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MAP, IMAGES and TEXT: Section 6 of 17 Who Were the Backcountry and Piedmont Patriots?
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MAP, IMAGES and TEXT: Section 6 of 17: Who Were the Backcountry and Piedmont Patriots?
OVERVIEW: There is a map and three portraits.
MAP: Map of the Southeast. DESCRIPTION: The image is a map of the English colonies along the Atlantic coast showing where the people from North Britain emigrated to. The map is focused on the states that border the Atlantic Ocean, with southern New York state on its northern border, southern Georgia its southern border, the Atlantic Ocean its eastern border, and extending as far west as to just show the eastern tips of Tennessee, Kentucky and half of Ohio. Each state is labeled with its name, and splotches of color to show where immigrants from North Britain tended to settle during the 18th century. From the top-down, there is a large spot of color over central and southwestern Pennsylvania, and a small spot in northwestern New Jersey. From Pennsylvania, a swatch of color extends southwest through parts of Maryland and West Virginia along Virginia's western border into its south-central area and into North Carolina. Two large color spots are in central North Carolina, with a small spot near the eastern coast. South Carolina's spots begin at the North Carolina border and extend over much of the state, bleeding over the southwestern border into Georgia.
CAPTION: Most immigrants from North Britain’s borderlands in the 1700s settled southern highlands areas, but some settled piedmont or low-country areas. CREDIT: Map at left based on a map by Andrew Mudryk in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, Page 637.
IMAGE 1 of 3: Isaac Shelby. DESCRIPTION: This image is the first in a series of three oval painted portraits. The first portrait is of Isaac Shelby from his later life after the American Revolution. It is a dark, almost black background. Shelby is shown from his chest up, wearing a black coat in the style of the early 19th century, with a high coat collar coming up his neck almost to his ears, and the body of the coat opened slightly to reveal his crisp white shirt and white neckerchief tied around his throat. The faint yellow edge of his vest can be seen following the edge of his opened coat. He is an older white man, with short white hair, clean shaven face, and a reddish complexion. A slight double chin is visible above his white tied neckerchief. He is turned to his right, but looking directly at the viewer with a serious expression, his left eyebrow raised either in curiosity or judgement. CAPTION: Isaac Shelby refused to stop and rest on October 6 after 36 hours of travel. He vowed to follow Ferguson into Lord Cornwallis’s lines if necessary. He later became Kentucky’s first governor. CREDIT:Kentucky Historical Society.
IMAGE 2 of 3: William Campbell. DESCRIPTION: This image is the second in a series of three oval painted portraits. This middle painting is of William Campbell how he would have appeared during the American Revolution. He is a white man in his late thirties, shown from the chest up, with a clean shaven face, sharp facial features, and long reddish brown hair pulled behind him and tied with a black string. On his head he wears a black hat with the three sides folded up into the "cocked" or "tricorn" style, a white edge running along the brim. His white shirt collar is visible above a piece of black cloth tied around his throat, and below the black cloth can be seen white ruffles from his shirt. Instead of a coat he is wearing an off-white "hunting shirt," a loose overshirt with a fringed cape that drapes over the shoulders. The front of the hunting shirt shows the fringed edge of the cape hanging down. Behind him can be seen the top of a wooded treeline in the distance, with a pale blue sky above. CAPTION: William Campbell, a Virginian, led the patriot army, chosen to command by his fellow colonels. He died in 1781, just before the battle of Yorktown. CREDIT: Robert Wilson.
IMAGE 3 of 3: John Sevier. DESCRIPTION: This image is the third in a series of three oval painted portraits. This last painting is of John Sevier at the end of the American Revolution. He is a middle-aged white man shown from the chest up, with a background that fades from dark in the left to light as you move right. He is wearing the uniform of an American general from the Revolution, a dark blue wool coat with light tan collar and edges running down the front, with large brass buttons at the corner of the collar and along the tan edges down his chest. Across the top of his shoulders are strips of gold decoration with two silver stars visible denoting his rank. As his coat is slightly open, the edges of a light tan vest can be seen with small brass buttons running along its edge, and a white ruffle from his shirt protruding out near his neck. Tied tightly around his throat is a white cloth. His face is clean shaven, with a few wrinkles along his forehead and face showing he is starting to age. He has a happy friendly expression, with rosy cheeks and a slight smile. His hair is pulled behind him, and covered in white-grey powder. CAPTION: John Sevier, widely known west of the Appalachian mountains, would be Tennessee’s first governor. This march and the ensuing battle built political fortunes. CREDIT: Tennessee State Museum, Tennessee Historical Society Collection.
