website now; The Adlum Diary of his imprisonment after the Battle of Brooklyn and his return home, and another which I came across recently ... in 1818 Captain David Perry recapped his participation in the 4 previous wars, both sides; website: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~dagjones/captdavidperry/captdavidperry.html Another 19 yr old was Simon Fobes who Kenneth Roberts said: 'is the only journalist who kept a record of a return journey to Maine over the same route followed by Arnold on his march to Quebec.' One of the Journals included in his book 'March to Quebec', compiled during his writing of Arundel, 1938. If anyone can recommend Journals from the 1781 SC Battles and Skirmishes with the British Army around Eutaw Springs, I would appreciate hearing about them. Thanks, Jan

Not sure that I understand "the URL is changed"... as these are two entirely different websites. Am I missing something? Elaine ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pattee" <Pattee@charter.net> To: <AMERICAN-REVOLUTION-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2002 7:52 PM Subject: RE: [A-REV] Literacy > The URL is changed thanks to the wonderful assistance of Jim (a Carroll > descendant) who located it for me. > http://www.zekes.com/~dspidell/famresearch/ulster.html > Patti > > You can go to the following site and get the input of one > descendant of Joseph Carroll, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who died of old > age in York Co, SC in about 1784... whose will included the passing on > of the 4 volumes of his Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary (one to each of > 4 of his children). > Am descended from Carroll, Ratchford, and Henderson lines of York > Co, SC... all of which were amply represented in the effort for > independence. > http://members.aol.com/bgandy007/genealgy/tmcsar.html > > Elaine > > PS. FYI... we have not found anything to support the tradition that > Joseph Carroll was awarded land in SC as a result of his father's > service to the King (see above referred-to site). Records of the > presence of Joseph Carroll and two son-in-laws, William Ratchford and > Nathaniel Henderson, can be found in those of Chester Co, PA, prior to > their coming to NC/SC. > > > > ==== AMERICAN-REVOLUTION Mailing List ==== > > > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 >

The URL is changed thanks to the wonderful assistance of Jim (a Carroll descendant) who located it for me. http://www.zekes.com/~dspidell/famresearch/ulster.html Patti You can go to the following site and get the input of one descendant of Joseph Carroll, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who died of old age in York Co, SC in about 1784... whose will included the passing on of the 4 volumes of his Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary (one to each of 4 of his children). Am descended from Carroll, Ratchford, and Henderson lines of York Co, SC... all of which were amply represented in the effort for independence. http://members.aol.com/bgandy007/genealgy/tmcsar.html Elaine PS. FYI... we have not found anything to support the tradition that Joseph Carroll was awarded land in SC as a result of his father's service to the King (see above referred-to site). Records of the presence of Joseph Carroll and two son-in-laws, William Ratchford and Nathaniel Henderson, can be found in those of Chester Co, PA, prior to their coming to NC/SC.

You can go to the following site and get the input of one descendant of Joseph Carroll, a Scots-Irish Presbyterian who died of old age in York Co, SC in about 1784... whose will included the passing on of the 4 volumes of his Matthew Henry's Bible Commentary (one to each of 4 of his children). Am descended from Carroll, Ratchford, and Henderson lines of York Co, SC... all of which were amply represented in the effort for independence. http://members.aol.com/bgandy007/genealgy/tmcsar.html Elaine PS. FYI... we have not found anything to support the tradition that Joseph Carroll was awarded land in SC as a result of his father's service to the King (see above referred-to site). Records of the presence of Joseph Carroll and two son-in-laws, William Ratchford and Nathaniel Henderson, can be found in those of Chester Co, PA, prior to their coming to NC/SC.

