Down the steep side of the mountain, finding their way as they plunged, went the overhill men.

They crossed the Blue Ridge at Gillespie's Gap and pushed on to Quaker Meadows, where Colonel Cleveland with 350 men swung into their column.

Along their route, the Back Country Patriots with their rifles came out from the little hamlets and the farms and joined them.
They now had an army of perhaps fifteen hundred men but no commanding officer.

Thus far, on the march, the four colonels had conferred together and agreed as to procedure; or, in reality, the influence of Sevier and Shelby, who had planned the enterprise and who seem always to have acted in unison, had swayed the others.

It would be, however, manifestly improper to go into battle without a real general.