[patriotic fife and drum music] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [musket fire popping] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ [mortar fire booming] ♪ Professor Henry Lumpkin> We're talking today of Kings Mountain, that deadly savage little action.

Where Major Patrick Ferguson, the British commander, lost his life and his entire force to the encircling attack of American frontier riflemen.

♪ Kings Mountain, South Carolina, right here.

The scene of one of the most important and dramatic battles of the American Revolution was fought and won by a force of some 900 American riflemen.

These came from the back country of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia.

Some of them a strong contingent, while the wild hunters from beyond the mountains, the men from the Watauga, Nolichucky, and Holston settlements along the Cherokee frontier in what is now Tennessee.

It must be remembered again that the Revolutionary War in the South was a savage, bitter, civil conflict, brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor, with the exception of Major Patrick Ferguson, who commanded the force fighting under the British flag here at Kings Mountain.

All participants in this battle on both sides were Americans.

Patrick Ferguson was a Scot, an officer in the British Regular Army, but his little army included 800 North and South Carolina loyalist militia, supported by about 100 American provincial troops from the Middle States.

Trained, equipped and uniformed as British regulars.

Ferguson's second in command was Captain Abraham de Peyster, a member of one of New York's most distinguished families.

Captain Samuel Ryerson of Ferguson's Corps was of Dutch descent and came from New Jersey.

Lieutenant Anthony Allaire, whose diary is one of our best sources, was a New York Huguenot.

King's mountain, thus, is not only an important battle, the first link in the chain of events which led to British defeat in America, it also is a bitter irony.

900 Americans fighting bravely for their beliefs were defeated terribly by about 900 Americans, equally dedicated to their concepts of loyalty.

It also was a battle where terrain, this terrain around us here, and weapons were to play an essential role in Ferguson's defeat.

King's mountain was a battlefield test of two military doctrines.

The classic 18th century European concept of close order discipline volley fire, supported by bayonet charges against precision fire Riflemen advancing undercover from cover to cover in open order, up these slopes, falling back before the bayonet rushes and returning again and fighting once more from tree to tree.

As Ferguson's bayonet men, frustrated and weary, retreated back to their positions.

The Patriot force, I shall call them Americans to avoid confusion as opposed to Ferguson's loyalists, were armed chiefly with the long Deckard or Dickert rifle, a muzzle loading flintlock piece of from 43 to 54 caliber.

I have one right here.

It's a beautiful piece.

Balances very nicely indeed.

With a notch rear sight and a bead front sight.

In the hands of a good rifleman, and the back woodsmen at Kings Mountain were exactly that, it had an accurate killing range of about 250 to possibly 300 yards.

Using the greased patch system of loading, a rifleman could deliver one aim shot a minute.

While an expert, you'd have to be a really an extraordinary expert, possibly might fire two.

The frontier rifle, however, was too lightly constructed to use successfully, unloaded with a butt stroke thusly.

All for hand-to-hand fighting in this way.

It also was not fitted with a standard socket or locking ring bayonet.

Very few of the frontier officers had swords and the man after the Indian fashion carried... hatchet and knife.

Hatchet and knife, exactly in this or these forms.

That, by the way, is a very interesting knife.

Hand forged.

It is not the Bowie knife which comes much, much later, almost 100 years later.

Its shape, its form, its shape is much more like the Scottish dirk.

Obviously, they were still forging in the ancestral form, but it has about a 12 inch blade here, double edged, pointed and a very nice balance.

This is your regular frontier tomahawk hatchet.

It can be thrown to stick into a man or a tree if you wish.

It can be used for hand-to-hand fighting, but as an arc weapon and of course, not as efficient as the bayonet.

It also meant that using these weapons, the rifle had to be dropped or switched to the left hand for close work.

A decided disadvantage against bayonet equipped musketeers in a set battle on open terrain.

But this, as you see, here at Kings Mountain, definitely was not a set battle, a classic battle in open terrain.

The British provincial regulars engaged in the battle were armed chiefly with regular issue smoothbore Brown Bess flintlock muskets weighing about 10 pounds and equipped with a socket or locking ring bayonet.

We have one here.

These, usually for the British, were 65 to 68 caliber and loaded with buckshot, or a solid soft led ball running about 14 to the pound.

In other words, a slug about the size of my thumb joint.

They were fearsome weapons at close range.

A smoothbore is faster loading than a rifle, and a well-trained soldier could discharge a musket like this three or possibly five times a minute.

