Introduction

to J. Fetterman's 'Stinking Creek,' 1967

Introduction by Harry M. Caudi
ISBN 0-525-47266-5.

"The people who settled the southern Appalachians were of a fierce and solitary character, cherishing their freedom and independence as few people ever have. The circumstances which drew them out of Europe and their struggles in the New World made them into radicals and dissenters. They were unprepared to bear the yoke of authority and proclaimed their independence of the Crown more than a year before Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. In Mechlenburg County, North Carolina, in May, 1775, the first American "Resolutions of Separation" were adopted by a large assembly of western backwoodsmen. Five years later these frontiersmen met a British army at King's Mountain, South Carolina, and crushed it in what was probably the most resounding defeat ever sustained by a British imperial force."

Back