In 1776, the Washington District sent a petition to the North Carolina Assembly asking to be annexed. In November of that year, North Carolina agreed, and the district was admitted to the state as Washington County. Washington County militiamen, who along with the Holston and Southwest Virginia militiamen comprised a frontier militia known as the Overmountain Men, took part in various engagements throughout the war, including the Siege of Charleston (historian Samuel Cole Williams dubbed the siege's Washington County participants the first volunteers of Tennessee) and the Battle of Musgrove Mill. In late 1780, Major Patrick Ferguson led an army of loyalists into the Appalachian Mountains to cover Cornwallis' invasion of North Carolina. Ferguson sent a message to the frontiersmen in Southwest Virginia and northeast Tennessee, ordering them to give up their arms or face destruction.