I hope that this brief essay will add a bit of clarity and ease some of the frustration experienced by researchers, but I doubt it. You probably would be surprised at the relatively high percentage of the immigrants, especially the Scots, who were at least educated to be able to read, write and cipher. The Presbyterian Church pushed schooling in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in the colonies so that the parishioners would be able to read the Bible and interpret it for themselves. One of my ancients was a Doctor of Theology and all of the others could read and write. And they were not from a wealthy family. As for alphabetizing rosters, the same is true for ship's sailing lists, etc. I suspect that when you are writing with a quill and ink some things just don't have a very high priority. It may have been (and this is pure speculation) that the officers in units were listed with the men they led. Or (far more likely) their names were entered in the rolls as they were appointed or elected which gives you a rudimentary listing of seniority. I have no proof of either, just 25 years of experience in the way things are done in the military. If you were to pick up the "Blue Book" today, which is the list of officers in the Marines, you would find it is not in alphabetic order either. It is a pure seniority listing, by year group. Many of our ancestors left no remarkable records for the same reasons we don't, they didn't think their daily lives (which tended to routine) important enough to record. I don't keep a diary, nor do I warehouse and catalog my letters and papers for any period longer than absolutely needed. We shouldn't get frustrated with our ancestors because they didn't do what we are unwilling to do. My second great grandfather was a Revolutionary War soldier, a Pioneer of Tennessee, a prominent businessman in his community and, when he died, the Lt. Col Commandant of the 12th Regiment of Tennessee Militia (Blount County) having served the Territory and the state for nearly 30 years, yet what I am able to learn of him I get from other frontiersmen's accounts because he was apparently too modest to record his own exploits. Arthur McGinley mcginley@chartertn.net amcginle@tusculum.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- I have always regarded the forward edge of the battlefield as the most exclusive club in the world -- Sir Brian Horrocks Marines I see as two breeds, Rottweilers or Dobermans, because Marines come in two varieties, big and mean, or skinny and mean. They're aggressive on the attack and tenacious on defense. They've got really short hair and they always go for the throat. --RADM "Jay" R. Stark, US Navy; 10 November 1995 To my mind, it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime and death. How feeble is the mind to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic. --Ted Nugent

><< The Loyalist characters in my book loved America. I have no reason >to think >they were atypical. They loved their homes, their way of life and their >patriotic kin and neighbors. But they ended up having to leave it all >forever and live out their lives in alien lands. > I might add, I don't see how they could have acted other than they did, or >how the patriots could have treated them other than they did. >> You make a good point, Anne... There were two sides to that issue - at least two sides! <g> In a tiny pocket of (beautiful!) countryside on what is now the state line between NY and VT there was a group of Irish and Irish Palatine immigrants living in a tiny settlement called Ashgrove. The Palatines had been brought out of the Palatinate torn by famine and war, and the one who "saved" them was none other than the English queen. She brought thousands of families to England, and then sent most to the Colonies (for her own less-than-altruistic motives). Hundreds of other Palatine families were sent north to Ireland to live as tenant farmers on estates owned by wealthy landlords. Later, when those same families immigrated to the Colonies to better their lives and to own their own land, they felt a great debt to the Crown. Ira and Ethan ALLEN, who lived in the same 'hood, began raiding, harassing, beating, stealing the animals and burning the homes of anyone who did not declare himself to be a rebel. These Irish Palatines were torn... they, too, loved their new homes and homeland, but they could not fight against the Crown that had given them their freedom and indeed their very lives. Some did not necessarily view themselves as Loyalists, but they could not bring themselves to take up arms against the British. In that particular area and probably in many others it was pretty nearly impossible to stay neutral. Many of these Irish Palatines were driven out and they ended up moving north to Ontario. Susan

At 08:51 PM 6/7/2002 -0400, you wrote: >More than any other event, > it brought the S-I "off the fence" as their *enemy*, >What does this mean? That the Scots-Irish joined the British? This means that the previously unaligned (indifferent and uninterested) Scots-Irish were no longer neutral but became ardent anti-British partisans. This was strongly supported from the Presbyterian pulpits, and became referred to by some Brits in the Carolinas as the "Presbyterian Rebellion". Someone has pointed out correctly that (an otherwise excellent British officer) Patrick Ferguson unwisely sent a challenge to the overmountain men (who lived well beyond the 1763 Proclamation Line and pretty much beyond the reach of the British military) and as a direct result, provoked a pre-emptive strike by some people he would have been much wiser to have encouraged to stay out of the fight. When the patriot/rebel militia left Sycamore Shoals, they left with the words of a highly educated Presbyterian minister challenging them to go forth with the "sword of the Lord and of Gideon". It has been correctly called a Presbyterian jihad (with the meaning the word "used to have"). Tarleton's performance at Waxhaws gave them all the evidence they needed to see it as a struggle between good and evil. In all denominations, during the Rev War, there was a lot of preaching from the Old Testament. Historians today wisely urge us not to try to study it as a struggle between the forces of good and evil, but that is precisely the spin put on it by patriot/rebel ministers. If we go back and read some of those Old Testament passages, we see some descriptions of war that would be condemned by modern international tribunals (which of course, did not exist, during the Rev War), but did not seem all that remote from the kind of war going on in the South. When the loyalists attempted to surrender at Kings Mountain, the patriot/rebel militia kept firing for a while, calling out "Give them Buford's play", meaning "we will let you surrender the same way Tarleton let Buford's men surrender". Kings Mountain was partially in retaliation for Tarleton's performance at Waxhaws (as perceived by the Scots-Irish), and partially in response to Ferguson's challenge to Isaac Shelby. Those conducting the attack had the full assurance of their ministers that they were "doing God's work". History has made it clear that these backcountry militia guerilla warriors were effective. Following the defeat of the Continentals in the South, there were 26 actions in SC alone, in which *militia* (no Continentals present) fought British regulars, loyalist provincials (essentially the equivalent of the Continentals but on the other side) and loyalist militia, and the patriot/rebel militia prevailed 2:1 in killed/wounded/captured. If we include GA and NC, the number of such encounters increases to the about 35. The fact that they were motivated by a combination of religious ardor and revenge (not likely true of their opponents) must have added to their effectiveness. At the recent Kings Mountain Forum, I heard a man speak who plans to write a history of Kings Mountain in which he plans to make the point that the patriot/rebel militia were effective because they were motivated by their concept of "honor" (what it takes to be a man?). It will be interesting to see that explained in some detail.

