SEVEN

Kings Mountain

WHEN BURGOYNE’S ARMY PILED ITS ARMS on the surrender field at Saratoga, the event could have been rightly celebrated by the Americans as their greatest victory of the war. Some thirty months later, and hundreds of miles to the south, the British were entitled to claim their greatest success of the war. On 12 May 1780 General Benjamin Lincoln, the same Lincoln who commanded a wing of Gates’s army at Saratoga, surrendered the city of Charleston, South Carolina, and its garrison to Sir Henry Clinton. The loss of the South’s largest city and seaport was serious enough, but what went with it was staggering—one of the major catastrophes suffered by the colonials during the whole war. The forty-four-day siege yielded to the British over 5,000 prisoners of war, 6,000 muskets, 391 cannon, and immense stores of ammunition and other supplies. The cost to the British: 76 killed and 189 wounded.

What had brought Sir Henry Clinton to Charleston and this surprising success? Clinton had succeeded Howe as commander in chief of His Majesty’s forces in America in March 1778. He assumed actual command in May upon Howe’s departure. After undergoing several setbacks in the North, Clinton found himself on the strategic defensive, though he had never given up his grand plan to take the offensive in the South. When the combined forces of American and French failed to take Savannah by siege and storm, French Admiral d’Estaing reembarked his troops and sailed back to France in October 1779. The small American force withdrew to Charleston, amid hard feelings toward the French by the Patriots and no end of jubilation among southern Loyalists, who renewed their call for a British invasion of the Carolinas.

All this good news, along with the assurance of a firm British hold on Georgia, led Clinton to decide that the time was right for undertaking his southern campaign. His plan was a bold one, and clear enough on the map. His first objective was Charleston, and following its seizure he would make that seaport his base of operations in the South. From then on it would be mainly a land campaign, with its major thrust northward across South Carolina, through North Carolina, and up into eastern Virginia. A major purpose behind all the thrusting was that steadfast aspiration that so influenced British strategic planning throughout the war: the belief that the Loyalists would come forward to reinforce British regular forces in large numbers. That illusion, as Page Smith saw it, was “that the great majority of the people of the South were loyal to the Crown and would with a little encouragement, avow that loyalty and take up arms, if necessary, to vindicate it” (A New Age Now Begins). When British commanders became disillusioned enough to see the real world, it was obvious that the Crown’s law and order could be maintained only in the areas occupied by His Majesty’s forces. When British troops passed on or were withdrawn from an area, either that quarter reverted to Patriot control or guerrilla warfare broke out anew.

Sir Henry Clinton was able to carry out the initial phase of his southern offensive without a hitch. Accompanied by Cornwallis as his second in command, Clinton sailed from New York in December 1779 with a fleet of ninety transports carrying 8,500 troops. In spite of a near-disastrous storm—the fleet was dispersed over a great expanse of the Atlantic for nearly a month and lost one transport full of Hessians, which was driven clear across the ocean to the English coast—the ships were finally reassembled and repaired at Savannah. Clinton then sailed for Charleston and began land operations in mid-February 1780. Although the operation was conducted at such a snail’s pace that the city was actually under siege only by the end of March, on 12 May Charleston was surrendered to Clinton, at tremendous cost to the Patriot cause in the South.

Clinton’s next step was the subjection of large interior regions of the Carolinas. His method was, insofar as practicable, to employ sizable detachments of Tories to do the job. Those operations resulted in raising Tory hopes and recruits, but also served to enflame what Christopher Ward describes as no less than “a civil war within the war against England” that was “marked by bitterness, violence and malevolence such as only civil wars can engender” (The War of the Revolution). The effects of the civil war on the operations of regular forces will be seen presently.

By the end of May Clinton was satisfied that things were going well enough for him to turn over operational control to Cornwallis. He sailed for New York on 5 June, leaving Cornwallis with some 8,300 men to carry on. Clinton’s concept of carrying on was to hold on to Georgia, South Carolina, and New York, and not to venture further in the immediate future. Cornwallis, however, had ideas of his own. He was to make his own broad interpretation of offensive operations that “did not jeopardize his primary mission of holding the large region of Georgia and South Carolina left . . . in British control when Clinton ventured to New York” (Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution). In effect, Cornwallis was going to embrace the old maxim that an offense is also the best defense. He envisioned, in fact, that an invasion of North Carolina would rally enough Loyalists to his banner so that he could eventually carry his offensive into Virginia, where he could link up with British forces from the North.

Cornwallis’s first moves to implement his own strategy included securing the subdued regions of Georgia and South Carolina by strengthening the critical posts at Savannah, Augusta, and Ninety-Six. Leaving his main force at Charleston, he then established a forward base at Camden, with outposts as far out as Georgetown, Cheraw, Hanging Rock, and Rocky Mount. Thus the solidly held territory of South Carolina was ringed by posts extending from Savannah in the south, northward through Augusta and Ninety-Six, and northeastward to Cheraw. The forward base at Camden was held by Lord Rawdon with 2,500 British regulars and Tory units.

The area to be secured was immense, comprising some fifteen thousand square miles, yet it had been subdued and occupied with ease. After the fall of Charleston only one Continental regiment remained in South Carolina, and what happened as it retreated northward clearly marked the end of Patriot resistance in South Carolina.

IN MID-MAY 1780 COLONEL ABRAHAM BUFORD had marched his regiment, the 3rd Virginia Continentals, within forty miles of Charleston when he received news of the surrender; he then got orders to retreat to Hillsboro, North Carolina. Cornwallis dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton in pursuit. With a task force of 270 men, Tarleton caught up with Buford’s rear guard on the twenty-ninth at a place called Waxhaws, about ten miles east of present-day Lancaster, S.C. The American commander deployed into line on open ground, and his officers ordered their men to hold their fire until the charging cavalry came within ten yards of their line. The Continentals’ single volley was too late to break the momentum of Tarleton’s charge. The American line was shattered, and simultaneously the Tory cavalry swept around both flanks. The Continentals were encircled and soon became a helpless mass, most men throwing down their arms. Buford had Ensign Cruit raise a white flag; when Tarleton himself charged at the flag, his horse was killed. Seeing him downed, a fury swept through his troopers with the word that their leader had been shot down in front of a flag of truce. Tarleton could not or would not hold back his men. They were out of control, sabering right and left, ignoring any cries for quarter. In moments the Tory infantry of the legion were into the Americans with their bayonets. The Americans by now were completely helpless, since they had grounded their muskets when the white flag was raised. In Robert Bass’s version of the affair, “the infantrymen continued to sweep over the ground, plunging their bayonets into any living American. Where several had fallen together, they used their bayonets to untangle them, in order to finish off those on the bottom” (The Green Dragoon).

In this massacre was born the American battle cry of “Tarleton’s quarter!” The “Waxhaws massacre” and “Tarleton’s quarter” flamed across the Carolinas and Georgia to become household words, and Tarleton became the hated symbol of the Crown and Tory oppression, and henceforth was known as Bloody Tarleton.

American casualties were 113 killed and 203 prisoners, but 150 of those were too badly wounded to be moved. Buford escaped on horseback, losing all six pieces of his artillery and his entire supply train. Tarleton counted his casualties at 19 killed or wounded and a loss of 31 horses. Buford’s losses, however, became more symbolic than material; they symbolized the end of organized Patriot military power in South Carolina.

THE WAXHAWS AFFAIR ALSO SIGNALED THE SPREAD of civil War. Although there were too many skirmishes to recount, at least four actions took place after Waxhaws that could be called battles. They were notable not only for blood and bitterness but further for the absence of British regular troops.

On 20 June 400 Patriots under Colonel Francis Locke attacked some 700 Tories at Ramsour’s Mill in North Carolina. Each side lost about 150 men, losses which speak clearly for the fierceness of the encounter.

At Williamson’s Plantation on 12 July a hastily organized band of Patriots surprised a Tory raiding party by attacking its camp at dawn. Out of 115 Tories in the camp only 24 escaped; of the remainder, 30 to 40 were killed and 50 wounded. The attacking Patriots lost one man killed out of about 250 who actually made the attack.

The victory at Williamson’s Plantation encouraged many of the rebels to rally to the side of famed Thomas Sumter, the “Carolina Gamecock,” who was building up a force in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Sumter decided to move against the fortified post at Rocky Mount, South Carolina, held by the Tory Lieutenant Colonel Turnbull with some 150 New York Volunteers and a detachment of South Carolina Tories. Turnbull had been warned of Sumter’s approach and was prepared. Three successive assaults were beaten back by the heavy fire of the defenders. After unsuccessful attempts to burn out the Tories, Sumter had to call it quits and withdraw to Land’s Ford on the Catawba River. Losses were equally light on both sides, each losing about fourteen killed or wounded.

