Rifles and Riflemen at the Battle of Kings Mountain

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE POPULAR STUDY SERIES
History No. 12
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, J. A. KRUG, Secretary
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, NEWTON B. DRURY, Director
Reprinted 1947
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C.—Price 15 cents
Maj. Patrick Ferguson, British commander at the Battle of Kings Mountain, and inventor of the breechloading rifle bearing his name; from a marble bust.
By Roger W. Young, Historian Branch of History
Kings Mountain, the fierce attack of American frontiersmen on October 7, 1780, against Cornwallis’ scouting force under Ferguson, was an unexpected onslaught carried out in the foothills of South Carolina. This sudden uprising of the stalwart Alleghany mountaineers, for the protection of their homes and people from the threat of Tory invasion under British leadership, was relatively isolated in conception and execution from the main course of the Revolutionary War in the South.
Clearly uncontemplated in the grand British design to subjugate the South in a final effort to end the Revolution, this accidental encounter in the Southern Piedmont delayed incidentally, but did not alter materially, the movement of Britain’s Southern Campaign. Kings Mountain is notable chiefly perhaps as supplying the first definite forewarning of the impending British military disasters of 1781. It was decisive to the extent that it contributed the earliest distinct element of defeat to the final major British campaign of the Revolution.
The extraordinary action occurred during one of the bleakest periods of the Revolution. A major change in British military strategy had again shifted the scene of action to the South in 1778. Faced by a discouraging campaign in the North and assuming that the reputed Loyalist sympathies of the South would be more conducive to a victory there, the British war ministry had dictated the immediate subjugation of the South. With the conquered Southern provinces as a base of operations, the war office planned to crush Washington’s armies in the North and East between offensives from North and South, and thus bring the defeat of the more stubborn Revolutionary Northern colonies.