He'd have to be quite an expert to do it five.

The musket, however, was a singularly inaccurate piece with approximately a 9 foot error at about 200 yards and an accurate range of less than 100 yards.

A key factor in this particular battle, as Major George Hanger an outstanding weapons authority to the British army, writing in 1814, was to say "I do maintain and will prove whenever called on, that no man ever was killed at 200 yards by a common soldier's musket, by the person who aimed at him."

Ferguson's loyalist militia, not armed with a bayoneted Brown Bess, were issued knives with specially tapered wooden hilts.

Something like this knife, undoubtedly with a tapered hilt which could be jammed into rifle or fouling piece muzzle thusly to form a crude plug bayonet.

Now there was no artillery used in the battle by either side.

Again an important factor.

The Americans also had no saber armed cavalry.

They came mounted to the battle, but dismounted in frontier fashion to fight on foot.

Ferguson only had 20 sword-armed horsemen with him.

Undoubtedly a factor in his choice of a wooded mountaintop as a battle position.

As Lieutenant Colonel Henry Lee, that's Light-Horse Harry Lee, points out in his memoir, American Rifleman, unequipped for the bayonet, were terrified of British cavalry.

It takes about a minute under pressure to load a flintlock rifle, or more than a minute and a galloping horse with a saber armed dragoon on it's back can cover a lot of ground in a minute.

I have stressed weapons because you cannot understand the Battle of Kings Mountain or any other 18th century battle, unless you really comprehend exactly at what ranges these people fought.

Look down that hill.

Behind me, here.

If you were one of Patrick Ferguson's infantry soldiers, your American opponent, with his precision rifle, would be aiming at you from behind, well, that tree right over there, about 200 yards away, twice as far as your musket could carry accurately.

When you fired your single shot weapon and what followed on Ferguson's order with a bayonet, you would be charging down that steep slope headlong, and your discharge musket with its bayonet would be nothing but a spear or a club.

Your enemy, meanwhile, would be retreating down that same slope, moving easily in his hunting shirt, leggings, and moccasins, taking cover behind trees or logs, and reloading to fire on targets of opportunity, namely you in a red coat.

And his rifle had an accurate killing range of well over 200 yards.

Why did Major Patrick Ferguson, a good and experienced soldier, choose a position impossible to defend against a rifle-armed enemy using forest tactics?

We really do not know.

He held the American back countrymen in vast military contempt, and referred to them constantly as backwater men and mongrels.

The sad underestimation of his enemy undoubtedly must have been part of his decision to choose a presumably impregnable position and make a stand when Lord Cornwallis, with a British field army, lay only 35 to 40 miles away.

A hard day's quick march would have brought Ferguson and his command to safety, and possibly, possibly changed the course of history.

Lord Cornwallis was marching north into North Carolina, when the defeat at King's Mountain, forced him, with the loss of some of his best light troops, to abandon the invasion.

Patrick Ferguson also was quite aware that a large American force was closing in on him.

Two deserters from that force already had come in to bring warning.

He is said to have stated that he was on King's Mountain, right here.

He was king of this mountain and God Almighty could not drive him off this mountain.

Now this, of course, is pure arrogance, a facet of Ferguson's character, which obviously contributed to the disaster.

But his underestimation of the frontier Americans fighting qualities, unhappily for him and his men was matched by his overestimation of the strength of his position.

There was not even a proper water supply near the summit where he made his stand.

The nearest spring is more than half way down the north slope, and fell into American hands soon after the battle started.

What puzzles me most of all is that Patrick Ferguson himself was an expert rifle shot and had invented and demonstrated to the British military authorities a practical working, breech loading flintlock rifle equipped with a bayonet.

While shorter and heavier than the American rifle, it had an accurate range of over 200 yards.

And Patrick Ferguson proved in England he could deliver five shots a minute and hit a man sized target four times at 100 yards.

Only 200 of these rifles ever were made during the Revolutionary War.

The weapon never was adopted by the British Army, and apparently few were in the hands of his troops.

Even the crack 100 provincials at Kings Mountain.

Abraham de Peyster, his second in command, may have carried one, and possibly some others of his officers did.

Patrick Ferguson probably carried his rifle, but he'd lost the use of his right arm from a wound received at the Brandywine, where, according to legend, lying in ambush he spared the life of George Washington himself.

The crippled right arm probably kept him from employing his favorite rifle in the battle.

He was killed at the end of the action.

Probably right near that spot, where the little monument stands.