Sumter had not earned the title of Gamecock by sitting around camp fires; four days after Rocky Mount, he left Land’s Ford to attack the heavily garrisoned outpost at Hanging Rock, about twelve miles east of Rocky Mount. Sumter had mustered 500 North Carolina militia and about 300 South Carolinians; all could be considered mounted infantry. Sumter divided his force into three columns, each with the mission of attacking one of the Tory camps. Their guides went astray, and all three divisions ended up on the front and flank of the North Carolinians on the Tory left. Sumter’s men drove on but were stopped by heavy fire from the legionaries and rangers of the enemy center. The Tory force commander, Major Garden, seeing his chance, took a detachment and fell upon Sumter’s flank. The surprised Americans rallied and, with amazing fierceness for militia, retaliated with such firepower that Tory casualties mounted to the point where Garden’s men fled or surrendered.

The main Tory camp and supply center were now wide open, and the triumphant victors went hog wild. Stores of rum were uncovered and gulped down, and while Sumter’s disorganized men were getting drunk and out of control, Garden formed some rallied men into a hollow square with two cannon on its corners and prepared to continue the fight. Garden was opposed by Major William Davie, a noted partisan leader. Davie had kept his “dragoons” under control and away from the looting. In the meantime Sumter had succeeded in drawing about 200 of his men from the looted camp. While so engaged he was threatened by two companies of legion cavalry who had come to join the fight. Davie led a charge against the new threat and drove the Tory cavalry out of sight. At this point, with the enemy square still standing fast, Sumter decided that further offensive action was out of the question and offered a general withdrawal. Outside of the fiasco in the looted camp, the battle had been fought with firmness and courage on both sides. The Tory losses were especially heavy: nearly 200 killed and wounded. The Patriots claimed to have suffered casualties of only 12 killed and 41 wounded, which is unlikely.

The Battle of Hanging Rock was the largest and last of the civil war actions after the fall of Charleston. Now, in early August 1780, new Patriot forces were entering the arena, forces not composed of partisans or irregulars.

WHEN SIR HENRY CLINTON WAS MAKING UP HIS MIND whether to stay on in Charleston or leave and turn the southern command over to Cornwallis, his decision was hastened by a bit of news: Comte de Rochambeau had left France for America carrying a large force of French troops bound for New England. The news prompted Sir Henry’s departure for New York on 5 June 1780. What was bad news for Clinton was, of course, good news for Congress and Washington. The latter had already sent a small force south under Major General Baron de Kalb in April 1780 to give “further succor to the Southern States.” De Kalb’s little army consisted of two brigades: the first comprising four regiments of Maryland Continentals; the second, three Maryland regiments and the Delaware regiment, all Continentals. The 1st Continental Artillery Regiment of eighteen guns marched in support. The force totaled 1,400 rank and file.

De Kalb was marching into North Carolina when he learned of Charleston’s surrender; the news had traveled with unaccountable slowness and reached de Kalb five weeks after the fact. Tough professional that he was, de Kalb refused to be disheartened. After several forward moves southward, he set up camp at Buffalo Ford, and from this base tried to raise reinforcements of militia, which should have become available. The hoped-for volunteers did not show up. Militia Major General Caswell, with a strong force of North Carolina militia, preferred to chase Tories elsewhere. Virginia militia led by Stevens and Porterfield also made themselves unavailable. While at Buffalo Ford, de Kalb got word of Horatio Gates’s appointment to command of the Southern Department. Washington’s man for the job had been Nathanael Greene; but Congress, with characteristic perversity, preferred the hero of Saratoga. The hero arrived at de Kalb’s new camp on Deep River on 25 July and assumed command of an army short of clothing as well as discipline. Through no fault of de Kalb’s, the army was exhausted and in bad need of all sorts of necessities, including rations and rum.

Gates immediately went on the offensive, his objective no less than the seizure of that tantalizing forward base of Cornwallis’s at Camden, with all its promise of life-restoring stores. Rejecting the route of advance proposed by de Kalb and his commanders, which would have taken the army through a relatively fertile region where most of the locals favored the Patriot cause, Gates ordered a more direct march through a desolate area dominated by swamps, pine barrens, and Tory sympathizers. Gates also turned down the request of Colonels William Washington and Anthony White for aid in recruiting horsemen, aid which would have been repaid handsomely if the two colonels had joined Gates’s army and furnished him with a reconnaissance and security force.

The army marched on 27 July, only two days after Gates’s arrival, and without the rations and rum which the soldiers had been promised. The hungry troops made 120 miles in two weeks, setting no records at an average of less than 9 miles a day. The promised rations never did catch up, so Gates promised them corn when they reached the Pee Dee River. “He was right, but the corn was still green, and soldiers who had been getting sick on green peaches now got sick on green corn instead” (Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution). Across the Pee Dee, Gates was joined on 3 August by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Porterfield with a small band of militia, and the yet-to-be-famous Colonel Francis Marion with twenty of his men.

Two days later Gates got a message from General Richard Caswell that he was about to attack a British outpost at Lynches Creek. When Caswell, with an estimated 2,100 men, advanced against the outpost, his “army” was thrown into disorder by a British surprise attack. The attack was actually a feint made by Lord Rawdon, commanding Cornwallis’s forces based on Camden. After his successful feint, Rawdon withdrew his detachment to Little Lynches Creek, where he occupied a strong position blocking the route to Camden.

On 6 August Gates was finally joined by Caswell, “adding 2,100 to his grand army, but greatly weakening it as the event proved” (Ward, War of the American Revolution). The combined forces moved forward toward Little Lynches Creek, bumping into Rawdon’s blocking force there on 11 August. De Kalb proposed to march up Little Lynches Creek at night, cross it, and turn the British out of their position while continuing to advance on Camden. Gates rejected the plan and instead tried a clumsy envelopment of the British left in broad daylight. Rawdon threw out a screening force of Tarleton’s legion and quietly pulled back to Camden.

Rawdon was met in Camden by Cornwallis on 13 August. What Cornwallis found was anything but cheering. His enemy’s estimated strength was 7,000, which Mark Boatner says was “an understandable error inasmuch as Gates himself was under the same misapprehension.” Cornwallis’s own strength was reported to him at 2,117 rank and file present for duty, with a dismaying 800 sick in the Camden field hospital. Of the effective 2,117, about 1,500 were regulars and the rest were dependable Tory units such as Tarleton’s legion, the Volunteers of Ireland, and two North Carolina regiments. Considering the estimated adverse odds of more than three to one, a lesser general would have fallen back on Charleston. Not so Charles Cornwallis; he would not abandon his sick in Camden. But even if they had not been there, he would still have taken the initiative and attacked his enemy. This he proceeded to do, and advanced northward to meet the Hero of Saratoga.

ON 14 AUGUST 1780, THE DAY AFTER CORNWALLIS’S ARRIVAL at Camden, Gates’s army at Rugeley’s Mill received its last reinforcement, the 700 Virginia militia of General Edward Stevens. On that date Gates’s strength returns included de Kalb’s 900 Maryland and Delaware Continentals,1 Caswell’s 1,800 North Carolina militia, Armand’s command (formerly Pulaski’s legion) of 120, Porterfield’s 100 Virginia light infantry, about 70 volunteer cavalry, and 106 guns in Colonel Harrison’s Virginia artillery. In all, counting some “miscellaneous” attachments, Gates’s total would have come to about 4,100. Yet when Otho Williams, Gates’s adjutant general, showed him the morning report strength of 3,052 fit for duty, Gates, still believing he had over twice that many men, didn’t want to be confused with facts. He brushed off Williams with “there are enough for our purpose.”

With his “purpose” in mind, Gates, in a command conference on 15 August, read his operation order for an attack that night to his commanders. It would require them to maneuver over wooded sand hills and scattered swamps with an army of which over two-thirds were green militia and whose major elements had never operated together.

Before the troops fell in for the march, a full ration of meat and corn meal was to be issued. There was, however, no rum, a customary stimulant before going into action. In its stead, Gates had a gill of molasses from the hospital supplies issued to each soldier. “The men ate voraciously of half-cooked meat and half-baked bread with a dessert of corn meal mush mixed with the molasses.” A sergeant-major described the results of the solution: “Instead of enlivening our spirits . . . it served to purge us . . . [and, Colonel Otho Williams added] the men were of necessity breaking the ranks all night and were certainly much debilitated before the action commenced in the morning” (Ward, War of the American Revolution).

