Cherokee with weapons for their raids against colonial settlers. Morgan agreed to the plan, as did General Horatio Gates, the supreme commander of colonial forces in the region. Assured that his plan would be carried out, Shelby returned home and promised to return the following spring with 300 men. On his way to Fort Ninety-Six, Morgan was attacked by Banastre Tarleton and gained a decisive victory over him at the Battle of Cowpens. Shelby later lamented the fact, that General Nathanael Greene, who relieved Gates only days after Shelby departed for home, claimed the lion's share of the credit for Cowpens, when it was Shelby's plan that had put Morgan in the position to begin with. Later wartime service and settlement in Kentucky Upon his return home, Shelby and his father were named commissioners to negotiate a treaty between colonial settlers and the Chickamauga. This service delayed his return to Greene, but in October 1781 he and Sevier led 600 riflemen to join Greene in South Carolina. Greene had thought to use Shelby's and Sevier's men to prevent Cornwallis from returning to Charleston. However, Cornwallis was defeated at the siege of Yorktown, shortly after Shelby and Sevier arrived, and Greene sent them on to join General Francis Marion on the Pee Dee River. On Marion's orders, Shelby and Colonel Hezekiah Maham captured a British fort at Fair Lawn near Moncks Corner on November 27, 1781. While still in the field, Shelby was elected to the House of Commons of the North Carolina General Assembly. He requested and was granted a leave of absence from the Army to attend the legislative session of December 1781. He was re-elected in 1782 and attended the April session of the legislature that year. In early 1783, he was chosen as a commissioner to survey preemption claims of soldiers along the Cumberland River. Shelby returned to Kentucky in April 1783, settling at Boonesborough. He married Susannah Hart on April 19, 1783; the couple had eleven children. Their eldest daughter, Sarah, married Dr. Ephraim McDowell, and the youngest daughter, Letitia, married future Kentucky secretary of state Charles Stewart Todd. On November 1, 1783, the family moved to Lincoln County, near Knob Lick, and occupied land awarded to Shelby for his military service. Shelby was named one of the first trustees of Transylvania Seminary (later Transylvania University) in 1783, and on December 1, 1787, founded the Kentucky