cessive fatigue in hot weather, that they despaired of overtaking the Americans, and abandoned the pursuit.

Shelby, having seen the party and its prisoners beyond the reach of danger, retired across the mountains. He left the prisoners with Clarke and Williams to be carried to some place. of safety to the North, for it was not known then that there was even the appearance of a corps of Americans anywhere south of the Potomac. So great was the panic after the defeat of Gen. Gates at Camden, and the subsequent disaster of Sumter, that McDowell's whole army broke up. He, with several hundred of his followers, yielding to the cruel necessity of the unfortunate circumstances which involved the country, retired across the mountains, and scattered themselves among the hospitable settlers in the securer retreats of Nollachucky and Watauga.

1780. At this period a deep gloom hung over the cause of American Independence, and the confidence of its most steadfast friends was shaken. The reduction of Savannah, the capitulation at Charleston and the loss of the entire army under Gen. Lincoln, had depressed the hopes of the patriot Whigs, and the subsequent career of British conquest and subjugation of Georgia and South Carolina, excited serious apprehension and alarm for the eventual success of the American cause. At the urgent appeal of the patriotic Gov. Rutledge, Virginia had sent forward reinforcements under Col. Buford. His command was defeated and his men butchered by the sabres of Tarleton. At Camden a second Southern army commanded by Gen. Gates, was dispersed, captured and signally defeated by Cornwallis.

But besides these general disasters, there were other circumstances that aggravated this discouraging condition of American affairs. The finances of Congress were low; the treasuries of the States were exhausted and their credit entirely lost; a general financial distress pervaded the country; subsistence and clothing for the famishing and ill-clad troops were to be procured only by impressment; and the inability of the Government from the want of means to carry on the war, was openly admitted.

British posts were established and garrisons kept up at numerous points in the very heart of the Southern country, and detachments from the main British army were with profane impudence rioting through the land in an uninterrupted career of

outrage, aggression and conquest. Under the protection of these, the Tories were encouraged to rise against their Whig countrymen, to depredate upon their property, insult their families, seek their lives and drive them into exile upon the Western wastes. This was the general condition of American affairs in the South immediately after the defeat near Camden. Gen. Gates, endeavoring to collect together the shattered fragments of his routed army, made a short halt at Charlotte. He afterwards fell back further, and made his headquarters at Hillsboro'.

Lord Cornwallis, on the 8th of September, marched towards North Carolina, and as he passed through the most hostile and populous Whig districts he sent Tarleton and Ferguson to scour the country to his right and left. Arrived at Charlotte, and considering it to be a favorable situation for further advances, his lordship made preparation for establishing a post at that place. While he was thus engaged, the commanders of his detachments were proceeding in their respective expeditions. That of Col. Ferguson, as has been already seen, was for several weeks on his left, watching the movements of McDowell, Sevier, Shelby, Williams and Clarke. His second in command, Dupoister, had followed the mountain men in close pursuit as they retired, after the victory at Enoree, to their mountain fastnesses.

Ferguson himself, with the main body of his army, followed close upon the heels of Dupoister, determined to retake the prisoners or support him if he should overtake and engage the escaping enemy. Finding that his efforts were fruitless, Ferguson took post at Gilbertown, near the present Rutherfordton, in North Carolina. From this place he sent a most threatening message, by a paroled prisoner, that if the officers west of the mountains did not lay down their opposition to the British arms he would march his army over, burn and lay waste their country and hang their leaders. "The pursuit by Ferguson of the retiring Americans brought him so far to the left as to seem to threaten the habitations of the hardy race that occupied and lived beyond the mountains. He was approaching the lair of the lion, for many of the families of the persecuted Whigs had been deposited in this asylum."

The refugee Whigs received a hearty welcome from their hospitable but plain countrymen on Watauga and Nollachucky. The door of every cabin was thrown open and the strangers felt at once assured of kindness, sympathy and assistance. Among the neighbors of Sevier and Shelby the exiles from the Carolinas and Georgia were at home.