WITH THESE UNHAPPY AUGURIES GATES’S TROOPS began their march as scheduled, at 10:00 P.M. on 15 August. The axis of advance was southward on the main road from Rugeley’s Mill to Camden. Colonel Armand’s horsemen preceded the advance, despite his warning to Gates that a cavalry unit was not right for the mission because it would be too noisy on the march and could not operate effectively in the woods. It was followed by Armstrong’s and Porterfield’s militia, who were followed by the advance guard of the Continentals. There was only starlight to see by; it was of no help to either the files slogging through sand and swamps or the column on the main road hemmed in by the dark pine woods.

About 2:30 A.M. on the sixteenth the march was brought to an abrupt halt by the sound of firing up ahead around Armand’s troops. They had run smack into the cavalry and infantry of Tarleton’s legion. Although the British advance party had only twenty cavalrymen and an equal number of legion infantry, Tarleton acted so quickly in attacking Armand’s troops that they wheeled away, spreading confusion among the Continentals’ advance guard. There was a firefight of sorts, which broke off in about fifteen minutes, since neither side had anything to gain by blazing away in the dark.

Cornwallis had marched north from Camden at 10:00 P.M. to carry out his decision to attack Gates. The opposing forces had met on the Rugeley’s Mill–Camden road, bounded in this area by open pine forest, which in turn was flanked on each side by extensive swamps. Although the Americans had the minor advantage of some slightly higher ground, the open forest to their rear widened out so that their flanks would be exposed if they were driven back. Both sides deployed with their fronts parallel, in line perpendicular to the road. On the British side, Lieutenant Colonel Webster led Cornwallis’s right wing, that is, all the units on the east side of the road. Lord Rawdon commanded the left wing, west of the road. Cornwallis’s second line, support or reserve as the situation called for, was composed of the 71st Highlanders astride the road. Behind them Tarleton’s legion was held in reserve, in column because of the terrain. The British artillery had only four guns—two six-pounders and two three-pounders—positioned in front of the center.

Gates’s army was also in two lines. Gist’s brigade of Continentals was on the right, Caswell’s North Carolina militia was in the center, and Stevens’s Virginia militia was on the left, backed up by Armand’s legion. The reserve was Smallwood’s brigade of Maryland Continentals. The American artillery was also positioned in front of the army’s center. De Kalb commanded the right wing, that is, the troops west of the road. Gates took up his own position about 600 yards behind the front line.

When artillery Captain Anthony Singleton told Otho Williams, Gates’s adjutant general, that he saw enemy infantry advancing in line of columns at several hundred yards distance, Williams told him to open fire. The adjutant general then rode back to report to Gates. When Gates appeared to be in no hurry to take any action, Williams recommended that Stevens advance and attack the enemy when they would be most vulnerable, in the act of deploying from columns into lines. According to Christopher Ward, Gates answered: “Sir, that’s right. Let it be done.” It was the last order he gave in that battle or in any other to the end of the war.

Williams had skirmishers thrown out to cover the advance of Stevens’s Virginians. Just before the Virginia militia were ready to advance, Cornwallis ordered Webster to attack the American left. The sight of ordered ranks coming at them with field music playing, drums beating the charge, regimental colors flying, and lines of glittering bayonets leveled at charge bayonet was all too much for the Virginia militia. Before the first British assault reached them, Stevens’s units broke and fled, throwing aside their muskets as they ran. Caswell’s North Carolina militia needed no prompting to follow their Virginia comrades and also took off smartly for the rear. Gates and Caswell tried to rally the fleeing men, but “they ran like a torrent, dashing past the officers and . . . spread through the woods in every direction.”

While the American left was breaking, Rawdon advanced with his wing. On the east side of the road Gist’s Continentals stood their ground, along with some North Carolina militia who had stayed to fight. By now there was so much smoke and dust obscuring the battlefield that de Kalb and his wing didn’t yet know that they were having to fight the whole battle. De Kalb went back to bring up Smallwood’s Maryland brigade in person, its commander having been carried away by the fugitives.

Cornwallis was as firmly in command of his battle as Gates was not. The British commander’s quick eye saw the opportunity to turn Webster’s regulars against the reserve brigade. The Marylanders fought back, were twice driven back and twice rallied, then were finally overcome and driven from the field.

It was Gist’s Maryland and Delaware Continentals who fought the rest of the battle—and fought it well indeed. They took on the whole of Rawdon’s wing, 1,000 to the American 600, and threw them back. Counterattacks followed each British thrust for almost an hour; at one point they broke through attacking British units to snatch 50 prisoners at bayonet point. In the midst of this fierce action de Kalb and Gist kept up the fight, still unaware that their wing was doing all the fighting. They had received no orders from Gates, and so saw no reason to save their men by falling back.

Even after de Kalb’s horse had been shot under him and his head laid open with a saber cut, he refused to quit. But “Cornwallis, as vigilant as Gates was not, had now thrown his entire force on these last remaining foemen, 2,000 men [by this time] no more than 600. Overwhelmed by numbers that almost surrounded him, de Kalb called for the bayonet again. . . . But ball after ball had struck their heroic leader . . . yet the old lion had it in him to cut down a British soldier, whose bayonet was at his breast. That was his last stroke. Bleeding from eleven wounds, he fell” (Ward, War of the American Revolution).2

With de Kalb’s fall and the breakup of Gist’s command, the Battle of Camden was over. A handful of Maryland and Delaware officers rounded up about sixty men; this was the only organized group in the retreat. Gates’s entire army—those who were not casualties or captured—had scattered and fled, most into the swamps, others dashing madly toward Rugeley’s Mill. Cornwallis unleashed Tarleton, whose pursuit lasted for more than twenty miles and came to a halt only because the horses gave out. On his way he picked off Gates’s entire baggage train, which was being looted by American fugitives.

CAMDEN WAS SOON BEING PROCLAIMED PUBLICLY as the worst defeat ever to be suffered by an American army. After such a debacle it is not surprising that American losses were not accurately reported and that estimates vary. Carrington estimates 1,000 killed and wounded; the figure does not include captured or missing. Otho Williams also estimated that 2,000 out of the army’s 3,000, or two-thirds of the force, fled without firing a shot. Ward’s conservative total come to 650 Americans killed or captured, and leaves the total wounded to be included among the captured. Matériel losses included 150 wagons loaded with ammunition and supplies, most regimental colors, and seven cannons. Much more significant, however, is the fact that Gates’s army was completely dispersed, never to be reformed as such again. Cornwallis’s losses were 69 killed, 285 wounded, and 11 missing.

So much for numbers; one still must account for the American army’s commanding general. Horatio Gates, along with Smallwood and Caswell, had been swept from the field by the torrent of fugitives as far as Rugeley’s Mill. Apparently it was in that vicinity that he began his famous ride. By nightfall he had reached Charlotte, a distance of almost 60 miles. In Page Smith’s words, “The bubble [of Saratoga fame] was pricked. The flight made him an object of almost universal scorn and ridicule. Had he escaped with Gist, or taken refuge at Hanging Rock . . . or found his way to join Sumter’s force across the Wateree River, he might have survived the defeat and been given another opportunity to display his ineptness as a military leader. But it was the sixty-mile flight that finished him” (A New Age Now Begins).

Continuing his northward hegira, mounted on a relay of horses, Gates reached Hillsboro, North Carolina, on 19 August, a total ride of 180 miles, leading Alexander Hamilton to comment in a letter to James Duane: “But was there ever an instance of a general running away, as Gates has done, from his whole army? And was there ever so precipitous a flight? One hundred and eighty miles in three days and a half. It does admirable credit to the activity of a man at his time of life [age fifty-two]. But it disgraces the general and the soldier.”

AFTER CLINTON HAD TAKEN LEAVE OF CORNWALLIS, the difference in their strategical concepts was beginning to show. In order to put his basic strategy into action, Cornwallis secured permission to communicate directly with the London officials who could authorize his strategy. Clinton agreed to the arrangement, which left Cornwallis free to operate as he wished. First, he would consolidate his hold on the coastal and interior regions of South Carolina and eastern Georgia in order to maintain secure bases from which to operate. Then he would thrust to the north and northeast through North Carolina, gathering Loyalist support and recruits as he advanced. After that he planned to move into Virginia to link up with British forces from the North and thus complete his inferred mission of bringing the South, from Georgia to Maryland, solidly under the Crown.

