The War in the Northwest 331 



leaders, armed in their own manner, and fighting 

 after their own fashion, for the freedom and the 

 future of America ; on the opposite side were other 

 Americans the loyalists, led by British officers, 

 armed and trained in the British fashion, and fight- 

 ing on behalf of the empire of Britain and the maj- 

 esty of the monarchy. The Americans numbered, 

 all told, about nine hundred and fifty men. 47 The 



47 Nine hundred and ten horsemen (possibly nine hundred, 

 or perhaps nine hundred and thirty-three) started out; and 

 the footmen who kept up were certainly less than fifty in 

 number. There is really no question as to the American 

 numbers ; yet a variety of reasons have conspired to cause 

 them to be generally greatly overstated, even by American 

 historians. Even Phelan gives them fifteen hundred men, 

 following the ordinary accounts. At the time, many out- 

 siders supposed that all the militia who were at the Cowpens 

 fought in the battle ; but this is not asserted by any one who 

 knew the facts. General J. Watts De Peyster, in the "Mag. 

 of Am. Hist." for 1880. "The Affair at King's Mountain" 

 gives the extreme tory view. He puts the number of the 

 Americans at from thirteen "hundred to nineteen hundred. 

 His account, however, is only based on Shelby's later narra- 

 tives, told thirty years after the event, and these are all that 

 need be considered. When Shelby grew old, he greatly ex- 

 aggerated the numbers on both sides in all the fights in which 

 he had taken part. In his account of King's Mountain, he 

 speaks of Williams and the four hundred Flint Hill men 

 joining the attacking body after, not before, the nine hun- 

 dred and ten picked men started. But his earlier accounts, 

 including the official report which he signed, explicitly con- 

 tradict this. The question is thus purely as to the time of 

 the junction: as to whether it was after or before this that 

 the body of nine hundred actual fighters was picked out. 

 Shelby's later report contains the grossest self-contradic- 

 tions. Thus it enumerates the companies which fought the 

 battle in detail, the result running up several hundred more 

 than the total he gives. The early and official accounts are 



