Wichita eagle., 1889-04-30
KINGS MOUNTAIN.
The Most Extraordinary Battle of
the Revolution.
How One of CORVALLIS Colonies Insulted
the Settlers in the Cumberland Mount
aims and Thereby Caused His
Own Destruction.
ISt. Louis Republican. ]

Inc battle OF Kings mountain was
| fought one hundred and six years ago. 1t
was not only the most extraordinary bat
! tie Of the revolution, but the very happiest
! in its effect on the temper OF the almost
( despairing patriots, and on the plans
which resulted in the final event of the
war the capture of CORVALLIS army,
! Just one year afterward. 1t was absolute
! ly unexpected. There was not only no
place for it either in the strategy Of Wash
ington or CORVALLIS, but there was no
BODY of men known to the Continental
Congress to fight it. A few settlements
! of emigrants fir ON Virginia and North
Carolina, it was vaguely known, existed
over the Cumberland Mountains, in a re-
gion which now forms part Of the State of
Tennessee; but they were thought to be so
few in numbers, with as much as they
could do in defending their lives against
the repeated fierce attacks of the Creek
Indians, that no reckoning whatever was
taken Of them by the Continental
Congress, nor by the colony of North Caro-
lima, to whom, without knowing 1t, they be-
longed. Indeed, they were SO far away
from the fields of the struggle that they
might as well have belonged to the Span
ish authorities IN the Southwest for all the
good any one dreamed they would ever be
W LAAC PdIIlO6 SdlSC. iuOCSQ, lAOy
might have been content to remain in their
rude cabin homes in the charming valleys
of the Holston, French Broad, Watauga
and Nolachucky, without much concern in
the sluggish war going on east of the
great mountains, had it not been for the
rash insolence Of Colonel Patrick Fergu-
son, of Corvallis army. Ferguson was
rugged and daring fighter, and, having
learned that the patriot leaders whose COM
mands he had routed and dispersed in the
Carolinas had found refuge in the over
mountain settlements he sent word to
Isaac Shelby and John Sewer, chief men
IN the mountains, that if they and their
friends did not at oncs submit to and rec
ognize the Kings authority he would cross
the mountains and lay waste their country.
Shelby was not man to be subdued by
such menace as this. He was
a Marylander by birth, Of Welsh
descent, and had seen some rough serv-
ice against the Indians and British in
Virginia and the Carollnas. Bancroft says
of him: shelby was man of the hardest
make, stiff as iron, among the dauntless
singled out for dauntlessness, who went
right onward and upward like man who
had but one thing to do, and but one
thought-to do it." Whom, therefore, Fer
guson's letter reached him, he mounted
his horse and rode forty miles to the capa-
cious log mansion Of his friend, John
Sewer, on the Watauga They Consulted
a night and day, and the result was
what might have been expected deter
mination to fight and not only to fight, but
to go in search Of Ferguson and fight him
on his own ground. The settlements were
rallied by runners, and in short time all
the able-bodied gunner were assembled
at Sycamore Shoals on the 18th Of Septem-
Der. Even old men and boys obeyed the
order, and it was actually found necessary
to make draft-not to decide who should
go, but who should stay at home, for the
mountaineers were stern, wild, fighting
Presbyterians, who, when piece Of work
had to be done, went about it in true
Scotch-trish spirit. They called themselves
the Western army. They were not under
the authority of Washington nor of the
Continental Congress. They knew no au-
thority but that of Shelby and Sewer, and
that they cheerfully recognized and obeyed
with alacrity. They had no guns
but their own hunting rifles; no bullets
but what they nodded with their
own hands; no baggage train, and
no commissariat, but the bags of
ground parohed corn sweetened with ma
pie strip, which each man carried for him
self, and the sweet potato patches that lay
along the line of march. AS they marched
they were Joined by body of Virginians
under Colonel Campbell and Triplett, some
patriot refugees under Mcdowell, Clark,
Cleveland, Williams and Chronicle, till they
had larger force than was needed, and
one-fourth the men were dismissed, leav-
ing only $40 in the expedition. Ferguson
had heard Of their coming, and for once in
mis- life was forced to take counsel of dis
erection and post himself on the slight ele-
walton called Kings Mountain, near the
northern boundary of South Carolina, to
await the attack In this position he felt
so secure that he declared ''hell itself could
not dislodge him" And yet, If the mount
ain men themselves had had the posting
of him, the position could not have suited
their purposes better. By forced march
they reached the mountain by daylight, on
the 9TH Of October, eleven days from their
start from Sycamore Shoals, and the battle
began 1t lasted but an hour. It took the
line of Decherd rifles that surrounded the
position, spouting straight streams of fire
from their deadly muzZles, just sixty min
utes to move, in a constantly narrowing
circle, from the base to the summit-and
then the battle was won. Ferguson was
killed, and his army killed, wounded and
captured In regular engagements it is
the rule to estimate five soldiers wound
ed to one killed, but the deadly shooting
done by the mountain men in this fight is
attested by the fact that the number of
killed on the British side actually eX-
ceeded the wounded-225 killed, lS5
wounded About 700 were taken prisoners.
The loss of the mountain men was IS killed
and 60 wounded.
To the patriots in the East the victory
seemed to burst out of the sky. 1t put an
entirely new face on the cause Washing
ton, in letter to a friend just before, had
written: Il have almost ceased to hope"
But, after the battle of Kings Mountain,
jefferson wrote: 1T was the joyful enun.
citation Of that turn in the tide of success
that terminated the revolutionary war with
the seal of Independence" Three months
later Tarleton was defeated at Cowpens,
and one year later Cornwallis, driven from
the Carolinas and Virginia, was entrapped
at Yorktown and captured
Thi rty-three years later Isaac Shelby, |
who had been chosen the first Governor of |
Kentucky. went into the war of 1872. and !
led 1000 Kentuckians through Ohio TO join |
Harrison in his invasion of Canada aud |
take part in the decisive victory of the |
Thames over Proctor ana Tecumseh John |
Sewer was in 1870, chosen the first member |
of Congress from the Miss sslppi valley. |