He was killed at the end of the action, charging on horseback with his sword in his left hand.

Ferguson sent a message by a paroled prisoner to the American commanders of the frontier militia along the western waters of the Watauga, and Nolichucky and Holston rivers.

This had stated that if they did not cease their opposition to British arms, he would march over the mountains, hang the leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword.

This message, plus the presence of Charles McDowell's desperate refugees, had exactly the opposite effect from that which Ferguson expected.

The full force of the district was reckoned at a thousand men, leaving half to guard the settlements against the still dangerous Cherokees, and some 480 riflemen rode to the rendezvous at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River.

Colonel William Campbell of Virginia marched down at the head of 400 riflemen to join them.

The six foot two inch redheaded Scot also carried his ancestral claymore to the battle.

With some 160 refugee North Carolina militia under Charles-- Colonel Charles McDowell, the force numbered over a thousand men, all mounted, most of them armed with the deadly rifle I have shown you.

The rendezvous at Sycamore Shoals must have been quite a sight.

Women and children came with food for the little army to say good-bye to their men marching away to war.

These people were, for the most part, hard, dour, frontier Calvinists who worshiped a stern and righteous God, and the prayers offered by a clergyman present, the Reverend Samuel Doak, were grim and appropriate.

He preached from the Old Testament on Gideon's people rising against the Midianites and told the assembled riflemen to take as their war cry "the sword of Gideon and the Lord."

Very clearly, Patrick Ferguson and his men were the Midianites.

This was truly an Indian fighting force without a supply column, each soldier carrying spare ammunition, clothing, and rations strapped behind his saddle.

The men who followed John Sevier, Isaac Shelby, and William Campbell were the big, shag-haired, rawboned, Southern frontiersmen, just as mean as snakes in a fight, schooled in savage, no-quarter, Indian warfare where white flags had no significance and surrender meant torture, with death finally coming as a mercy.

This also was an army without uniforms, although a few of the officers had swords.

On the 26th of September, the mountain men began their march.

On the second day, as I've said, two men deserted.

These were the same who carried news of the mountaineers' approach to Patrick Ferguson.

When the frontier militia reached the foot of the mountains on 30 September, they were joined on the upper Catawba River by 350 troops from Wilkes and Surry Counties, North Carolina, led by Colonel Benjamin Cleveland, a noted and ruthless Indian fighter, and Major Joseph Winston.

On the 2nd of October, camped in a gap at South Mountain, the officers of the several contingents agreed that Colonel William Campbell should be overall commander.

The senior officer present, Colonel Charles McDowell, was sent to General Horatio Gates' camp to see if the famous Daniel Morgan might not be persuaded to lead the attack, the Daniel Morgan who'd led the riflemen at Saratoga.

These men were veteran partisans who'd served under Colonel Elijah Clarke, the famous Georgia guerilla leader.

Shortly thereafter, Colonels Edward Lacey and William Hill, with 100 South Carolinians-- mostly York and Chester County men-- joined the expedition.

A hard and dedicated group of fighters rode into the rendezvous at the Cowpens, Saunders' Cowpens.

Colonel Frederick Hambright, Colonel Graham, and Major William Chronicle came in with 60 men from the Gilbert Town area.

And the disputatious, aggressive, but able Colonel James Williams joined the little army with 60 North Carolina Volunteers.

The combined force, about 1,100 strong, met at the designated place, Saunders Cowpens, sometimes called Hannah's Cowpens, a site for a later, even more decisive battle on January 7th of the next year.

Here, 920 men, all mounted, were chosen to close in on Patrick Ferguson here on Kings Mountain for the death hunt.

These included 200 crack riflemen from William Campbell's command, 120 under Isaac Shelby, 120 led by John Sevier, 110 men following Benjamin Cleveland, Joseph McDowell with 90, and Joseph Winston leading 60.

Edward Lacey commanded his 100 South Carolinians, and James Williams brought 60, while Frederick Hambright and Graham led 50.

The 30 Georgians formed part of James Williams' battalion, and Major William Chronicle's South Ford men marched, as before, with Graham's command.

Chronicle would lead them in the battle, Graham having been given leave of absence, by the way.

The Kings Mountain range is only about 16 miles in length, extending generally from the northeast in North Carolina in a southwesterly direction into South Carolina.

The ridge where the battle was fought is in York County, South Carolina, about a mile and a half from the North Carolina line.

It is some 600 yards long and about 250 yards wide from one base across to the other.

