Each party ran true to form--Ferguson repeating Braddock's suicidal policy of opposing bayonet charges to the deadly fusillade of riflemen, who in Indian fashion were carefully posted behind trees and every shelter afforded by the natural inequalities of the ground.

In the army of the Carolina and Virginia frontiersmen, composed of independent detachments recruited from many sources and solicitous for their own individual credit, each command was directed in the battle by its own leader.

Campbell--like Cleveland, Winston, Williams, Lacey, Shelby, McDowell, Sevier, and Hambright--personally led his own division; but the nature of the fighting and the peculiarity of the terrain made it impossible for him, though the chosen commander of the expedition, actually to play that role in the battle.

The plan agreed upon in advance by the frontier leaders was simple enough--to surround and capture Ferguson's camp on the high plateau.

The more experienced Indian fighters, Sevier and Shelby, unquestionably suggested the general scheme which in any case would doubtless have been employed by the frontiersmen; it was to give the British "Indian play"-- namely to take cover everywhere and to fire from natural shelter.