The Kentuckian

It is time we turn our attention to the south once more. The region is replete with first patriots whose names were legend to the generations following the struggle for independence but are lost in the mists of time. The southern struggle was most remembered by the exploits of Marion and Sumter. But countless others played roles large and small. Not the least of these were those badasses called the “Over Mountain Men.” Hard-nosed and hard-fisted settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains steeped in hunting, fighting, and hard liquor. This edition profiles one of these: Isaac Shelby.

Family of Migrants

Isaac Shelby was born in Hagerstown, Maryland on 11 December 1750. His father, Evan Shelby,  hailed from Tregaron, Cardiganshire, Wales, and had come to America in 1734. About 1773, Evan moved his family to the Holston region of what is now upper East Tennessee but was then part Virginia.

In mid 18th century the Alleghenies
were the western frontier

Raised on the Range

Young Isaac grew up steeped in the frontier world of rough and tumble living and fighting. He early learned the use of arms and became accustomed to the rigors of western life. He received a fair education, worked on his father's plantation, occasionally surveyed the land, and at age eighteen became a deputy sheriff.

Frontier cabin

Big Strong Man

 Isaac Shelby was a large man, six feet tall, powerful, and well proportioned, with a striking countenance and ruddy complexion. He could endure long hours of work, physical hardship, and great fatigue. Dignified and impressive in bearing, he was nevertheless affable and winning. In short, a natural leader. He was also smart and had obvious executive skills that served him well in peace and war.

Shelby in later life

 Lord Dunmore's War

When the Earl of Dunmore, Virginia Royal Governor John Murray. went to war with the Shawnee under Chief Cornstalk, Shelby joined the nearby militia as a lieutenant, serving under his father. On 10 October 1774 young Shelby fought in the Battle of Point Pleasant. He achieved early military success in the battle by charging the high ground on the Indian flank, forcing them to abandon the field. This was just a prelude to things to come.

John Murray,Royal Governor of
Virginia

A Rebel Goes West

The American Revolution went hot in 1775 and by 1776 Shelby had rejoined the militia, this time as a captain. Virginia’s Governor, Patrick Henry, appointed him to a post on Virginia’s western frontier.  There he provided direct support to Colonel George Rogers Clark’s thrust into the Illinois Territory. Isaac also played a role in well his father’s victory over the Indian chief Dragging Canoe in a battle on the Tennessee River in 1779.

Shelby provided logistic support to
George Rogers Clark's western campaign

Me? A Tar Heel?

Eighteenth-century boundaries in this region were advisory at best. When he discovered that his homestead was actually in North Carolina, Isaac became a colonel of militia there.  He also won a seat in the state assembly. Although a newly minted Tar Heel, Shelby was in Kentucky when Charleston fell to the British in 1780 and the triumphant and exuberant redcoats began to overrun his state. At word of the new threat, he hurried home and raised some 200 men for the cause. He immediately joined forces with Colonel Joseph McDowell to try to block the advance of British General Charles Cornwallis and his Loyalist supporters.

The Fall of Charleston opened up the Carolinas
to the Southern Strategy

Guerrilla Days

His first major test came on 31 July when Shelby and his men managed to surround Thickety Fort on the Pacolet River.  His swagger and deception enabled him to bluff the commander to surrender his 94 men. Shelby then joined forces with a band of partisans under Lieutenant Colonel Elijah Clarke. With a combined force of 200 men, they attacked a Loyalist outpost at Musgrove Mills. Although outnumbered almost two to one they drove off the Loyalists in a fierce skirmish.

Enter the Counter Guerrilla

These activities posed a threat to Cornwallis’s security, so the British general dispatched perhaps the army’s best guerrilla fighter, Major Patrick Ferguson. But when the patriot army under General Horatio Gates was annihilated at Camden on 16 August 1780, pretty much all resistance collapsed throughout the south. It looked like the British “southern strategy “was going to pay off.