Following his triumph at Camden, Cornwallis planned to advance his main force up the Camden-Charlotte-Salisbury axis. By so doing he expected to crush rebel resistance along that line while his regular forces provided the bases to which Loyalist elements would rally. The rallying was expected to come mainly from two separate regions where the Loyalists were, actually or potentially, the strongest: in the east an area centered around Cross Creek (present-day Fayetteville), about 125 miles east of Charlotte; and in the west a much larger area lying roughly between the Broad and Little Catawba rivers. Cornwallis reasoned that once the two regions were under his control, the task of subduing North Carolina would be fait accompli.

The British establishment of a system of bases and outposts in Georgia and South Carolina has already been described. In support of the system Cornwallis sent out several detachments with the mission of rallying Loyalist recruits to his banner. By far the most active and successful were the Tory forces raised and trained by Major Patrick Ferguson. Shortly after the fall of Charleston, that promising professional had been appointed by Sir Henry Clinton to the post of inspector of militia in the southern provinces. The imposing title belied the real nature of the job: the raising and transforming of Loyalist recruits into trained units capable of subjugating and controlling provincial regions and fighting alongside British regular forces as dependable troops.

While Cornwallis was still in Charleston, Ferguson had set up a rallying post at his camp on Little River, a few miles east of Lieutenant Colonel Balfour’s post at Ninety-Six, and raised a force of 4,000 Tories, which he organized into seven regiments. By the end of June Ferguson had already begun to move into the up-country north of Ninety-Six, sending out detachments in all directions to rally more Tories to the Crown. Rallying and pacification were closer to Ferguson’s nature than the bloodshed and terror that accompanied Tarleton’s raids. Many of Ferguson’s recruits, however, were Loyalists who were fiercely antagonistic to any Patriots and would stop at nothing when they were on their own and riding roughshod over their former neighbors. This kind of Tory raiding party, operating beyond Ferguson’s personal control, became known for their plundering of “cattle, horses, beds, wearing apparel, bee-gums, and vegetables of all kinds—even wresting the rings from the fingers of the females” (Dykeman, With Fire and Sword). When foraging parties were through plundering, it was not uncommon to turn the horses into grain fields to complete the depredation. Hence it was not surprising that Carolinians were aroused to firmer and firmer resistance, as Ferguson was to learn the hard way.

By no means was the subjugation of the up-country, or any other area within a radius of seventy-five miles from Ninety-Six, an unopposed effort. While the Patriot partisans of the low-country had their leaders—Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens—the up-country didn’t lack its own. Colonel Charles McDowell was the most noted leader of North Carolina Patriot militia at the time. After Charleston’s surrender and the beginning of Ferguson’s forays, McDowell needed reinforcements to carry out his raids against the Tories and British outposts. He sent a message requesting help to Colonel Isaac Shelby, one of the two famed leaders of the “over-mountain” men. Shelby responded by leading 200 mounted riflemen to join McDowell on the Broad River. They were joined by Colonel Elijah Clarke with a force of Georgia militia. During the three-month interval between Charleston’s fall and the Battle of Camden, these three leaders and their mounted men combined at various times to attack Tory and British posts in three major actions. At Thicketty Fort on 30 July, Shelby and Clarke succeeded in forcing the surrender of the fort’s garrison without firing a shot. Exhilarated by their easy victory, they went after foragers from one of Ferguson’s forces. On 8 August, at Cedar Spring, the British won the field but were unable to recapture prisoners the Patriots had taken at the beginning of the fight.

Ten days later, on 18 August, Shelby and Clarke teamed up with Colonel James Williams to make a surprise attack on the Tories at Musgrove’s Mill, far to the rear of Ferguson’s main force. The surprise failed, and the attackers had to take up a defensive position of their own. They repulsed the Tory counterattack, and dealt the Tories severe losses, to the tune of sixty-three killed, ninety wounded, and seventy prisoners. The Patriots lost only four killed and eight wounded. It was a stunning little victory, and such a morale builder that the leaders planned a really daring coup: an all-out attack on Ninety-Six, about thirty miles away. The men were already mounting up for the ride when the news came of Gates’s disaster at Camden two days before.

They stayed mounted and headed north for the hills. Ferguson, who had swift news of the Patriot retreat, set out in hot pursuit. At one time he was only thirty minutes behind the tail riders when he was halted near Fair Forest by a message from Cornwallis ordering him to report to his commander at Camden.

At British headquarters Ferguson was briefed on Cornwallis’s strategy for advancing into North Carolina, and how he expected to raise Tory forces from east to west to rally around his central axis—Charlotte to Salisbury—and use them to control the rest of the state. Ferguson was then given his mission: to act independently in making a western sweep, in other words, to serve as Cornwallis’s left wing in the subjection of rebels and the raising of Tory troops. Since Ferguson was already pursuing the most dangerous Patriot force in the area, his mission further authorized him to proceed as far north as Gilbert Town (present-day Rutherfordton) to raise sufficient Tory forces to control the region. Upon completion of his mission, when British control was ensured and large numbers of recruits had rallied to Ferguson, he was to rejoin Cornwallis’s army with his force in the vicinity of Charlotte.

Cornwallis had chosen Ferguson for the job because he needed a keen professional who could act in independent command. Ferguson was born to a family of landed gentry in Aberdeenshire in 1744. The life of the soldier attracted him from childhood. He attended a London military academy, and at age fourteen had a commission purchased for him as a cornet in the Scots Greys (then the Royal North Irish Dragoons). In 1768 he bought a captaincy and served with the 70th Foot in the West Indies during the subjugation of a slave rising.

Back in England Ferguson became obsessed with the idea of a breech-loading rifle that would not only be as accurate as the famed American frontier rifle but would have a far greater rate of fire than that muzzle-loading flintlock. The Ferguson rifle was years ahead of its time. Its inventor demonstrated its capabilities in tests where he fired it six times a minute, reloading from the prone position (it was necessary to stand to load the muzzle-loading flintlock). Yet, like so many inventions that have been too far in advance of their time, Ferguson’s failed to impress generals like Sir William Howe, and only about 200 were ever manufactured.

Ferguson arrived in America with permission to raise a detachment of rangers. It was his rangers that were scouting in advance of Knyphausen’s march to Chadd’s Ford before the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777. Ferguson took a bad wound in that battle; a bullet shattered his elbow, permanently crippling his right arm. Captain Ferguson was next heard from a year later when he led a successful raid on Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, in October 1778. In October 1779 he was appointed major in the 71st Highlanders, and he accompanied Clinton’s expedition to Charleston in 1780. He took part with Tarleton in his victory over the Americans at Monck’s Corner on 14 April 1780. After that operation Ferguson was glad to be separated from Tarleton, for he disapproved strongly of that cavalryman’s ruthless methods against both civilians and the military.

While Cornwallis had not hesitated in assigning Ferguson his mission of making the western sweep, he had some reservations. Cornwallis probably felt, as Henry Lumpkin observed, that “he clearly was highly intelligent and a fine combat officer, but his commander feared Ferguson’s willful, impulsive, and somewhat erratic personality. He was soft spoken, with a personal magnetism that drew people to him. Oddly enough, he got along well with frontier Americans, even though he considered them his social inferiors. He would sit down and talk for hours with farmers whose loyalty to the Crown had begun to waver and argue his case with humor, comprehension, and sympathy” (From Savannah to Yorktown). Yet, as we will see, the image he finally projected to the Patriots of the frontier through his proclamations and the acts of his Tory troops was that of a monster in human form who would not hesitate to burn and slay at will.

ISAAC SHELBY’S AND CHARLES MCDOWELL’S MEN had been in the field for months, raiding and fighting actions such as those at Cedar Spring and Musgrove’s Mill. Now they were exhausted and hungry, and it was time to go home and get some rest. They scattered and faded into the hills, many disappearing over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Such a dispersal after a series of forays was not at all uncommon, but it served to deceive Ferguson into believing that his pacification operations were beginning to succeed.

On 7 September Ferguson invaded North Carolina and occupied Gilbert Town. Many of the locals appeared to rally to him and came to take the oath of allegiance to the Crown. It may not have occurred to Ferguson that most of them took the oath only to protect their property from his Tory raiders. Three days later, on 10 September, Ferguson left with his troops in the hope of intercepting Elijah Clarke, who was supposed to be withdrawing northward after an unsuccessful attempt to capture Augusta. He failed to find Clarke and returned to encamp at Old Fort, twenty-two miles northwest of Gilbert Town. Things appeared to be quiet throughout the area. Beyond the Blue Ridge, however, and unknown to Ferguson, things were stirring.

