"History made interesting."

In a comment posted to The Posterity Project earlier this month, Michael Lynch reminded me of a book that I have had on my reading list for quite a while, but until now I have not had the chance to read it.

Originally published in 1970 and later reissued by The Overmountain Press in 1986, The Overmountain Men by Pat Alderman is a compilation of a series of booklets written by the author to cover succeeding periods of early Tennessee history. Only the first two sections were published separately (The Overmountain Men in 1958 and One Heroic Hour at King's Mountain in 1968). The remaining chapters in this book (The Cumberland Decade, The State of Franklin, and Southwest Territory) complete Alderman's single-volume compilation.

The Overmountain Men cuts a wide path through the Tennessee frontier. In his comment on this blog back in January, Michael Lynch wrote of the book:

"Alderman's work on the Tennessee frontier is very unusual. He loaded his books with illustrations of all kinds--photos of historic sites and artifacts, maps, paintings, drawings--so reading them is almost like taking a mental field trip to the places he's talking about and back in time. But the writing itself is sort of similar to the work of earlier chroniclers like Draper; very focused on prominent figures and dramatic episodes, and heavily reliant on tradition. I love flipping through The Overmountain Men because it evokes places and time periods that are special to me, but I get frustrated when Alderman mentions something I can't find elsewhere and have no hope of finding without a reference."

Such is the dilemma for many researchers of early Tennessee history. So much of what we know about that important time period has been chronicled through the oral histories and traditions handed down through generations, and later chronicled by historians of the mid to late 19th century who viewed the early American period through the lens of "Manifest Destiny" thinking.

For his part, Pat Alderman liked to describe his brand of storytelling as "history made interesting." While this approach to writing history makes for quite the page turner, it certainly would not pass the scrutiny of peer review by today's standards. As a public historian, I found several flaws with The Overmountain Men. There are no footnotes to check statements of fact (though, thankfully, there is a brief bibliography). Much of what Alderman wrote was clearly gleaned from the works of the early Tennessee writers and historians who preceded him, and there is very little, if any, original scholarship. Alderman himself acknowledges this weakness, writing that "This brief pictorial sketch of early Tennessee History is not intended as a source of research, but rather as a medium of calling attention to some of the highlights of that period."

The Overmountain Men is illustrated hagiography, and the whole book struck me as the work of a chronicler, not a historian, and yet I found myself strangely drawn to its pages. Despite its flaws as a work of "history," there is something that public historians can learn from The Overmountain Men if we first try to understand the man who wrote it.*

John B. "Pat" Alderman grew up as an entertainer, always looking to please the crowd. He was born in Dunn, North Carolina on October 31, 1901. As a youngster, he developed a love and appreciation for music. In fact, Alderman's whole family was involved in music, either by playing an instrument or singing. Religious music was the Alderman family's calling, and at age 14, Pat Alderman toured eastern North Carolina with his family performing evangelistic music.

Throughout high school and college, Alderman immersed himself into the music ministry. After two years at Wake Forest College (now Wake Forest University), Alderman left for New Orleans to further his music education at the Baptist Bible Institute. From there, he moved to Troy, Alabama, where he became the director of a local church. After a short stay in Troy, he moved to Birmingham, Alabama to attend Howard College and to direct the college glee clubs. From 1927 to 1930 Alderman attended the Chicago Conservatory of Music where he earned a master's degree in music.

By the time he earned his master's degree, the Great Depression began to take a toll on all phases of the economy, and especially music education, forcing Alderman back home to Dunn, North Carolina. Despite the bleak outlook for music educators, he managed to organize a number of community sings, and eventually landed a job as a music teacher at a Baptist orphanage in nearby Kinston, North Carolina. But just as he was getting back on his feet financially, the United States' entry into World War II brought more change to Pat Alderman's life. In 1943, he began working for the shipyards at Wilmington, North Carolina where he remained until the war's end in 1945, when he returned to Dunn for a year.

Following the war, Alderman and his wife Verna moved to the mountains of East Tennessee, where he found work as a music director at a church near Johnson City, and later took up permanent residence in Erwin, Tennessee, where he became the director of the choral music department at Unicoi County High School. This is the place where Pat Alderman's love for East Tennessee history took root.

Beginning in the 1950s Alderman developed a keen interest in Appalachian, especially East Tennessee, history and culture. It was during this time that he wrote and directed historical plays and pageants, and authored books on Appalachian history, including the works that make up The Overmountain Men compilation.

In 1952, Alderman put his skills in music and the arts to work for the local community by producing an outdoor drama, also named The Overmountain Men, which was cast almost entirely by citizens of Erwin, Tennessee. The Erwin Record newspaper published front page accounts of plans for a "Big Historical Pageant" which would "encompass one of the most rugged and dramatic epics in the birth of this -- the United States of America."