--part1_135.f767a17.2a32e274_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit < Subj: Re: [A-REV] Greed Date: 6/8/2002 12:27:51 AM Eastern Daylight Time From: JMJJF In a message dated 6/6/2002 5:54:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, hcalmes@mindspring.com writes: << Subj: [A-REV] Greed Date: 6/6/2002 5:54:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: hcalmes@mindspring.com (holley calmes) To: AMERICAN-REVOLUTION-L@rootsweb.com Let see, if I followed you correctly on another point. The rebels were motivated primarily by greed. Therefore the loyalists would have been characterized by ... (absence of greed?). Ahem. The Loyalist characters in my book loved America. I have no reason to think they were atypical. They loved their homes, their way of life and their patriotic kin and neighbors. But they ended up having to leave it all forever and live out their lives in alien lands. I might add, I don't see how they could have acted other than they did, or how the patriots could have treated them other than they did. This leads me to believe people of Middle Eastern origin are going to have a very bad time in this country. I wish it were not so. Anne >> --part1_135.f767a17.2a32e274_boundary Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Disposition: inline Return-path: <JMJJF@aol.com> From: JMJJF@aol.com Full-name: JMJJF Message-ID: <32.2811d206.2a32e1c7@aol.com> Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 00:27:51 EDT Subject: Re: [A-REV] Greed To: hcalmes@mindspring.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 14 In a message dated 6/6/2002 5:54:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, hcalmes@mindspring.com writes: << Subj: [A-REV] Greed Date: 6/6/2002 5:54:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time From: hcalmes@mindspring.com (holley calmes) To: AMERICAN-REVOLUTION-L@rootsweb.com Let see, if I followed you correctly on another point. The rebels were motivated primarily by greed. Therefore the loyalists would have been characterized by ... (absence of greed?). Ahem. The Loyalist characters in my book loved America. I have no reason to think they were atypical. They loved their homes, their way of life and their patriotic kin and neighbors. But they ended up having to leave it all forever and live out their lives in alien lands. I might add, I don't see how they could have acted other than they did, or how the patriots could have treated them other than they did. This leads me to believe people of Middle Eastern origin are going to have a very bad time in this country. I wish it were not so. Anne --part1_135.f767a17.2a32e274_boundary--

What is there to say? If they couldn't write, it's truly too bad. If they couldn't write, they couldn't leave writings. So there is something to say, after all: don't let's have any more who can't write. Support your local schools! Then posterity will know what the little people thought. This probably doesn't fit within the approved parameters, but it seems to be an answer to the question raised in this message. Anne

I am with you. How many rosters of units do you see where the officers are alphabetized? Rex Jones

