The Battle of Kings Mountain
October 7 th 1780
Following the defeat at Saratoga and Monmouth and their withdrawal from
Philadelphia, the British strategy in the north was in shambles. Desperate for a
victory, they shifted their focus to the southern colonies.
On May 12 th 1780, the largest southern seaport, Charlestown, South Carolina was
surrendered to the British following a six-weeks siege. The American fleet was
captured and over 5000 Americans became prisoners of war. Charlestown became
the largest defeat that the Americans experienced during the revolutionary war.
Following the fall of the city, Lord Cornwallis marched his army north and defeated
the Americans once again at Camden Courthouse in August 1780. This opened the
door to allow the British to invade North Carolina; their strategy relied on loyalists
joining forces with the British regulars to advance north through North Carolina and
Virginia. To enlist loyalist reinforcements, Lord Cornwallis sent Major Patrick
Ferguson north to North Carolina in September to recruit men to fight for the
Loyalist militia and protect Cornwallis’s left flank as he moved through the
Carolinas.
Ferguson soon came up against the over mountain men, settlers from the
Carolina backcountry and the areas now known as the states of Kentucky and
Tennessee. American cavalry commander “Light Horse” Harry Lee called them,
“A race of hardy men who were familiar with the use of the horse and the rifle,
stout, active, patient under privation, and brave.” To the British, however, they
were “more savage than the Indians.” Major Ferguson miscalculated his potential
enemy. The over mountain men found the British on a rocky hilltop in western
South Carolina called Kings Mountain. In the early afternoon of October 7 th , the
over-mountain men surrounded the hill and advanced from all sides using the
undergrowth and woods to their advantage.
One Loyalist later recalled that the Over-mountain men looked “like devils from
the infernal regions… tall, raw-boned, sinewy with long matted hair.” Ferguson
and his men were surrounded, and their counterattacks failed to stop the
Americans. With his defensive perimeter shrinking, Ferguson tried to lead his
men past the attack. Mounted on his horse, he proved the perfect target for the
Americans. He was hit multiple times, his body was hanging from his horse as his
mount fled down the hill.
The British were ultimately overrun suffering the lost of their entire force, killed, wounded, or captured. The defeat of the British loyalists at Kings Mountain gave the Americans confidence that that their militias could successfully face the British in battle and was a major setback for Britain’s southern strategy that began a chain of events that resulted in Cornwallis’s defeat at Yorktown.