Major Patrick Ferguson

 Run Away

For his part, Shelby withdrew to the west with McDowell, and their forces dissolved into the frontier hinterland. There they would wait out events. But local atrocities by Loyalist bands angered the southerners and in a series of partisan and guerrilla actions, they continued resistance.

Partisan militia

 The Lord's Prayer

Seeking to consolidate the Carolinas under British authority, Lord Cornwallis marched an army into North Carolina in a gambit that would ultimately backfire. With him went Ferguson who issued a bold challenge to the “Over Mountain Men” as the frontier rebels were called. The threat was blunt: submit to the crown, or their homes would be put to the torch.  But the men of the west were unimpressed. In fact, this galvanized the frontiersmen.

Major General Charles Cornwallis

Band of Brothers, Tough Mothers

Shelby, along with another over mountain man from Tennessee, John Sevier, raised a force of 200 volunteers, rallied at Sycamore Shoals, and soon plunged into war-torn North Carolina. There they joined forces with Colonel William Campbell. Anxious for revenge, the over mountain men moved hell-bent for leather to get Ferguson. The feeling was mutual. The famed counter-guerrilla led a force of some 900 Loyalists itching to subdue the rebels.

John Sevier - another
Over Mountain Bad Ass

Go Tell it to the Mountain

But the ride was turned on Ferguson, who was surrounded on a stretch of high ground called King’s Mountain (just over the border in South Carolina) and cut off from the main British column under Cornwallis. Withering and accurate fire from the rifles of the westerners devastated the Loyalists. Ferguson was shot trying to rally a defense and soon died. The few who did not taste lead eventually surrendered. Shelby played a conspicuous role in planning and executing the operation and soon became a local hero.

Kings Mountain was a turning point i n the South

 Draining the Swamp, with the Swamp Fox

After King’s Mountain, Cornwallis’s strategy began to unravel. But there was more fighting to be done. Shelby joined forces with famed partisan general Francis Marion and assisted in seizing Monk’s Corner. Fighting continued throughout the south even after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781. But the British and their Loyal allies were beaten.

Francis Marion and his partisan militia

The Kentuckian

After the war, Shelby retired to private life, where his wartime heroics resulted in a successful political career. He moved to Kentucky and helped organize the territory, develop infrastructure, improve defenses against the Indians and their British allies. On 19 April 1783, at Boonesboro, he married Susannah Hart, daughter of Captain Nathaniel Hart, one of the earliest settlers of Kentucky. Susannah eventually bore him eleven children.

Susannah Hart Shelby

 Politician, Pundit, and Warrior

In 1792 he was elected governor of the recently admitted state. He was a critic of President Washington’s foreign policy.  Many westerners wanted a more aggressive stance against the British forts to the west and the Indians.  However, he provided unstinting support to Major General Anthony Wayne’s Legion during the Indian campaigns of 1794. In 1812 Shelby was once again elected governor. His military and organizational skills went to work mobilizing Kentucky’s militia for war. In 1813 he personally led a force of 3,500 mounted riflemen north to support General William Henry Harrison’s army near Thames, Ontario. After the war, Congress struck a gold medal in his honor.

Gen Anthony Wayne's American Legion

 Diplomat to the Indians

 In 1817, he declined President James Madison’s offer to serve as Secretary of War. His last significant contribution to the over mountain region came in 1818 when he, Andrew Jackson, and others negotiated the “Jackson Purchase,” which removed control of the western districts of Kentucky and Tennessee from the Chickasaw Indians. This opened the western region to settlement. To honor this service, the Tennessee General Assembly named Shelby County (Memphis) for him.

President James Madison

 A Model for the West

The fighting governor died near Danville, Kentucky in July 1826. He was mourned as a celebrated public servant and soldier. One of the nation’s most remarkable frontiersmen, Shelby provided the model for those later frontiersmen who would forge the Republic of Texas and help solidify America’s western expansion.

Shelby Cemetery is a KY historic site