On July 21, 1776, the once-peaceful morning was broken by the sounds of musketry as a Cherokee war party, under Chief Old Abraham, attacked the frontier fort known as Fort Watauga, also known as Fort Caswell, near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. This attack was not successful, and it led to an eventual several-day siege on the […]
“We have every reason to believe,” proclaimed the North Carolina Council of Safety, that “the emissaries of [the British] government are making use of every means in their power to induce the Indian Nations to fall upon the inhabitants of these [Southern] Colonies. Your own prudence will direct that you hold the Militia of your […]
Following the American surrender at Charleston on May 12, 1780, the Continental Army’s “Southern Department” was in disarray. Taken prisoner that day were 245 officers and 2,326 enlisted, including Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, the Southern Department’s commander-in-chief, along with militia and armed citizens, the most American prisoners surrendered at one time during the American Revolution.[1] […]