Looking back, it’s an ironic name, given the significant events that took place there on Oct. 7, 1780.
King’s Mountain is a long, narrow ridge with boulder-strewn slopes due west of Charlotte, North Carolina.
At just a little over 1,000 feet tall, it is only a mountain in the eastern sense of the word – we out west might characterize it a hillock if we were feeling especially generous.
At any rate, it was on this aptly named mountain that American patriot forces finally turned the tide in their war against the British crown.
By fall of 1780, things were looking grim for the American cause. Although Washington had won some victories over the British at Trenton, Princeton, and Monmouth Courthouse, the war up until then had been one largely of cat-and-mouse, with the American forces trying to outmaneuver the British.
Many of the American victories up until then was as much a result of the abysmal leadership on the British side as it was the quality of generalship on the American.
But after three years of expensive warfare in a conflict that was supposed to only last a single campaign season, the British public was growing weary.
Aware that continued stalemate in America would be just as bad as outright failure, the British tried a new tactic. Rather than continue an all-out war on the Continental Army in the north, as they had been doing, they would focus their efforts on securing the aid of the loyalists.
Ever since the opening of the war, the British were convinced that the majority of colonials were loyal to the crown. Although they had secured some aid from loyalists in New York, British command believed that the south was positively teeming with them.
So, in 1778, they shipped their men to the south. And the tactic appeared to be working. They occupied Savannah, Georgia, in late 1778 and Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1779. They also struck a disastrous blow against American General Horatio Gates' forces at Camden, South Carolina, in August of 1780.
For all of these victories, however, the war continued to drag on interminably. Although they were succeeding in conventional battles, the American forces under Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan pestered them with guerilla warfare, sapping their resources while always managing to stay just out of reach.
This was the state of things when Major General Charles Cornwallis decided his forces were ready to move against the patriots in North Carolina. Moving with the main force himself, Cornwallis entrusted his left flank to the very competent Major Ferguson, who had succeeded in raising a sizeable force of loyalists.
As the forces proceeded with their plan, Ferguson and his some 1,100 loyalists were able to sweep away the uncoordinated attacks of local militia bands. But as they continued northward, they started to meet more resistance and when word reached him of an army forming to stop him, Major Ferguson sent for reinforcements from Cornwallis and made camp with his army on the slopes of a nearby mountain: King’s Mountain.
It was true; an army of sorts was forming in an attempt to stop the marauding band of loyalists. In the end, however, the patriots were only able to gather some 900 men – all of them militiamen from as far away as Virginia and as close by as the field over the rise. But many of these men were rugged outdoorsmen, as proficient in the use of the rifle as any on the North American continent.
Early in the afternoon of Oct. 7, 1780, the small band of militiamen arrived at the foot of King’s Mountain (possibly named for a local farmer rather than King George III).
Determining to surround Ferguson and prevent any sort of escape, the Americans launched a four-pronged attack, with two columns advancing on both sides of the mountain. Ferguson and his loyalists were apparently taken by surprise by the militiamen’s ferocity of attack.
The battle waged on, with the shrill cry of a whistle sometimes audible over the cacophony of the fight. Major Ferguson carried a silver whistle, which he used to direct the movement of his troops, and the clear trill of it encouraged his embattled men.
But then the whistle went silent.
Realizing that he was surrounded, Major Ferguson had attempted to lead a sortie with some of his men in an attempt to break out of the tightening noose of militiamen. He was shot down, mid-whistle blow, by one of the rugged marksman of the American militia.
In about an hour’s time, Ferguson and 250 of his men had been killed, with another 163 wounded and the rest captured or missing. In a single fight, the American forces had obliterated the left flank of Cornwallis’ advance into North Carolina.
The Battle of King’s Mountain would be the last major battle of the war in which colonial loyalists participated. Although just a single conflict, the battle marked the beginning of the end for the British effort in the south and, ultimately, the war.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.
This Week in History: Turning the tide of the American Revolution
- Antone Pierucci
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