RELATED TEXT: American patriot Patrick Henry exclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.” His mother called the American Revolution just more “lowland troubles.” She did not mean North America’s lowlands but the borderlands comprising the north of Ireland, the Scottish lowlands, and England’s northern counties. Most frontier people in the South were immigrants from those borderlands—which helps explain their strong reaction to Major Ferguson’s intimidating challenge. Patrick Henry descended from the same stock as the overmountain folk. They had settled much of colonial America’s backcountry in serial mass migrations—250,000 people—in the 1700s. Two-thirds came between 1765 and 1775. In fighting Ferguson’s loyalists, they replayed five generations of similar conflict in North Britain, where so-called “borderers” had reacted violently to generations of oppression—with little love lost on the Crown or on state-sponsored religion. The overmountain folk had largely remained aloof from the revolution—until Ferguson issued his ultimatum. Called ”backwater men” here, overmountain folk made up 90 percent of the southern highlands Euro-Americans, dominating the culture even more than that figure suggests. They possessed fierce pride, were stoutly self-contained, and practiced a militantly non-hierarchical form of Presbyterianism. To them, everyone was a foreigner except neighbors and kin—as defined over generations of conflict in their North Britain homelands. Arriving in America’s backcountry, they fought some of the most fierce Indian wars against some of the strongest, most war-like Indian groups. Even with the Indians subdued, the southern highlands retained their border character as a contested territory lacking established government or rule of law. The overmountain people’s heritage fit them to this anarchic environment. It suited their extended family system, warrior ethic, small-farm economy, and informal and self-enforced style of retributive justice. Writing of this American backcountry, historian David Hackett Fischer has observed that “The ethos of the North British borders came to dominate this ‘dark and bloody ground,’ partly by force of numbers, but mainly because it was a means of survival in a raw and dangerous world.” Major Ferguson’s great mistake—it proved fatal for him and disastrous to British efforts to staunch the American Revolution—was to goad this borderlands heritage of the overmountain and piedmont settlers into championing the patriot cause so decisively
Description
MAP, IMAGES and TEXT: Section 6 of 17 Who Were the Backcountry and Piedmont Patriots?
OVERVIEW: There is a map and three portraits. MAP: Map of the Southeast. DESCRIPTION: The image is a map of the English colonies along the Atlantic coast showing where the people from North Britain emigrated to. The map is focused on the states that border the Atlantic Ocean, with southern New York state on its northern border, southern Georgia its southern border, the Atlantic Ocean its eastern border, and extending as far west as to just show the eastern tips of Tennessee, Kentucky and half of Ohio. Each state is labeled with its name, and splotches of color to show where immigrants from North Britain tended to settle during the 18th century. From the top-down, there is a large spot of color over central and southwestern Pennsylvania, and a small spot in northwestern New Jersey. From Pennsylvania, a swatch of color extends southwest through parts of Maryland and West Virginia along Virginia's western border into its south-central area and into North Carolina. Two large color spots are in central North Carolina, with a small spot near the eastern coast. South Carolina's spots begin at the North Carolina border and extend over much of the state, bleeding over the southwestern border into Georgia. CAPTION: Most immigrants from North Britain’s borderlands in the 1700s settled southern highlands areas, but some settled piedmont or low-country areas. CREDIT: Map at left based on a map by Andrew Mudryk in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, Page 637. IMAGE 1 of 3: Isaac Shelby. DESCRIPTION: This image is the first in a series of three oval painted portraits. The first portrait is of Isaac Shelby from his later life after the American Revolution. It is a dark, almost black background. Shelby is shown from his chest up, wearing a black coat in the style of the early 19th century, with a high coat collar coming up his neck almost to his ears, and the body of the coat opened slightly to reveal his crisp white shirt and white neckerchief tied around his throat. The faint yellow edge of his vest can be seen following the edge of his opened coat. He is an older white man, with short white hair, clean shaven face, and a reddish complexion. A slight double chin is visible above his white tied neckerchief. He is turned to his right, but looking directly at the viewer with a serious expression, his left eyebrow raised either in curiosity or judgement. CAPTION: Isaac Shelby refused to stop and rest on October 6 after 36 hours of travel. He vowed to follow Ferguson into Lord Cornwallis’s lines if necessary. He later became Kentucky’s first governor. CREDIT:Kentucky