Ferguson himself was the unwitting cause of the activity. Just before leaving on 10 September he had paroled Samuel Phillips, one of the prisoners taken at Musgrove’s Mill, and sent him with a message to Colonel Shelby. The message was in effect an ultimatum stating that if Shelby and other rebels of his ilk did not “desist from their opposition to the British arms and take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leader, and lay their country waste with fire and sword” (Dykeman, With Fire and Sword). Seldom did a message have a more opposite effect from that intended. Far from being cowed by Ferguson’s threats, the “fire and sword proclamation” was circulated rapidly and widely among the over-mountain men, who had already decided that the best way to protect their homes and families was to get Ferguson before he could get them. To transform that decision into action, the partisan leaders had sent out the call for volunteers on both sides of the Blue Ridge. Ferguson’s ultimatum now served to turn that call into action.

No doubt carrying Ferguson’s message in his pocket, Isaac Shelby rode to meet with Colonel John Sevier, known across the frontier as “Nolichucky Jack,” the Indian fighter whose home was on the Nolichucky River, west of the mountains. The two completed their plans to raise a powerful “posse” to go after Ferguson. To cover the expenses involved, the two pledged themselves to make good the money taken out of the public treasury. Their final call for armed men went out to famous leaders such as Colonel William Campbell of Virginia and Colonels Charles McDowell and Benjamin Cleveland, whose men rode on both sides of the Carolinas’ border. The call named the rendezvous point as Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River, near present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee.

What kind of men did they expect to answer the call? The term over-mountain men was applied loosely to the colonists who had settled on the western side of the Blue Ridge in what is now eastern Tennessee. They were mostly North Carolinians of Scotch-Irish descent who were moving westward “in the same way that the Virginians who followed Boone crossed the mountain into Kentucky” (Fisher, The Struggle for American Independence). They were also called back water men—a term used by Ferguson—because they chose to settle along the upper waters of the Watauga, Holston, and Nolichucky rivers. The over-mountain men were by no means the only, or even the principal, source of the frontier manpower that rode against Ferguson. Out of the 1,800 who joined up, Shelby’s and Sevier’s men counted as only the initial 480. What the over-mountain men should be given credit for is forming the nucleus of the volunteer force that fought at Kings Mountain.

Over-mountain men or not, all of the Patriot fighters were a tough lot. In his Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States, Light-Horse Harry Lee later referred to them as “a hardy race of men, who were familiar with the horse and rifle, were stout, active, patient under privation, and brave. Irregular in their movements [as opposed to the marches and maneuvers of regular units], and unaccustomed to restraint, they delighted in the fury of action, but pined under the servitude and inactivity of camp.”

They came to Sycamore Shoals, many with their families, but each with horse and rifle. That weapon was one of the most prized possessions of the frontiersman. Most of them carried the so-called Kentucky, or long rifle, of the type made by Jacob Dickert of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.3 The caliber was usually .50, but could vary from .35 to .60, and it had a barrel from thirty-six to forty-eight inches long with a rifling twist of about one turn in forty-eight. It was called a long rifle because its overall length varied between fifty and sixty inches. It was a muzzle-loading flintlock with surprising accuracy up to about 300 yards. It fired a round lead ball which was rammed home with a greased patch, thus making the ball fit tightly against the rifling, which gave the ball its spin; the spin in turn gave the ball its velocity and accuracy. The rifle had the disadvantage of slowness in loading—a trained soldier with his musket could fire from three to five rounds while the rifleman was firing one—and the fact that it could not be fitted with a bayonet. Those disadvantages, however, meant little to the backwoodsman, because the rifle was ideal for its purposes: hunting and Indian fighting. For hand-to-hand combat the frontiersman had learned from the Indians to carry tomahawk or knife.

Of the more than 1,000 mounted riflemen who assembled at Sycamore Shoals on 25 September, Shelby and Sevier brought 240 each. Colonel William Campbell, a towering, red-haired Scot carrying the family’s Highland broadsword, came in with 400 Virginians. Colonel Charles McDowell arrived with 160 of his North Carolinians. The majority of those present brought their womenfolk and children, who came to see fathers, sons, or brothers off to the war. The gathering had a gala air. As Wilma Dykeman recounts: “The men talked and planned and prepared. And the women cooked, made last-minute patches or polishings on clothing or equipment, and they talked and worried over the dangers” (With Fire and Sword). Finally, on the early morning of 26 September, these deeply religious people heard the Reverend Samuel Doak say the prayer for the departing expedition. He compared their cause to that of Gideon’s men in the Bible going forth to fight the Midianites. Doak ended with a ringing battle cry, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” It was fitting, and it was remembered.

The long column that rode out of Sycamore Shoals was, in Dykeman’s words, “an army without uniforms. Many of their hunting shirts were of fringed buckskin while others were of homespun linsey-woolsey, ‘clumsily made, blouse fashion, reaching to the knees and gathered up, tied around the waist.’ Their breeches and gaiters were of rough, home-dyed cloth. Long hair was tied back in a queue beneath their wide-brimmed hats. They were an army little encumbered with baggage, unaccompanied by a supply train. Each man had a blanket, a cup, and ‘a wallet of provisions’ . . . principally of parched corn.” There were, of course, rifles, powder horns, and “possible bags” with hunting necessaries.

The little army had to make a ninety-mile march to reach its next rendezvous at Quaker Meadows, near present-day Morganton, N.C. There were delays—some expected, some not. Slowed down at first by the cattle they were driving as meat on the hoof, they made only twenty miles the first day. On the second they had trouble with a stampede, which was irksome enough to cause the men to slaughter a few cattle for a portable supply of beef, then abandon the remainder to valley farmers. The column went on to climb the gap between Yellow and Roan mountains, where they encountered snow “shoe-top deep.” When they encamped on the plateau beyond the gap, they found that two of Sevier’s men were missing—probably deserters who had gone to alert Ferguson of the frontiersmen’s approach.

The deserters raised another problem: in order to attack Ferguson before he could get reinforcements from Cornwallis, they would have to speed up their march. Yet they couldn’t use the trail the deserters knew, so they must select another that would still give them time to pick up the back-country militia en route to join them. They decided on one that would allow a faster march, and Nolichucky Jack Sevier and Shelby led off. They crossed the Blue Ridge at Gillespie’s Gap and rode on to arrive at Quaker Meadows on 30 September. There, at McDowell’s Plantation, their numbers were increased to 1,400 by North and South Carolina reinforcements.

Here were the leaders who would march to catch up with and attack Ferguson. Besides Shelby and Sevier, the expedition had already been joined by Colonel William Campbell, the six-foot-six giant who was an Indian fighter and a born leader. He had fought in Lord Dunmore’s War (1774), and had married Patrick Henry’s sister. In Hank Messick’s summation,

Other leaders who gathered on this venture were Joseph McDowell, a Virginian who had forsaken the easy life to move to the Carolina Piedmont, and Benjamin Cleveland, another Virginian, who had moved west and built his reputation as an Indian fighter. These would soon be joined by other outstanding fighters: James Williams, a longtime Tory hater who had served as a delegate to the provincial legislature of South Carolina; William Chronicle, a veteran of the 1780 skirmishes and a resident of the south fork of the Catawba; Joseph Winston, a leather-tough frontiersman who had been fighting Indians since he was 17; and Edward Lacey, a one-time Pennsylvanian who at the age of 13 had served with Edward Braddock’s army in the Indian campaigns. (King’s Mountain)

The senior officer, Colonel Charles McDowell, brother of Joseph McDowell, was a respected fighter who had served in Rutherford’s campaign against the Cherokees.

The leaders were of the opinion that a force the size of theirs needed a general—or at least a commander of reputation who, coming from outside, would not arouse jealousies among the men from different localities. They sent Charles McDowell to General Gates to ask him to assign someone like Daniel Morgan or William Davidson to the job. Gates didn’t answer the request, so they elected William Campbell commander of their combined forces. That done, the army marched again, and on 2 October camped sixteen miles north of Gilbert Town, where they hoped to find Ferguson.

But their quarry was no longer in Gilbert Town. Ferguson had already learned of the expedition seeking him out, and had started withdrawing to the south on 27 September. He was hastened in his decision to march toward Ninety-Six when he learned that Elijah Clarke’s forces might be moving to join the rebel army. On 30 September the deserters from Sevier’s men caught up with Ferguson. The two of them, James Crawford and Samuel Chambers, were able to give Ferguson detailed information about the expedition: its numbers, composition, and leaders. The news was disturbing enough for Ferguson to dispatch riders to Cornwallis, now at Charlotte with his main body, and Lieutenant Colonel John Cruger, the commander of the Ninety-Six garrison, asking for reinforcements posthaste.