Replete with "horses, Indian fights, and celebrations in the rugged outdoor setting in the locality where this dramatic period was lived," The Overmountain Men drama was a full-scale production. Set in a 2,000-seat football stadium, with sixteen episodes in three distinct acts, and a 300-person cast including fifteen major leads, The Erwin Record noted that "the pioneer pageant of bronze and white will have a most definite thread of personal human interest that treats with the individual as well as the spread of an empire." Manifest Destiny had arrived in Unicoi County.

This image depicts a scene from Pat Alderman's historic drama, "The Overmountain Men," produced in Erwin, Tennessee in 1952. The entire cast in this production were natives of Erwin.
Image credit: The Overmountain Men by Pat Alderman.

Pat Alderman's personal journey to the mountains of East Tennessee reminds us that history should be more than a rote recitation of names, places and dates. Good history requires good storytelling. Although The Overmountain Men fails to adequately cite sources, exhibits an over-reliance on secondary literature, and treats its subject with an unusual reverence, there are moments of great storytelling within its pages. As Michael Lynch accurately points out, the book is "not the sort of thing one can rely on for research," but for what it's worth, The Overmountain Men is the kind of book that inspires further inquiry, and reminds us all that history is indeed interesting.

*EDITOR'S NOTE: I want to extend a special acknowledgment to the Archives of Appalachia, which houses the John Biggs "Pat" Alderman Papers at East Tennessee State University. A biographical sketch published on the Archives' website provided me with a great deal of information concerning Pat Alderman's life and his early influences.



 

Gordon Belt is an information professional, archives advocate, public historian, and author of The History Press book, John Sevier: Tennessee's First Hero, which examines the life of Tennessee's first governor, John Sevier, through the lens of history and memory. On The Posterity Project, Gordon offers reflections on archives, public history, and memory from his home state of Tennessee.

 

"Thus ended the war of 1782."

Looking again at how writers have viewed John Sevier through the lens of history and memory, I examine the work of anthropologist E. Raymond Evans who in 1980 wrote a detailed and scholarly account of the historical evidence, or lack thereof, surrounding the so-called "Last Battle of the American Revolution." In his article, first published in the Journal of Cherokee Studies and later reprinted in the Chattanooga Regional History Journal and The Chattanooga Times Free Press, Evans argued that the engagement, fought on September 20, 1782 on the slopes of Lookout Mountain nearly one year after Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown, was a product of legend. Described by writers and historians of the 19th century as an armed confrontation between Cherokee Indians loyal to the British and John Sevier's "Nolichucky Riflemen," the "Last Battle of the American Revolution" remains shrouded in myth and mystery.


The caption in the lower left corner of this image reads as follows: "The last battle of the American Revolution, an indecisive skirmish on the slopes of Lookout Mountain involving Chickamaugas and frontiersmen, took place in September 1782. Courtesy of the Chattanooga Convention and Visitors Bureau. Illustration by George Little."
Image credit: James W. Livingood, Chattanooga: An Illustrated History (1980).

Evans described the build-up to the alleged confrontation by stating, "on July 23, 1782 North Carolina Governor Alexander Martin ordered Charles McDowell, a North Carolina militia general, to raise five hundred men for a campaign against the Chickamauga Cherokees... Following the mission, McDowell was to act in conjunction with John Sevier, commander of the east Tennessee militia, to arrange a treaty with the Cherokees that would include substantial land cessions."

In his article, Evans presented documented evidence which revealed that John Sevier's 1782 campaign was not a battle, but rather a systematic effort to burn and vandalize homes and crops "belonging to Cherokee refugees who had no connection with the pro-British Chickamauga Cherokees." The actual campaign was an abject failure. According to Evans, letters from key participants in the campaign revealed that John Sevier's guide, a man by the name of John Watts, was loyal to the British cause as early as 1776, and led Sevier's men away from hostility. Even Governor Martin, declared:

"The expedition against the Chickamaugas hath not answered our expectations. The Indians fled on the approach of our Militia and were not to be found. Their huts were destroyed and some trifling plunder taken."

