Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

History

Major Professor

G. Kurt Piehler

Committee Members

Lorri Glover, Steven Ash

Abstract

Hank Messick’s 1976 book on the backwoods militia’s victory over a large Tory force at King’s Mountain is not what most historians would consider to be a full-scale, academic treatment. Lightly documented but vibrantly written, King’s Moutain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge “Mountain Men” in the American Revolution falls squarely in the category of popular narrative. But Messick’s account is as firmly situated in a particular body of interpretation as the most rigorous historiographical work. The most interesting portion of King’s Mountain is the introduction, in which Messick explains his motives in devoting an entire volume to the Whig partisans’ 1780 campaign in the Carolina backcountry. “By achieving better perspective of the past,” Messick states, “something may be accomplished in the present.” He explains that the book is partly a result of his disgust with American arrogance toward present-day Appalachians. The mountaineer, he argues, “is called various unflattering names today and is the butt of comic-strip buffoonery and the ‘villain’ of serious works.”1 Messick’s book is a chronicle of the King’s Mountain victors’ achievement, but it is also an attempt to vindicated present-day inhabitants of the Southern mountains.

For many Appalachians, and particularly for East Tennesseans, King’s Mountain remains a matter of intense regional pride: it was the area’s signal contribution to the American Revolution and a critical turning point in that conflict. The traditional view of the King’s Mountain Whigs holds them to be fiercely patriotic and stubbornly independent. Accustomed to living in a state for freedom, they were quick to react to the threat of British oppressions by employing the deadly skills learned from a life in the wilderness, surrounded by hostile Indians. There is much truth to this traditional interpretation, and the purpose of this study is not to smash pedestals. Rather, the purpose here is to examine how views of the King’s Mountain victors evolved over time. The creation of traditional heroes is so common that it is easy to assume that any historical figure can enter the national pantheon, given enough time. But as this study will demonstrate, the path historical figures must travel on their way to heroic status is neither straight in direction nor steady in ascent. Hero-making is sometimes a messy, contentious process, and requires a great deal of effort.

Messick’s interpretation has very deep roots in the American historical imagination, and some of his ideas mirror similar works written more than a century before the publication of his book. But although this “incarnation” of the King’s Mountain militia has had tremendous staying power, its acceptance was not inevitable. Contemporary views of the King’s Mountain Whigs were quite different. The first chapter explores contemporary expectations of American militiamen and how these expectations played out in the King’s Mountain campaign. Contemporaries had definite ideas about the nature of American militia, and while most irregular troops failed to fulfill these notions, the King’s Mountain victors were in many ways exceptions. They fit the model of experienced frontier veterans who could use partisan tactics to great effect. But many revolutionaries also demanded certain types of behavior from soldiers engaged in war, and it was here that the backcountry militia fell short of expectations. Regular officers such as Nathanael Greene, who assumed responsibility for the King’s Mountain victors when he arrived in the South to take command of American forces there, expected virtuous soldiers to behave according to prescribed rules and customs of war. The King’s Mountain Whigs fought the Revolutionary War in their own way, and this clash of military cultures meant that contemporary interpretations of their contribution did not fit the traditional, heroic model. Many early assessments of the King’s Mountain victors were surprisingly negative, because they did not behave according to the rules of the mainstream American Revolution.

The King’s Mountain men finally became full-fledged revolutionaries after the War of 1812. The legacy of the Revolutionary War was very much on the minds of Americans in this period, as veterans took advantage of the “re-discovery” of the fight for independence to demand the recognition they deserved. The second chapter demonstrates how King’s Mountain veterans joined this tidal wave of revolutionary remembrance. Average soldiers applied for pensions or published accounts of their services, while officers feuded over questions of honor that had simmered since the King’s Mountain campaign. By asserting their own role in winning American independence, King’s Mountain veterans claimed a place for themselves in the legacy of the Revolutionary War. They achieved recognition and acceptance as revolutionaries that had been denied them during the actual conflict.

The third chapter focuses on the view of King’s Mountain that emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the revolutionary war receded from living memory into written history, writers and orators interpreted the King’s Mountain victors according to their own needs and preconceptions. The frontier historian Lyman C. Draper was the most important King’s Mountain chronicler, elevating the militia to the stature of genuine heroes. Other chroniclers carried this process farther along, but in the process, they came to identify the King’s Mountain militia with particular geographical regions. Writers claimed the battle for their own state or section, shaping history to meet the needs of their own time and place. East Tennessee emerged as the winner in this crucial stage of the militia’s evolution, ensuring that King’s Mountain would be synonymous with Appalachia well into the modern era, as evidence by Messick’s account.

The influence of nineteenth-century tradition is one good reason to approach King’s Mountain using historical memory as a starting point. Another reason is more practical. Primary source material dating from the campaign itself is sparse. Good manuscript material exists, but much of it comes from decades after the Revolution, for reasons explained in detail in the second chapter. This study makes use of manuscript accounts as well as published documentary material. Because the subject is the creation of historical tradition, many later accounts are also treated as primary sources. Treatment of King’s Mountain changed so much from 1780 to the early twentieth century that the kinds of primary material used varies greatly from chapter to chapter, from published documentary sources and manuscript recollections from the eighteenth century to popular historical works of the late nineteenth.

This study is also grounded in the relevant secondary literature on the Revolutionary War, historical memory, and Appalachia. Recent scholars have applied the techniques of the “new military history” to the Revolutionary War and produced valuable insights on the way Americans interpreted their battle for independence, and why they chose to fight as they did. This new approach broadens the scope of military history to examine the impact of society at large on the manner of waging war. The memory of the Revolution, and of war in general, is also a particularly vibrant field; this study operates within a framework very familiar to students of the war’s legacy. Finally, the study of Appalachian identity and outsiders’ views of the region is also the subject of much good work, and this study employs some of these interpretations. Hopefully the work of these disparate groups of creative historians will shed new light on the men who triumphed at King’s Mountain, their evolving image, and the importance of their story.

1 Hank Messic, King’s Mountain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge ‘Mountain Men’ in the American Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1976), ix-xi.

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