The next day Ferguson issued a proclamation to the countryside, a strange declaration which smacked of bravado and betrayed a sense of growing frustration. “I say, if you wish to be pinioned, robbed, and murdered, and see your wives and daughters, in four days, abused by the dregs of mankind—in short, if you wish and deserve to live and bear the name of men, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp.” As Messick said, “The Backwater men have crossed the mountains, Ferguson warned; McDowell, Hampton, Shelby and Cleveland are at their head, so you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be pissed upon forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women turn their backs upon you, and look out for real men to protect them” (King’s Mountain).

At heart he was a bold fighter, however, so some of the twists and turns of his marches may have been deliberate ruses to keep his pursuers confused and off the track. On 2 August, after seeing his proclamation distributed, Ferguson turned his column eastward toward Charlotte, anticipating that the rebels would keep on going south, in the direction of his apparent march toward Ninety-Six. The Patriot army was indeed confused by Ferguson’s turning east, but only temporarily. It marched through Gilbert Town on 3 October; then its leaders lost Ferguson’s trail at Denard’s Ford on 4 October, at the very place he had turned to the east. In the meantime Ferguson had forded the Second Broad River, Sandy Run, and Buffalo Creek, and marched on to the plantation of a Tory named Täte, about ten miles west of Kings Mountain. There he lingered, awaiting reinforcements and resting his men for two days, 4–5 October.

Frustrated at losing Ferguson’s turn at Denard’s Ford, the Patriot leaders were using all their means to scout out his trail. Finally they camped for the night of October 5. Campbell and his colonels then decided on a bold measure to make a fast move to catch Ferguson. They picked men with the best horses—some 700 in all—to make a dash for Cowpens, twenty-one miles to the southeast. If the advance column did not intercept Ferguson en route, it would still be in position to swing to the northeast to find Ferguson or his trail. Moreover, at Cowpens, a well-known cattle-herding center, the leaders would be in an area likely to yield the information they were so urgently seeking.

Their column arrived at Cowpens on Friday, 6 October. It was early evening and they found the principal landowner in the area, a well-to-do Tory farmer named Hiram Saunders. The first men to arrive hauled Saunders out of bed to question him. He said he knew nothing of Ferguson’s troops or their whereabouts; apparently he was telling the truth. By the time they had finished questioning Saunders, the main body arrived and began to help their hungry selves to Saunders’s bounty.

There was more than food to bolster morale. Soon Colonel James Williams came riding in with 400 of his men. While the greetings were going around, another piece of good luck, undoubtedly the most important event of the day, fell the way of the Patriots. Joseph Kerr arrived to confirm reports of Ferguson’s location. A cripple who served the cause by acting as a spy, Kerr used his lameness to gain access to Tory formations under the guise of seeking shelter. He had been among Ferguson’s troops when they halted that same day for their noon meal about six or seven miles from Kings Mountain. Kerr had found out that they were headed for the mountain and would encamp there.

There was no time to lose. The leaders quickly made a new culling to pick 940 of their number: the best men with the best horses. “These included 200 picked riflemen from Campbell’s command, 120 under Shelby, 120 led by Sevier, 100 men following Cleveland, 90 with Joseph McDowell, and 60 under Winston. Edward Lacey and William Hill commanded their 100 South Carolinians, Hambright and Chronicle led 50 picked soldiers, and Candler’s 30 Georgians formed part of James Williams’ unit of 90 selected riflemen” (Lumpkin, From Savannah to Yorktown). They left at 8:00 P.M. on Friday, 6 October, their destination Kings Mountain.

KERR’S REPORT WAS ACCURATE. FERGUSON HAD LEFT Tate’s Plantation about 4:00 A.M. on 6 October. His troops followed him along the old Cherokee Road that ran between Buffalo Creek and King’s Creek. They forded King’s Creek and passed through Stony Gap heading toward the northeast. By then they knew their destination was not to be Charlotte, which lay about thirty-five miles farther east. Instead, Ferguson had chosen to make camp and take up a position on top of the ridge known as Kings Mountain.

While his units were filing off to occupy campsites atop the ridge, Ferguson wrote Cornwallis what was to be his final report: “I arrived to day at Kings Mountain & have taken a post where I do not think I can be forced by a stronger enemy than that against us.” The dispatch was given to a lad named John Ponder, who was to carry it to Cornwallis.

All indications are that Ferguson was taking up his mountaintop location not like the fox brought to bay by the hounds but so as to command a formidable defensive position while awaiting reinforcements from Cornwallis. He had already received the answer to his request for reinforcements from Cruger at Ninety-Six, who had replied that he did not have enough men to hold that post, much less to send men anywhere else. So Ferguson knew that he would get no help from the south. What he did not know, however, was that help would not be forthcoming from Cornwallis, either. His commander would not send Tarleton, the most mobile force left to him, because his legion needed a rest, and moreover, Tarleton was incapacitated with malaria, as was Major Hanger, his second in command. Cornwallis himself was down with a “feverish cold” and of no mind to dispatch any of his main force on a chase to the west of Charlotte.

KINGS MOUNTAIN IS ACTUALLY A LONG RIDGE rising independently from a low range running from the northeast in North Carolina to the southwest in South Carolina. The ridge itself is in York County, S.C., about a mile and a half south of the present border between the Carolinas. It is shaped somewhat like a canoe paddle with a short handle, with the crest of the ridge running from the broad “paddle end” on the northeast to the narrower “handle end” on the southwest extremity. The crest is about 600 yards long, varying in width from 120 yards at the paddle end to 60 yards on the handle. In 1780 the crest was practically treeless, but all of its slopes were, and are today, heavily wooded, with occasional ravines and great boulders strewn everywhere. There was no natural cover on the summit of the ridge, which rises some sixty feet above the surrounding terrain, whereas the trees and boulders on the steep slopes would provide ideal protection for riflemen in scattered skirmish order.

Because he had sent out a foraging detachment on the morning of 7 October, Ferguson’s total strength on Kings Mountain was about 900 men. Of those, 100 were “regular” Tories who had come south with Ferguson from the King’s American Rangers, the Queen’s Rangers, and the New Jersey Volunteers, and 800 were Tory militia from North and South Carolina. Ferguson’s second in command, Captain Abraham de Peyster, was an aristocratic New Yorker of Huguenot descent, an able and efficient officer. The adjutant was Lieutenant Anthony Allaire, also a New Yorker of Huguenot descent.

All of Ferguson’s men were well trained under British army drill regulations. They were armed with the Brown Bess musket equipped with a socket bayonet, and the men were well trained in its use. Some few of the newly joined Tories were equipped with a crude, makeshift “plug” bayonet with a wooden hilt that could be inserted in the muzzle for close combat, though it rendered the musket useless as a firearm.

The Tory militiamen were drilled to fight like the British regulars, in close-ordered ranks which, once engaged in battle, could move only forward or rearward on command. If, however, their enemy did not stand and fight—as the Patriot riflemen could not because they had no bayonets, nor was it in their style to stand when they could fade away and fire from cover—the attackers could hold only the ground they stood on or else fall back to reform a rearward line. And the rugged terrain they would be fighting in was not conducive to maneuvering in close-ordered ranks.

Another disadvantage of the position on Kings Mountain was one that Ferguson could have overcome but did not. He had sufficient time to protect his position with field fortifications such as abatis, breastworks, or earthworks, but he seems to have been content to rely on the slopes’ boulders and trees as natural obstacles. It was possible, too, that he had underestimated his enemy’s strength and capabilities, in particular the frontiersman’s skill at fighting in wooded cover; the “barbarians” and “mongrels” cited in his proclamation were truly beneath contempt. There was the same arrogance in his pronouncement after he had established his position on the ridge: that “he defied God Almighty and all the rebels out of hell to overcome him.”

THE NIGHT MARCH OF THE 900 PATRIOTS WAS ANYTHING but easy. They left Cowpens in pitch dark, and the black night closed in on them, with no moonlight or even starlight to guide their way. Their march was along rough backcountry roads, and to make things even more miserable a steady drizzle set in that lasted through the night. The drizzle caused every rifleman to sacrifice the comfort that would have been provided by hunting shirt and blanket. Those articles had to be used to cover the precious rifle from the wet, and above all to ensure that the muzzle and gunlock were kept dry.

Short halts were made to wolf down a few handfuls of parched corn or whatever else the marchers had in wallets or saddlebags. Just after sunrise on Saturday, 7 October, the column forded the Broad River at Cherokee Ford, below the point where it was joined by Buffalo Creek. The weather had not improved. The drizzle had changed to a steady rain that made it all the more difficult to keep the rifles dry, but being used to all kinds of weather, the men managed. By mid-morning the men were cursing and grumbling about their tired horses, and Colonels Campbell, Sevier, and Cleveland agreed that a rest was in order. However, when they approached Shelby with the idea they met with a flat refusal: “I will not stop until night, if I follow Ferguson into Cornwallis’ lines.” The column pushed on.