The top of the ridge itself is from 60 to 120 yards wide, tapering here to the south, so narrow that even the musket of the period would carry easily at killing range across the battle area.

The summit of the hill where we stand is about 60 feet above the surrounding country.

It was at the wide end of the plateau-- up behind you here, ahead of me-- that Ferguson chose to stand and fight.

Because of the difficult terrain and heavy woods that you see right here, the backwoodsmen were not discovered by Ferguson until his pickets, thrown out on the hill slopes, spotted them advancing about a quarter of a mile away.

The Americans were so close they could hear the Loyalists' drums beating to quarters and Ferguson's famous silver whistle calling his men to battle.

Isaac Shelby and William Campbell, coming up on two sides of the ridge from the southwest, were the first to open the battle, while the other American commanders came into position around the hill.

According to tradition, at 3:00 in the afternoon, William Campbell, leading his Virginians, suddenly shouted, "Here they are, my brave boys!

Shout like hell and fight like devils!"

-- which the frontiersmen proceeded to do.

They raised what has been described as the "Tennessee Yell," a wild war shout or war scream, probably derived from a Cherokee war scream.

Captain Abraham de Peyster, Ferguson's second in command, who'd heard the same battle cry at hard-fought Musgrove's Mills, where he faced Isaac Shelby for the first time, is reported to have said, "These things are ominous.

These are the damned yelling boys."

Patrick Ferguson's men formed a circle, and he chose to fight a European-style battle... aimed volley fire, by the ranks, supported by directed bayonet charges against threatened salients, or parts of the circle.

William Campbell and Isaac Shelby had borne the brunt of the fighting, having been driven back three times by desperate bayonet charges, the last charge almost routing them.

As the British charged in one sector, however, the Americans would move up in another sector and shoot them from behind.

When the charge fell back to re-form on the ridge, the frontier riflemen would rally, reload, and follow the retreating Loyalists, killing them at rifle range from behind cover.

At last, the circle-- the American circle around this embattled hilltop-- was complete, and the wilderness hunters pressed in from all sides.

Suffering heavy casualties and running out of ammunition, Patrick Ferguson's force, weary, discouraged, and increasingly hopeless, began to waver.

Ferguson himself had been wounded in the hand, but he continued to ride from point to point, a clear target for every rifleman, encouraging his men with cool and desperate courage to continue to fight.

When white flags were raised, he cut them down with his sword.

Finally, Ferguson determined to try and break the circle with a mounted charge.

Calling for volunteers, which included a South Carolina and a North Carolina colonel, he led his mounted contingent, his small, mounted contingent, sword in hand, against the American lines.

He fell, wounded.

Fifty riflemen were aiming at him personally.

He fell, wounded mortally in many places, and everyone who followed him were killed also.

And he fell right by that monument here.

This stone at the northeastern end of Kings Mountain marks where he died.

Captain Abraham de Peyster, who succeeded to the command, realizing the battle was lost, finally raised a white flag and asked for quarter.

Isaac Shelby shouted, "Damn you if you want quarter!

Throw down your arms!"

-- riding up to within 15 yards of Patrick Ferguson's beaten force.

The British losses in the action were 119 killed, 123 wounded, and 664 captured.

The American loss, according to the official report, was 28 killed and 62 wounded.

I regret to say, some reports state that Ferguson's poor body was mutilated as it lay by some of the frontier militia.

It probably is true.

This first important American victory in the South since the defense of Fort Sullivan in 1776 had a profound effect.

General George Washington proclaimed it, in his general orders to the army, as an important victory gained and a proof of the spirit and resources of the country.

Loyalist elements in North Carolina and South Carolina were intimidated.

American hopes revived, Lord Cornwallis was forced to fall back from his intended expedition into North Carolina, and Lord Cornwallis also lost an important element of his best scouting forces and a very brave and valuable officer.

Kings Mountain set the scene for Nathanael Greene's arrival with a new army for the Battle of Cowpens and the final expulsion of the British from North and South Carolina.

From the military point of view, Kings Mountain has a meeting-- or was a meeting-- of two battle doctrines.

Patrick Ferguson tried to use disciplined volley fire by rank and bayonet charges on the European model.

His enemy were American riflemen fighting a no-quarter battle in open order and advancing through natural cover.

The result was inevitable.

It is probable that the formation of the famous British rifle brigade in the Napoleonic Wars-- uniformed in green and carrying the Baker rifle, loaded with a greased patch like American weapons-- was based on British experience in the American war.

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