French Huguenot, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and Welsh Presbyterian were
their ancestors. With such leadership as these three men furnished,
the early Mountain colonists ought to have been heroes, and they were.

In the author's own words, "These three men, John Sevier, James
Robertson and Isaac Shelby, * * * were like Washington and Lincoln,
'providential men.' They marched neither to the sound of drum nor
bugle, and no flaming bulletins proclaimed their exploits in the ears
of a listening continent; their slender forces trod silently the
western solitudes, and their greatest battles were insignificant
skirmishes never reported beyond the mountains; but their deeds were
pregnant with consequences that will be felt along the coming
centuries."

They were, and they held themselves to be, "providential men." Whether
reading the Bible by the light of the great pine fires, or burning the
cabins of the Cherokees, or driving the marauding
Chickamaugas into their lair at "Nick-a-Jack" cave, or beating the
British at King's Mountain, these men felt themselves called of God to
maintain for the people a free government.

There was the same reckless administration of punishment that still
characterizes these Mountain people. A tory appeared in the road one
day near the home of Colonel William Campbell, of the "Backwater
settlement." The Colonel at once gives him chase; after a brief
absence he returns to his home, and his wife eagerly asks "What did
you do with him?"

"Oh, we hung him, Betty, that's all."