About six miles farther, one of the scouts reported that he had come upon a Tory girl who admitted that she had been in Ferguson’s camp that very morning. She pointed out the ridge where Ferguson was encamped. A little farther on, the scouts brought in a prisoner, the Tory John Ponder, with Ferguson’s last message to Cornwallis. When he was asked if Ferguson could be identified by his uniform, Ponder said that “while that officer was the best uniformed man on the mountain, they could not see his military suit, as he wore a checked shirt, or duster over it.” They would also recognize that officer because he would be the only one who carried his sword in his left hand.

By noon the rain had stopped, and the column halted about a mile from the base of Kings Mountain. They dismounted, tied up their horses, and each followed his leader’s orders to “throw the priming out of his pan, pick his touchhole, prime anew, examine bullets and see that everything was in readiness for battle.”

Having cursed the rain throughout the march, the men were now beginning to realize that it could also be a blessing. The packed leaves that carpeted the approaches to the mountain and its slopes were soaked through, so there would be no telltale rustling as the columns of riflemen, all of them hunters and stalkers, made their stealthy approach.

As the men checked their weapons, the countersign was passed around—“Buford,” for the man whose command had received no quarter from Tarleton’s Tories at Waxhaws. Then it was time to make their final advance on foot. They formed into four columns for their approach march, heading initially to the northeast to reach the narrow end of the ridge first. The battle plan was for the columns to split up and move to assigned positions which, when movements were completed, would completely encircle Kings Mountain. The column on the extreme right was made up of the units of Winston, McDowell, and Sevier. Campbell led the next column to the left, and Shelby the column in the left center. The left-most column was composed of the commands of Chronicle, Cleveland, and Williams.

The plan was simple, and it was going to be executed rapidly and skillfully. The signal for launching coordinated attacks was “that when the center columns [Campbell’s and Shelby’s] were ready for the attack, they were to give the signal by raising a regular frontier war whoop, after the Indian style, and rush forward, doing the enemy all the injury possible.”

The columns moved out and headed for their assigned positions. Tory security was so slack that Shelby’s command was only a quarter of a mile from their position at the foot of the ridge before the first Tory sentries fired on them. Shelby’s leadership was showing: he made sure that no one returned the fire. There would be plenty of action after they had started up the ridge.

On the opposite slope of the paddle handle Campbell’s men were already creeping toward the top. When the first shots were fired, Campbell stripped off his coat and shouted: “Here they are; shoot like hell and fight like devils.” They raised the war whoop, the so-called Tennessee yell that the over-mountain men had picked up from the Indians in the Cherokee War, said to be the forerunner of the famous Rebel yell of the Civil War. The war whoop was a high-pitched, keening scream that would set a man’s hair stiffening. The cries were taken up by Shelby’s men and those of the other forces as they came into action.

In the Tory camp the drums beat the call to arms while Ferguson and his second in command, Captain de Peyster, were getting set to move the units into battle formations. De Peyster recognized the whooping that he had heard before in action. He told Ferguson, “These are the same yelling devils that were at Musgrove’s Mill.”

Ferguson’s reply was to direct his units into line toward the paddle-handle end of the ridge, where they formed a three-sided square facing the riflemen coming up the slopes. The Tory units delivered a series of disciplined volleys that made their enemies duck for cover. But the riflemen continued to advance, taking cover, Indian fashion, behind trees, rocks, logs, and in ravines, and keeping up a deadly fire that was taking an increasing toll on the exposed Tory formations on the crest of the ridge.

It was these losses that caused Ferguson to order the first bayonet charge. The counterattack appeared successful—at first. The Patriots could not stand up to the bayonet, and they ran back down the slopes. Most of Campbell’s men scattered as far as the bottom of the ridge and even up the slope behind them. Here was a real challenge to Campbell’s leadership. The red-headed Scot responded at once. He was all over the place, calling his men to rally and return to the attack. He succeeded in getting them to reload and take up the fire against their enemy, whose ragged lines were retreating back up Kings Mountain. The Virginians returned, resuming their dodging attack from cover to cover, reloading and firing from behind the rocks and trees they had used before. Shelby rallied his men every bit as effectively as had Campbell, and they too renewed a fire that thinned the withdrawing Tory ranks. In the meantime Sevier’s force had joined the battle.

The fighting around the southeastern end of the ridge now took up a pattern that was to characterize the whole battle. Three times the skirmishing riflemen attacked, and each time they were driven back by bayonet charges. Each time, the Tory formations had to halt and withdraw up the slopes, whereupon the Patriots returned to the attack, their accurate rifle fire making the Tories pay a stiff penalty for each counterattack.

It was also becoming obvious that Ferguson was paying the price for his failure to fortify his position on the ridge and his reliance on the trees and boulders as obstacles. For the “obstacles” had become ideal cover for his enemies’ skirmishing tactics. Furthermore, the volleys that returned the riflemen’s fire were consistently ineffective. In the hands of trained troops the Brown Bess musket could deliver deadly volleys under the ideal conditions it was designed for: firing platoon volleys at ranges up to fifty to seventy-five yards between close-ordered opposing formations facing each other on open, level terrain. At Kings Mountain, however, the conditions were anything but ideal for the musket, and matters were made worse by the Tory units having to fire downhill. Troops firing downhill will, unless specifically trained to avoid it, fail to compensate by sighting low, and consequently will fire over the heads of their targets. That is what happened to the Tory volleys at Kings Mountain; and to compound their loss in firepower, their own ranks were silhouetted against the skyline, thus making ideal targets for rifles that could kill at two or three hundred yards. The words of Light-Horse Harry Lee about Kings Mountain, that “it was more assailable by the rifle than defended with the bayonet,” were no doubt true.

A less significant feature of the battle is the popular misconception that Ferguson’s troops were dressed in the traditional scarlet coats and white breeches of the British regular soldier. While it is true that some of Ferguson’s men—the “provincials” from the north, such as the King’s American Rangers or the Queen’s Rangers—were so clad, by far the greater number were wearing the civilian clothes in which they had enlisted. The only difference in dress between Tory and Patriot was brought out in recollections like that of Thomas Young, a sixteen-year-old private who fought under Colonel James Williams, and who got left in the middle of a firefight where “I found myself apparently between my own regiment and the enemy, as I judged from seeing the paper the Whigs wore in their hats, and the pine twigs the Tories wore in theirs, these being the badges of distinction.”

THE BATTLE SURGED UP AND DOWN THE SLOPES of the paddle-handle end. The riflemen of Shelby’s, Campbell’s and Sevier’s commands attacked again and again with ever deadlier effect. Meanwhile, other forces had launched their attacks against the broader expanse of the ridge on its northeast end. William Chronicle led his men forward from their position at the foot of the ridge, waving his hat and shouting, “Face to the hill.” Struck down by a musket ball as he shouted, the twenty-five-year-old major died instantly. German-born Colonel Hambright continued the assault, which was met by a bayonet charge led by Captain de Peyster. Hambright’s men were driven down the slopes, just as had been Shelby’s and Campbell’s, and were rallied by him in no less courageous fashion. Though wounded in the thigh, with blood filling his boot, Hambright called out in his German accent, “Fight on, my brave poys, a few minutes more and the battle will be over.”

Cleveland, delayed by his 250-pound bulk and a swampy area, was late, but he came up in time to throw his men into the battle alongside Hambright’s attack. Williams and Lacey came in next, filling the gap between Cleveland and Shelby on the north side of the ridge. In like manner Joseph McDowell’s and Winston’s men attacked to complete the encirclement on the south side of the ridge. All this pressure on the Tories atop the broad end of Kings Mountain was felt by Ferguson as he led the defense on the southeast end. The shrill call of his silver whistle was heard constantly above the roar of battle as he rallied one formation after another to bolster the defense all along the crest. It was soon apparent that his efforts were becoming futile at the southeast end, however, and he managed to withdraw his troops back along the crest of the ridge to the broad end of the mountain. As the Tories withdrew, Sevier’s men came over the crest, and in conjunction with Shelby’s and Campbell’s forces were now masters of the whole paddle-handle portion of the ridge.

