Just as surely as fall comes, the Overmountain Victory Trail re-enactors pack their gear, grab their muskets, and for the next 10 days or so, they live in another time and place. They retrace the steps of the Overmountain Men, who in September 1780 laid down their plows, took up their guns and marched over the mountains in search of the British, who had threatened to “lay waste the countryside with fire and sword.”
They’ll do it again this week. In fact, the first of the marchers from ”Ole Virginny” will cross the Watauga River Monday just as they did in 1880. Monday night they will camp at Fort Watauga, and early Tuesday morning they will be joined by other marchers to begin their trek across the mountains.
The battle fought Oct. 7, 1780, proved to be the turning point in British Southern Campaign in the American Revolutionary War. The American Continental Army had suffered successive defeats at Charleston, Waxhaws, and Camden, S.C., in the summer of 1779. By the fall, only the volunteer militia units remained in the field to oppose the army of Cornwallis.
To recruit and equip militia loyal to the British cause, Cornwallis sent Major Patrick Ferguson into the Western Carolinas. His job was to raise a loyal militia army and suppress the remaining Patriot militia. The threat was made to the men living in the mountain settlements, including those in the Watauga River Valley, that if they did not lay their arms, he would march west and “Lay waste the countryside with fire and sword.”
The Overmountain Men did not take kindly to threats, thus they armed themselves and marched across the mountains from Sycamore Shoals in search of Ferguson and his forces. Overcoming hunger, weather, wrangling, and intrigue, the Patriots attacked and destroyed Ferguson’s army at King’s Mountain, S.C.
The Overmountain Trail marks the 14-day trek across the Appalachians to the Piedmont region of the Carolinas. Each year history buffs commemorate this historic and patriotic event.
The trail was officially designated a national historic trail in September 1980. The OVT trail stretches approximately 230 miles from Abingdon, Va., through East Tennessee, over the high mountains of North Carolina, across the Piedmont of North and South Carolina to King’s Mountain National Military Park. A 70-mile branch from Elkin, N.C., joins the main route at Morganton, N.C.
These marchers not only retrace the steps of the brave men who first marched across the mountains to fight the British, but also relive the spirit of those pioneers, who thirsted for freedom.
Freedom if it thrives will demand this same spirit of determination of our men and women of today — but tomorrow, next year, and the years to come. Hopefully, that spirit and that thirst for freedom will never die. Our hope is that the challenge of freedom will be met by each new generation of Americans.