In this march of the riflemen to the sea we hear of no appropriation of private property, no incendiarism, no robbery, no insult to non-combatants. To the honor of the troops under Sevier and Shelby, their integrity was as little impeached as their valor. They came back to their distant homes enriched by no spoils, stained with no dishonor; enriched only by an imperishable fame, an undying renown, and an unquestionable claim to the admiration and gratitude of their countrymen and of posterity. The results of the campaigns of 1780 and 1781 sensibly affected the measures of the British Ministry, and rendered the American war unpopular in Great Britain, and on the 19th of April, 1783, peace was proclaimed in the American army by the Commanderin-chief, George Washington, precisely eight years from the first effusion of blood at Lexington. For more than that length of time the pioneers of Tennessee had been in incessant war. On the 10th of October, 1774, their youthful heroes, Shelby and Sevier, flashed their maiden swords at the battle of Kenhawa, and with little intermission thereafter were constantly engaged in guarding the settlements or attacking and invading the savage enemy. The gallant and patriotic participation of the mountain men in the Revolutionary struggle under the same men, now become leaders, has been just related. We embalm their memory and their heroic services; we bow down and do homage to their patriotism and to the majesty of their virtue. It is through them that on this centennial anniversary Tennessee claims an identity with the American Revolution and American independence. And to the Historical Society of our proud State, to the posterity of its pioneer soldiery and to their successors, I beg leave to add the injunction :

"Let no mean hope your souls enslave,

Be independent, generous, brave,

Your fathers such example gave

And such revere!"

HISTORICAL ADDRESS,

BY HON. W. T. AVERY.

DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION AT MEMPHIS, TENN. JULY 4TH, 1876.

MY FELLOW COUNTRYMEN AND COUNTRY-WOMEN, Composing this Vast concourse of people-In approaching the performance of the duty which has been assigned me to-day, I do so distrusting in no slight degree my ability to fulfill in a manner befitting the magnitude and importance of the occasion.

And it is a pleasing thought that to-day, at this hour, throughout the length and breadth of the land, everywhere in this great Republic of ours on this, our centennial day, this patriotic duty is being performed. So, then, my fellow-citizens of the county of Shelby, you will please be content with the plain recital of such facts and incidents connected with the early history of our county and our city, and the mention of those revered names closely identified with their foundation, as I shall be able crudely and imperfectly to group together in the brief space of time it will be proper to employ in the presentation of them; I hope, too, it will be borne in mind that in the short time allotted it will be impossible to embrace in this sketch many, very many of the names and incidents it would be both pleasing and profitable to record. The great difficulty which confronts me at the threshold is not the paucity of material, but from the varied historical facts, incidents and names which crowd upon the memory of your historian which to select and which to discard. I wish it was possible that the early history of every name connected with the first settlement of our county and our town could find a place in this imperfect record; knowing most of them personally as I did, it would be a labor of love to embalm their memories in historic page. But this cannot be done. To my task then. to-day is rich in the history of the past.

The spot we inhabit
It was upon these

bluffs that more than three hundred years ago, not fifty years

after that great navigator, Columbus, had lifted from the seas a hidden continent and held out to view a new and undiscovered world; that that wonderful but ill-fated Spaniard, Hernando DeSoto, discovered our great river and with the crucifix in one hand and the sword in the other, planted upon its savage banks the Christian cross. A little below our city still stand, despite the effacing fingers of time, the remains of the mounds of Chisca, which history tells us is the name of the village which DeSoto founded upon reaching the river. A little more than one hundred years thereafter, Father Marquette, a missionary, together with an explorer named Joliette, descended the Mississippi in canoes, and from the maps and charts accompanying the history of their explorations, evidently camped for a season upon these bluffs, as they passed along. A few years thereafter a French explorer named La Salle, under a commission from his Government to "perfect the discovery of the Mississippi," built a fort and established the arms of France upon the 4th Chickasaw Bluff. In 1739, Blenville, third Governor of Louisiana, and founder of New Orleans, in his campaign against the Chickasaws, established fort Assumption, and remained the winter here. In 1782 General Gayosco, from whom the bayou that runs up stream through our city, from its southern to its northern limits, takes its name, by authority of the Spanish Government occupied the bluff, and at the mouth of Wolf river established Fort Fernandina. In 1803 General, Pike took possession of the fort and planted the stars and stripes in place of of the Spanish flag. Some time thereafter General Wilkerson dismantled this fort and established Fort Pickering which stood down near the Jackson Mounds long after my remembrance, and I have often seen boys with their pocket knives picking out the bullets embedded in the timbers of the old block houses of the fort. Shelby county was named in honor of Isaac Shelby, the first Governor of Kentucky, and who, by the side of Sevier, distinguished himself at the battle of King's Mountain. In 1818, together with General Jackson, he negotiated upon this bluff an advantageous treaty with the Chickasaws, by which were ceded to the United States all the lands in West Tennessee, then known as the Chickasaw purchase.