By this time all of the Patriot forces had been engaged. The net thrown around Ferguson’s force was being tightened as the riflemen came pushing up the slopes from all directions. The smoke from rifles and muskets covered the mountain, obscuring some Tory units from time to time and drifting down the ravines and woods of the slopes. Now and then Ferguson could be seen through the smoke as he rode from unit to unit, rallying his men around the formal tent camp on the broad end of the ridge. He had been wounded in the hand of his useless right arm but continued to carry his sword in his good left hand. He got some units lined up to defend the camp, but those he had formed into a square soon deteriorated into a shrinking circle of beaten men. In one Tory unit a white flag fluttered for a moment, but Ferguson towered over it on horseback and cut it down with his sword. Another went up on the other side of the camp; Ferguson galloped over and cut it down with another stroke. When Captain de Peyster counseled surrender, Ferguson shouted back that “never would he yield to such damned banditti.” And he made it clear that he meant it. He charged at the rebels at the head of a few volunteers ready to follow him in his desperate assault, and tried to break out through Sevier’s men. Brandishing his sword in his left hand, he spurred directly at the rebels on his white horse. It was an attempt as futile as it was desperate. At least fifty rifles were aimed at Ferguson and his party. Every man in Ferguson’s band went down, either killed or mortally wounded. It is said that six or seven bullets ripped into Ferguson’s body; both arms were broken, and he fell from his horse to die after he had been carried away from the firing.

With Ferguson’s fall and the overrunning of the ridge by the combined forces of the Patriots, organized resistance crumbled away. Captain de Peyster took command of the masses huddled around the camp and the wagon park, but any attempt at counterattack or breakout was clearly impossible. The fight had gone out of the force. White flags in the form of handkerchiefs or shirts appeared among the milling defenders, but they were ignored and their bearers were shot down.

The aftermath of Kings Mountain is neither pleasant in the telling nor does it do credit to the Patriot forces. De Peyster, riding out on his gray horse, carried a white flag which was acknowledged by Campbell, yet the shooting of the now-defenseless Tories went on. De Peyster protested to Campbell, “It’s damned unfair, damned unfair.” Campbell strode through his men, knocking down rifles and ordering, “For God’s sake don’t shoot. It is murder to kill them now, for they have raised the flag.” He then directed de Peyster to have the officers separate themselves, and for the men to lay down their arms, sit down, and remove their hats.

In other parts of the ridgetop Tories cried out for quarter and got “Buford’s quarter” or “Tarleton’s quarter” instead—in the form of rifle bullets. Shelby, enraged at both sides, came forward and shouted to the Tories, “Damn you, if you want quarter, throw down your arms!” All within earshot obeyed, but elsewhere the firing into the defenders went on. Finally, more of the responsible Patriot militia officers tried to stop the slaughter, knocking aside rifles or pleading with their owners by name to stop shooting. Yet even after the shooting stopped and the prisoners were seated on the ground, an alarm was raised when one of Ferguson’s foraging parties returned. Some of them saw the situation and fired a parting shot before fleeing. One of the shots presumably struck down Colonel James Williams, who died later.

The cry went up of a Tory attack, and Campbell ordered the rifleman nearest him to shoot into the prisoners to subdue any attempt to break for freedom. The order was obeyed, and, according to Lieutenant Hughes, “We killed near a hundred of them and hardly could be restrained from killing the whole.”

Shelby himself had this to say about the aftermath of the battle: “It was some time before a complete cessation of the firing on our part could be effected. Our men who had been scattered in the battle were continually coming up and continued to fire, without comprehending in the heat of the moment what had happened; and some who had heard that at Buford’s defeat, the British had refused quarter . . . were willing to follow that bad example.”

When the “bad examples” had been quelled and all the shooting stopped, the victors rounded up the prisoners and looked to their own wounded and dead. The Patriots had lost 28 killed and 64 wounded out of over 900 in the battle. Their enemies lost 157 killed, 163 wounded too badly to be moved, and 698 prisoners. On the following day, Sunday, 8 October, the partisans pulled their prisoners’ wagons across the camp fires and left them burning as they marched the prisoners away. Near Gilbert Town, thirty were convicted in some sort of drum-head trial; twelve were condemned to die, and nine were actually hanged. The odyssey of the remaining prisoners went on as far as Hillsboro, where they were left by Cleveland’s men. Eventually most of them escaped through the carelessness or the disregard of their warders.

Ferguson’s body was defiled by some of the less compassionate of the frontiersmen, who urinated on it after it was stripped of belongings and clothing. Others, more humane, gave the fallen Scot a “decent” burial by wrapping his body in a raw beef hide and interring it in a shallow ravine near the crest of the ridge. On the 150th anniversary of the battle, a simple stone monument to Ferguson was erected by American citizens. It is dedicated to: “A soldier of military distinction and of honor.”

THE FRONTIERSMEN HAD RIDDEN HARD AND LONG for vengeance, and they had tasted deeply of it. Now they dispersed, going their separate ways to homesteads and settlements in the backcountry and beyond the Blue Ridge. Though their accomplishment would be retold around firesides for generations, it is doubtful that any participant in the Kings Mountain campaign could have realized the far-reaching effects of the victory.

To the British and their Tory allies the impact of Kings Mountain was as appalling as it was immediate. Imagine the reaction of Cornwallis when the confirmation of Ferguson’s disaster reached him at Charlotte. Ferguson dead and his entire force wiped out in one day—actually in one hour—and the western frontier exposed to a Patriot uprising. Rumor had the Patriot frontiersmen’s numbers at 3,000 with their next objective Charlotte. Instead of the rebels of North Carolina being subjugated, the western half of the province had been lost, and the loss of the central area was now a looming possibility, especially without organized Loyalist forces to hold the countryside. Clearly, in Mark Boatner’s summation, Kings Mountain had “tipped the balance of Whig-Tory armed support in favor of the rebel cause” (Encyclopedia of the American Revolution).

However reluctantly, Cornwallis decided to give up North Carolina and retreat back into South Carolina. On 14 October the dreary retrograde march began. The fall rains set in and beat down on the sodden British while the red-clay roads became quagmires; yet because of flooded swamps and dense forests, the roads could not be bypassed. Some twenty supply wagons were wrecked or abandoned; others were captured by Patriot militia that had turned out to harass the unhappy British. Cornwallis himself had to be carried in one of the wagons, having come down with a “bilious fever.” After fifteen days of miserable marching, the commander in chief and his famished army pulled into Winnsboro, where they were immobilized in camp until December. Cornwallis’s offensive into North Carolina had been stopped cold, and it could not be resumed without considerable reinforcement and change of plan. Kings Mountain had altered the whole course of the war in the South.

Although the long-range consequences of Cornwallis’s failure were yet to be seen, there were ominous signals flashing beyond the horizon, not the least of which were Gates’s replacement by Nathanael Greene and renewed offensive operations against the British in the South by partisan, Continental, and militia forces. The partisan victory caused Sir Henry Clinton to view Kings Mountain in retrospect as the check that “so encouraged the spirit of rebellion in the Carolinas that it could never afterward be humbled.” With historic hindsight, he recognized the battle to be “the first link in a chain of evils that followed each other in regular succession until they at last ended in the total loss of America.”

KINGS MOUNTAIN STANDS ON ITS OWN as a one-of-a-kind battle. With the sole exception of Ferguson himself, it was fought entirely by Americans against Americans, ending in a decisive Patriot victory. A force of Patriot irregulars, reaching a total of nearly 1,800, armed principally with the frontier rifle, had annihilated a trained body of the enemy armed mainly with the musket. The Patriot force had emerged on call, organized itself into units with competent leaders, marched on campaign as a controlled and highly mobile corps, and utterly destroyed its enemy. It was a force that was logistically independent and self-disciplined; Shelby said to his men before the battle: “When we encounter the enemy, don’t wait for the word of command. Let each one of you be your own officer, and do the very best you can.” It was led by veterans who had proved themselves in frontier warfare. The melding of those leaders with their riflemen resulted in skillfully coordinated combinations of tactical movement and firepower.

Kings Mountain appeared to mark the beginning of the end of Cornwallis’s offensive in the South. The next encounter between organized forces would confirm that beginning.

Footnotes

1. After detaching 100 Maryland Continentals to support Sumter’s operation against British supply routes.

2. De Kalb was later rescued from looters by no other than Tarleton, who got him attended to by British doctors, but he died from his wounds three days later.

3. “Of the type” because many historians have implied that all the Americans at Kings Mountain were armed with the Dickert rifle. Since that rifle—and most like it—was a masterpiece of hand craftsmanship, good Jacob Dickert (1740-1822) could not possibly, by 1780, have turned out the 940 rifles carried by the Patriots into that battle.