Evans argued that the early Tennessee historians John Haywood and J.G.M. Ramsey, who were among the first to record the "Last Battle of the American Revolution," relied too heavily on stories told to them by elderly veterans of the expedition, and the only contemporary account of the battle, found in the North Carolina State Papers, was largely ignored. A few years later, Evans noted, the writer James Gilmore took the accounts written by Haywood and Ramsey and embellished them further. In his book, The Rear Guard of the Revolution, Gilmore made the bold assertion that Sevier's campaign took place "on the identical spot where, eighty years later, Hooker fought his famous 'battle above the clouds.'" While this claim could never be substantiated by primary sources, the story continued to build to mythic proportions. Evans believed that there was a more sinister motive behind the effort to connect Lookout Mountain with both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

In the mid-1880s, Evans argued, Civil War Veterans conventions held significant influence over local economies, and there was keen competition among southern cities to host these veterans reunions. In the "Last Battle of the American Revolution," real estate speculators in Chattanooga saw an opportunity. If it could be documented that Chattanooga was the site of significant battles during both the American Revolution and the Civil War, it would give the city a competitive advantage over other cities in the South desiring to host conventions.

According to Evans, amateur local historians began to embrace this particular narrative, repeating what had been written before. Years later, during America's bicentennial celebration, the myth of Sevier's battle on Lookout Mountain was repeated in an effort to stake a claim to the founding of our nation. In his article, Evans noted:

"Attention was directed to this previously obscure event by the bicentennial celebrations. All during the year of 1975, a local TV station punctuated each station break with the phrase 'patriots fought the last battle of the American Revolution on the slopes of Lookout Mountain.' George Little, a prominent local artist, executed a vivid painting of the battle. The National Park Service erected a suitable marker on the site of the battle. 'Confederama,' a local tourist attraction featuring models of the Civil War battles of Chattanooga and Lookout Mountain, added a small section devoted to the 'last battle of the Revolution.' Another popular tourist spot, Reflection Riding, introduced a dramatic live re-enactment of the battle that has grown to an annual event."

Evans beleived that this "proliferation of dubious historical attractions" threatened to "smother and erase the credibility of legitimate local history." He further stated that efforts to connect the region to a national bicentennial celebration had ultimately obscured what really happened atop Lookout Mountain. Evans wrote:

"The myth of the battle on Lookout Mountain was created by a real estate dealer and a popular writer, enlarged by amateur historians and given general acclaim by a professional historian's concession to local civic groups seeking a focus for the regional bicentennial celebration."

American Revolutionary War Battle Marker atop Lookout Mountain
Image credit: The Historical Marker Database

E. Raymond Evans was not the only writer to question the claim that Lookout Mountain was the site of the "Last Battle of the American Revolution." In his 1889 book, The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt called James Gilmore's account of the battle, "pure invention," yet the legend continued to build. Although well-documented evidence suggests that John Sevier's men were never involved in any real engagement with the Cherokee atop Lookout Mountain, the mere fact that Sevier's 1782 campaign was sanctioned by the Governor of North Carolina gave many steadfast believers in John Sevier's legend cause to embrace the ongoing narrative. As recently as 2007, the John Sevier Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a historical marker which declared:

"On September 20, 1782, after several minor encounters, Sevier and his men engaged the Chickamaugas in a battle high in the palisades at the north end of Lookout Mountain. The Frontiersmen's accurate rifle fire soon overcame their foes. This was an official Revolutionary War engagement and is considered by many to be the LAST 'OVERMOUNTAIN' BATTLE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION."

In contrast to this description of the battle, the only documented account of the campaign was provided by James Sevier, the son of John Sevier, who served as a militia captain under his father. In a letter dated August 19, 1839 James Sevier recalled:

"We set out for the Indian country in the month of September, 1782. On the Highwassee river and Chiccamauga creek we destroyed all their towns, stock, corn & everything they had to support on. We then crossed a small range of mountains to the Coosa river, where we found and destroyed several towns, with all their stock, corn & provisions of every kind. The Indians eluded our march and kept out of our way in the general, although a few men, women and children were surprised and taken. We left the Coosa river for home about the last of October... Thus ended the war of 1782. We all set out for our homes without the loss of a single man."

Selected Sources:

• E. Raymond Evans. "Was the Last Battle of the American Revolution Fought on Lookout Mountain?" Journal of Cherokee Studies. Volume V, Number 1 (Spring 1980), pp. 30-40.
• John Haywood. Civil and Political History of Tennessee (1891). pp. 119-120.
• James W. Livingood. "Cherokee Warrior Fights Whites to Standstill." The Chattanooga Times, July 4, 1976.
• J.G.M. Ramsey. The Annals of Tennessee to the End of the Eighteenth Century (1853). pp. 272-273.

Gordon Belt is the Director of Public Services for the Tennessee State Library & Archives, and past president of the Society of Tennessee Archivists. On The Posterity Project, Gordon blogs about archives, local history, genealogy, and social media advocacy for archives and cultural heritage organizations. His ongoing research project, John Sevier: Tennessee's First Hero, examines the life of Tennessee's first governor, John Sevier, through the lens of history and memory.