of operations had been concerted between Stuart and the
British commander-in-chief, General Gage. It was for a universal rising
among the Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Shawnees, who were to
invade the frontiers of Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas, while
simultaneously a large military and naval force under Sir Peter Parker
descended upon the Southern seaboard and captured Charleston. It was
also intended to enlist the co-operation of such inhabitants of the back
settlements as were known to be favorable to the British. Thus the
feeble colonists were to be not only encircled by a cordon of fire, but
a conflagration was to be lighted which should consume every patriot's
dwelling. It was an able but pitiless and bloodthirsty plan, for it
would let loose upon the settler every savage atrocity and make his
worst foes those of his own household. If successful, it would have
strangled in fire and blood the spirit of independence in the Southern
colonies.

That it did not succeed seems to us, who know the means employed to
thwart it, little short of a miracle. Those means were the four hundred
and forty-five raw militia under Moultrie, who, behind a pile of
palmetto logs, on the 28th of June, 1776, repulsed Sir Peter Parker in
his attack on Sullivan's Island in the harbor of Charleston, South
Carolina, and the two hundred and ten "over-mountain men," under Sevier,
Robertson, and Isaac Shelby, who beat back, on the 20th and 21st of
July, the Cherokee invasion of the western frontier.

As early as the 30th of May, Sevier and Robertson were apprised by their
faithful friend Nancy Ward of the intended attack, and at once they sent
messengers to Colonel Preston, of the Virginia Committee of Safety, for
an additional supply of powder and lead and a reinforcement of such men
as could be spared from home-service. One hundred pounds of powder and
twice as much lead, and one hundred militiamen, were despatched in
answer to the summons. The powder and lead were distributed among the
stations, and the hundred men were sent to strengthen the garrison of
Fort Patrick Henry, the most exposed position on the frontier. The
entire force of the settlers was now two hundred and ten, forty of whom
were at Watauga under Sevier and Robertson, the remainder at and near
Fort Patrick Henry under no less than six militia captains, no one of
whom was bound to obey the command of any of the others. This
many-headed authority would doubtless have