Historical Society. IMAGE 2 of 3: William Campbell. DESCRIPTION: This image is the second in a series of three oval painted portraits. This middle painting is of William Campbell how he would have appeared during the American Revolution. He is a white man in his late thirties, shown from the chest up, with a clean shaven face, sharp facial features, and long reddish brown hair pulled behind him and tied with a black string. On his head he wears a black hat with the three sides folded up into the "cocked" or "tricorn" style, a white edge running along the brim. His white shirt collar is visible above a piece of black cloth tied around his throat, and below the black cloth can be seen white ruffles from his shirt. Instead of a coat he is wearing an off-white "hunting shirt," a loose overshirt with a fringed cape that drapes over the shoulders. The front of the hunting shirt shows the fringed edge of the cape hanging down. Behind him can be seen the top of a wooded treeline in the distance, with a pale blue sky above. CAPTION: William Campbell, a Virginian, led the patriot army, chosen to command by his fellow colonels. He died in 1781, just before the battle of Yorktown. CREDIT: Robert Wilson. IMAGE 3 of 3: John Sevier. DESCRIPTION: This image is the third in a series of three oval painted portraits. This last painting is of John Sevier at the end of the American Revolution. He is a middle-aged white man shown from the chest up, with a background that fades from dark in the left to light as you move right. He is wearing the uniform of an American general from the Revolution, a dark blue wool coat with light tan collar and edges running down the front, with large brass buttons at the corner of the collar and along the tan edges down his chest. Across the top of his shoulders are strips of gold decoration with two silver stars visible denoting his rank. As his coat is slightly open, the edges of a light tan vest can be seen with small brass buttons running along its edge, and a white ruffle from his shirt protruding out near his neck. Tied tightly around his throat is a white cloth. His face is clean shaven, with a few wrinkles along his forehead and face showing he is starting to age. He has a happy friendly expression, with rosy cheeks and a slight smile. His hair is pulled behind him, and covered in white-grey powder. CAPTION: John Sevier, widely known west of the Appalachian mountains, would be Tennessee’s first governor. This march and the ensuing battle built political fortunes. CREDIT: Tennessee State Museum, Tennessee Historical Society Collection. RELATED TEXT: American patriot Patrick Henry exclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death.” His mother called the American Revolution just more “lowland troubles.” She did not mean North America’s lowlands but the borderlands comprising the north of Ireland, the Scottish lowlands, and England’s northern counties. Most frontier people in the South were immigrants from those borderlands—which helps explain their strong reaction to Major Ferguson’s intimidating challenge. Patrick Henry descended from the same stock as the overmountain folk. They had settled much of colonial America’s backcountry in serial mass migrations—250,000 people—in the 1700s. Two-thirds came between 1765 and 1775. In fighting Ferguson’s loyalists, they replayed five generations of similar conflict in North Britain, where so-called “borderers” had reacted violently to generations of oppression—with little love lost on the Crown or on state-sponsored religion. The overmountain folk had largely remained aloof from the revolution—until Ferguson issued his ultimatum. Called ”backwater men” here, overmountain folk made up 90 percent of the southern highlands Euro-Americans, dominating the culture even more than that figure suggests. They possessed fierce pride, were stoutly self-contained, and practiced a militantly non-hierarchical form of Presbyterianism. To them, everyone was a foreigner except neighbors and kin—as defined over generations of conflict in their North Britain homelands. Arriving in America’s backcountry, they fought some of the most fierce Indian wars against some of the strongest, most war-like Indian groups. Even with the Indians subdued, the southern highlands retained their border character as a contested territory lacking established government or rule of law. The overmountain people’s heritage fit them to this anarchic environment. It suited their extended family system, warrior ethic, small-farm economy, and informal and self-enforced style of retributive justice. Writing of this American backcountry, historian David Hackett Fischer has observed that “The ethos of the North British borders came to dominate this ‘dark and bloody ground,’ partly by force of numbers, but mainly because it was a means of survival in a raw and dangerous world.” Major Ferguson’s great mistake—it proved fatal for him and disastrous to British efforts to staunch the American Revolution—was to goad this borderlands heritage of the overmountain and piedmont settlers into championing the patriot cause so decisively.
Duration
8 minutes, 21 seconds
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