I'm new here, so please forgive me if you already know of these sites, as I do not wish them to be redundant. Rev. War Letters: http://www.schistory.org/displays/RevWar/archives-online/indexbydate.html Rev. War Links: http://www.americanrevolution.org/histlinks.html South Carolina and the Revolutionary War – 1775-1783 http://www.sciway.net/hist/periods/revolwar.html I hope some of this is new to you, and will be useful. I'm increasingly concerned that the "little people" are not represented in the writings that are available to us. My thoughts are twofold: 1. Those who left writings, were the elite of both sides. These writings may not be representative of the sentiment of the majority, if there was a majority. Could this tend to slant our view? 2. Those who were of the general population were less well educated; and/or, did little writing anyway, as their duties were so time consuming, they had little incentive. What are your thoughts? James Baker A-Flame Corporation wrote: > Great Posts! You guys are confirming everything I believed about my relatives. > > Does anyone have a link to actual letters, which may have been posted from this > era? Thanks in advance! > > James Baker > > SmokyMtn43@aol.com wrote: > > > John: > > > > I agree with your assessment of Tarleton doing his share when it > > came to persuading the Scots Irish to get off the fence and involved > > in the war. The same thing can be said of Ferguson when he marched > > to the eastern edge of the Appalachians and sent word to the settlers > > on the other side of what he intended to do to them. Up to that point, > > they were pretty much occupied with defending themselves from the > > Indian raids on the frontier and trying to keep their families safe and > > fed. Being the independent lot they were, (pretty much still are), the > > Scotch-Irish on the western side of the mountains didn't much > > care for threats being make on them and they reacted the same way > > they would have if the Continental government had threatened them in > > such a manner. They too, like the South Carolinians almost a century > > later, went looking for a fight and found it at Kings Mountain. Another > > tactical error for which the British paid dearly, not only there, but with > > the resulting strategy followed by Cornwallis leading up to Cowpens. > > They, for the most part, had been living very independently over the > > mountains and didn't really feel obligated to get involved until they had > > a reason, which Col. Ferguson graciously gave them. > > > > Regards, > > > > Mack Smith > > > > ==== AMERICAN-REVOLUTION Mailing List ==== > > > > ============================== > > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 > > ==== AMERICAN-REVOLUTION Mailing List ==== > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237

Great Posts! You guys are confirming everything I believed about my relatives. Does anyone have a link to actual letters, which may have been posted from this era? Thanks in advance! James Baker SmokyMtn43@aol.com wrote: > John: > > I agree with your assessment of Tarleton doing his share when it > came to persuading the Scots Irish to get off the fence and involved > in the war. The same thing can be said of Ferguson when he marched > to the eastern edge of the Appalachians and sent word to the settlers > on the other side of what he intended to do to them. Up to that point, > they were pretty much occupied with defending themselves from the > Indian raids on the frontier and trying to keep their families safe and > fed. Being the independent lot they were, (pretty much still are), the > Scotch-Irish on the western side of the mountains didn't much > care for threats being make on them and they reacted the same way > they would have if the Continental government had threatened them in > such a manner. They too, like the South Carolinians almost a century > later, went looking for a fight and found it at Kings Mountain. Another > tactical error for which the British paid dearly, not only there, but with > the resulting strategy followed by Cornwallis leading up to Cowpens. > They, for the most part, had been living very independently over the > mountains and didn't really feel obligated to get involved until they had > a reason, which Col. Ferguson graciously gave them. > > Regards, > > Mack Smith > > ==== AMERICAN-REVOLUTION Mailing List ==== > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237

John: I agree with your assessment of Tarleton doing his share when it came to persuading the Scots Irish to get off the fence and involved in the war. The same thing can be said of Ferguson when he marched to the eastern edge of the Appalachians and sent word to the settlers on the other side of what he intended to do to them. Up to that point, they were pretty much occupied with defending themselves from the Indian raids on the frontier and trying to keep their families safe and fed. Being the independent lot they were, (pretty much still are), the Scotch-Irish on the western side of the mountains didn't much care for threats being make on them and they reacted the same way they would have if the Continental government had threatened them in such a manner. They too, like the South Carolinians almost a century later, went looking for a fight and found it at Kings Mountain. Another tactical error for which the British paid dearly, not only there, but with the resulting strategy followed by Cornwallis leading up to Cowpens. They, for the most part, had been living very independently over the mountains and didn't really feel obligated to get involved until they had a reason, which Col. Ferguson graciously gave them. Regards, Mack Smith

<< maybe the goal was to push the front line of this war as far north as possible to prevent further damage >> Pamela, You may be right about this, but knowing the way a lot of SC people feel even to this day, I'd be willing to bet that the reason they were among the first to arrive in VA was probably so they could get at the enemy! They were raring to go, and having taken control of the federal facilities in their state, the next best chance of getting into the fray was to head north where the war was just starting to heat up and the enemy was accessible. Just my 2 pennies worth, Mack Smith SmokyMtn43@aol.com