Kings Mountain

The Battle of Kings Mountain and the Turning of the Southern War

On the afternoon of October 7, 1780, a sharp ridge in the backcountry of South Carolina—just south of what is now Kings Mountain, North Carolina—became the site of one of the most decisive engagements of the American Revolution. The Battle of Kings Mountain lasted barely an hour, but its consequences rippled across the entire Southern theater of the war, derailing the British strategy for conquering the Carolinas and ultimately setting in motion the chain of events that would lead to Yorktown. Thomas Jefferson called it "The turn of the tide of success."

British commander Henry Clinton later acknowledged its significance even more starkly, calling the American victory "the first Link of a Chain of Evils that followed each other in regular succession until they at last ended in the total loss of America."

In The Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt wrote of Kings Mountain, "This brilliant victory marked the turning point of the American Revolution."

The story of Kings Mountain is not simply the story of a battle; it is the story of how frontier settlers, many of whom had never served in a formal army, crossed a mountain range to destroy a threat they refused to tolerate, and in doing so changed the trajectory of American independence. The Battle of Kings Mountain was one of the few major battles of the Revolutionary War waged entirely between fellow countrymen—fought entirely between Americans, with Major Patrick Ferguson, commander of the Loyalist force, the only Briton on the field.

The battle has been described as "the war's largest all-American fight."

To understand why Kings Mountain mattered, one must first understand the dire state of the Patriot cause in the South by the summer of 1780. Charleston had fallen to the British in May, taking with it an entire American army. General Horatio Gates's attempt to recover the initiative ended in the catastrophic defeat at Camden on August 16. British commander Lord Charles Cornwallis, now confident that organized American resistance in South Carolina was broken, began planning an invasion of North Carolina as the next step in a broader campaign to reclaim the Southern colonies one by one. To protect his western flank during this advance, Cornwallis dispatched Major Patrick Ferguson, one of the most capable and innovative officers in British service, to rally Loyalist militia in the Carolina backcountry and sweep the region of Patriot resistance.

Ferguson was a remarkable figure— born in 1744 at Pitfour in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a Scottish judge — a professional soldier who had designed a breech-loading rifle that was years ahead of its time, a man of considerable personal courage and tactical skill. He developed the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock weapon based on Chaumette's earlier system.

Its superior firepower was unappreciated at the time because it was too expensive and took longer to produce.

In 1777, Ferguson went to the colonies commanding an experimental rifle corps equipped with his new rifle. However, he was shot through the right elbow joint at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, a wound that shattered the joint and cost him full use of his right arm. Ferguson refused to have the arm amputated and, since the shattered elbow cost him full use of his arm, the right-handed major taught himself to wield his saber left-handed.

He practiced so assiduously that he learned to wield his sword with his left hand, earning him the nickname "Bulldog" in the process.

Having lost the use of his right arm, Ferguson also used a silver whistle to drill his troops —a distinctive signal that would be heard shrieking across the ridge at Kings Mountain in his final moments.

Ferguson was appointed Inspector of Militia on May 22, 1780.

His task was to march to the old Tryon County area, raise and organize Loyalist units from the Tory population of the Carolina backcountry, and protect the left flank of Lord Cornwallis's main body at Charlotte, North Carolina. He proved alarmingly effective. Many residents came out to swear allegiance to the king and enlist in Loyalist militias. During the summer, Patriot militia under Colonels Isaac Shelby and Charles McDowell had raided Loyalist outposts, including capturing Fort Thickety on the Pacolet River and aiding in the Patriot victory at the Battle of Musgrove Mill. Ferguson pursued the retreating Patriots and successfully dispersed many of them. But then he made a catastrophic miscalculation.

Ferguson pardoned a captured frontiersman named Samuel Phillips—a cousin of Isaac Shelby—so that Phillips could carry a message to the Overmountain settlements. In the message, Ferguson warned the Overmountain Men that if they didn't lay down their arms, he would "march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste the country with fire and sword." Rather than intimidating the frontier settlers into submission, this threat had precisely the opposite effect. Upon receiving the message, Shelby rode 40 miles to Watauga to consult with John Sevier, and the two agreed to raise armies and cross the mountains to engage Ferguson.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary feats of mobilization in the entire war. On September 25, 1780, several hundred frontiersmen gathered at Sycamore Shoals —on the Watauga River in present-day Elizabethton, Tennessee. On that day Sevier and Shelby arrived with 240 troops each to join Colonel Charles McDowell, who was already there with 160 North Carolina riflemen. They were heartened when Colonel William Campbell marched in with 400 Virginians. The community rallied behind the effort: lead had been mined at nearby Bumpass Cove for ammunition, Sullivan County merchant John Adair volunteered funds for the expedition, and women prepared clothing and food for the long march. Black powder for the expedition was manufactured by Mary Patton at the Patton mill along nearby Powder Branch.

On September 26, after a fiery sermon by Reverend Samuel Doak, the Overmountain Men began their long trek over the Blue Ridge, marching from Sycamore Shoals to Shelving Rock at the base of Roan Mountain, where they camped for the night.

While the little army was marching over Roan Mountain, two of Sevier's troops, James Crawford and Samuel Chambers, were reported missing. Suspecting that they would warn Ferguson, Sevier changed the march plans. The force split and reunited east of the mountains. On September 30, the American force reached Quaker Meadows in Burke County, where it was joined by Colonel Benjamin Cleveland and 350 North Carolinians. Additional militia from South Carolina and Georgia swelled the ranks further as they pushed south.

On October 4, the Patriot militia reached Ferguson's former camp at Gilbert Town, finding it deserted. There 30 Georgia militiamen joined them, anxious for action. On October 6, they reached Cowpens, South Carolina, where they received word that Ferguson was east of them, heading towards Charlotte and Cornwallis. At Cowpens, the officers made a fateful decision: Patriot militia