Kings Mountain

Battle

At roughly three in the afternoon, some nine hundred men loyal to the Patriot cause, among them John Crockett, whose son Davy Crockett would later become famous, reached the foot of the steep western ridge and began their assault. They split themselves into eight groups, each numbering somewhere between one hundred and two hundred fighters. Ferguson had no idea that this force had closed the distance on him and his own command of eleven hundred men. Among that entire body, he stood alone as the sole regular soldier from the British army; the rest were Carolina Loyalist militia, aside from roughly a hundred Provincials in red coats who had enlisted from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He had never bothered fortifying the camp, judging it unnecessary.

Surprise favored the attackers completely. Chesney, an officer among the Loyalists, recalled afterward that he had no inkling the Patriots were nearby until gunfire erupted. As the attackers rushed up the slope shouting, de Peyster, a Loyalist captain of Dutch-American descent, turned to Ferguson and remarked that the noise sounded ominous, calling them "the damned yelling boys." Sevier and Campbell each led a group up toward the mountain's "heel," the point smallest in area yet highest in elevation. Meanwhile the remaining companies, headed by Shelby, Williams, Lacey, Cleveland, Hambright, Winston, and McDowell, converged on the main body of Loyalists, ringing the base near the summit.

Once the fighting began, no single officer directed the Patriot force as a whole. Instead, every detachment operated on its own, following the strategy they had already settled on: encircle the enemy and crush him. They advanced by inches up the slope, taking shots from behind boulders and tree trunks. Ferguson managed to rally his men and drove a bayonet charge straight at Sevier and Campbell. Since the attackers carried no bayonets themselves, they retreated down toward the tree line. Campbell, however, quickly regrouped his men, brought them back up, and resumed the exchange of fire. Twice more during the engagement Ferguson called for bayonet charges. This became the rhythm that defined the fight: the Patriots would push uphill, the Loyalists would counter with bayonets fixed and force them back toward the trees, and once the charge lost momentum and the defenders withdrew to their posts, the attackers would regroup among the trees and try again. Williams lost his life in one such charge, and McDowell suffered a wound. The Loyalists found accurate shooting nearly impossible, since their opponents kept shifting position, using whatever cover the terrain offered, and the steep downward angle caused Loyalist shots to sail over their targets.

By the end of the first hour, the toll on the Loyalist side had grown severe. Ferguson galloped back and forth along the ridge, sounding a silver whistle to signal each new charge. Meanwhile Shelby, Sevier, and Campbell had circled around and gained the summit behind the Loyalist line, striking from the rear. Pushed backward into their own camp, the Loyalists started giving up the fight. Ferguson, sword in hand, cut down every small white flag he spotted rising among his men, though he seemed to sense that defeat was close at hand. Trying one last time to inspire his wavering troops, he cried out that the day still belonged to them. Gathering a handful of officers, he attempted to break through the surrounding Patriot lines, but a volley from Sevier's men brought him down, and his horse dragged him behind enemy lines. There, a Patriot officer confronted him and called for his surrender, but Ferguson answered by shooting the man dead with his pistol as a final gesture of resistance, only to be cut down himself instantly by several Patriots firing at once. When his body was later recovered, it bore seven separate bullet wounds.

With their commander dead, the Loyalists began surrendering en masse. Not every Patriot fighter realized that the enemy was attempting to yield, and some had no wish to accept prisoners at all, still burning with the memory of Waxhaws, where Tarleton's men had cut down Continental troops under Buford's command even after several had already displayed the white flag. (During that earlier battle, Tarleton's horse had been shot at nearly the same moment Patriot soldiers tried to surrender, pinning him beneath the animal and convincing his own men, wrongly, that their commander had been killed while a white flag flew.)

De Peyster, now in command following Ferguson's death, dispatched a messen