Doings in Western Carolinas

The defeat of Sumter's band made the victory of Cornwallis complete. The hopes of the patriots were almost extinguished. Within the space of three months, two republican armies had been almost annihilated by capture or dispersion; and the earl, regarding the full and final subjugation of South Carolina as accomplished, moved toward the North State accompanied by Martin, a former royal governor of North Carolina, who assured him that the people there would rise to welcome him. Had Cornwallis been guided by good judgment and humanity, the conquest of South Carolina, and the restoration of North Carolina to a loyal condition, might have been permanent; for the former State swarmed with Tories, and the republicans were weary of the unequal contest. But following the wicked suggestions of Martin and the sanguinary Tarleton, and animated by the cruel instructions from Germain, he proposed to establish a system of revolting terrorism. He put military despotism in place of civil law, and treated the people as slaves having no rights which he was bound to respect. He ordered all militiamen who had served in Loyalist corps and were afterward found in arms against the king, to be hanged without mercy. He gave full license to Tories to execute these orders. Private rights were everywhere trampled under-foot. Property was wantonly destroyed by fire and violence; the chastity of women was set at naught; plunder was universal; and Whigs, both men and women, cultivated and tenderly reared, were hunted by the ravenous Tory wolves as legitimate prey to their worst passions. These ruthless measures created the most intense hatred. The people revolted and thirsted for vengeance. They only awaited the appearance of good leaders, to fly to arms and rid the country of their oppressors. Only Marion was then in the field, untrammeled by any parole. Governor Rutledge had commissioned him a brigadier, and with his famous brigade of ragged followers, he performed those deeds for the redemption of South Carolina which have made his name immortal.

The first symptoms of that revolt were seen in Western Carolina. Cornwallis had marched his army to Charlotte, in North Carolina, early in September, and from that point he sent out detachments to execute his cruel orders. While Tarleton and his legions were operating eastward of the Catawba, Major Patrick Ferguson was sent to embody the Tories among the mountains west of the Broad River. Many profligate and unworthy men joined his standard, and at the beginning of October he was encamped among the gravelly, wooded hills of King's Mountain, about two miles south of the North Carolina border. Meanwhile the patriots west of the Alleghany ranges had taken up arms to frustrate the plans of Cornwallis. They were embodied in regiments under Colonels Shelby, Sevier, Campbell, Cleveland, McDowell and Williams, and were chiefly Virginians and North Carolinians. On the evening of the 6th of October (1780) they were all assembled at the "Cowpens," in Spartanburg district, and called themselves "The Western Army." There they heard that Ferguson was at King's Mountain, and they determined to proceed that night and strike him by surprise. Nine hundred of their best horsemen (they were all mounted) marched by moon-light, and on the afternoon of the next day, they came near Ferguson's camp of a little over eleven hundred men (mostly Tories), who were resting in fancied security on account of their peculiar position.

The republicans dismounted, and forming themselves into four columns, advanced to within a quarter of a mile of Ferguson's camp, without being discovered. The regiments of Shelby and Campbell, which formed the right and left centres of the force, pushed up the hill and made the first attack. The aroused British flew to arms, and the bayonets of the few regulars over-matched the rifles of the assailants for a moment. For ten minutes the advanced regiments sustained a fierce contest for the crown of the hill, when the right and left wings of the republican army fell upon Ferguson's left and rear and drove him into a hollow, where he was slain on the border of a clear mountain brook. The position of his force was now untenable, and Captain De Peyster (of the "King's American Regiment"), Ferguson's senior surviving officer, hoisted a flag of submission. The firing ceased, and the invaders surrendered, with fifteen hundred stand of arms. The entire loss of the British was eleven hundred and five, of whom four hundred and fifty-six were either killed or wounded. The Americans lost twenty-eight killed and sixty wounded. Among the British prisoners were many of the worst Tories, who had most cruelly executed the severe orders of Cornwallis. Ten of these, after a brief trial the next morning, were hanged together upon an outstretching limb of a tulip tree, which, when I visited the spot in 1849, was huge, and overshadowed a small monument erected on the spot where Ferguson was slain. That stone was set up in commemoration of Major Chronicle and three other Americans who were killed in the battle. Upon it were their names, and on the opposite side were these words: "Colonel Patrick Ferguson, an officer belonging to his Britannic Majesty, was here defeated and killed."