/(ings Mountain NATIONAL MILITARY PA'RK

SOUTH CAROLINA Kings Mountain NATIONAL MILITARY PARK Department of the Interior, J. A. Krug, Secretary

National Park Service, Newton B. Drury, Director

Climax of a victorious rising of American frontiersmen against British and Tories in the Carolina foothills in 1780 which foreshadowed the British military defeats of 178I

Kings Mountain, the fierce attack of American Unimpeded by effective resistance, the British frontiersmen on October 7, 1780, against Corn- Southern Campaign swept unchecked through wallis' scouting force under Ferguson, was an Georgia and part of during unexpected onslaught carried out in the foothills 1778-79. The surrender of Gen. Benjamin Lin- of northwestern South Carolina. This sudden up- coln's American army at Charleston, in May rising of the stalwart Alleghany mountaineers, 1780, greatly strengthened the British position. for the protection of their homes and people Soon most of South Carolina, except a few dis- from the threat of Tory invasion under British tricts in the Piedmont, was overrun by British leadership, was relatively isolated in conception and Royalist forces directed by Lord Cornwallis. and execution from the main course of the His plans for an immediate invasion of North Revolutionary War in the South. Carolina were upset temporarily by the advance Clearly unforeseen in the grand British plan of a new American army under Gates. At Cam- to subjugate the South in a final effort to end den, on August 16, 1780, Gates suffered a disas- the Revolution, this accidental encounter in the trous defeat, again leaving South Carolina and Southern Piedmont delayed incidentally, but did the route northward open to the British. not alter materially, the movement of Britain's Southern Campaign. Kings Mountain is notable chiefly perhaps as supplying the first definite Cornwallis Threatens the Frontier forewarning of the impending British military disasters in 1781. It was decisive to the extent The only southern region in the path of Corn- that it contributed the earliest distinct element wallis' northward march remaining undisturbed of defeat to the final major British campaign of by the course of the war lay in the foothills and the Revolution. ranges of the Alleghanies stretching through northwestern South Carolina, western , and into the present eastern Tennessee. The Southern Campaign Here, the independent mountain yeomen, largely of Scotch-Irish descent, were occupied with The extraordinary action at Kings Mountain establishing a new frontier and protecting their occurred during one of the bleakest periods of rude homes from the nearer threat of the border the Revolution. A major change in British mili- Indians, and had been little concerned with the tary strategy had again shifted the sceneof action war on the seaboard. But their free and compar- to the South in 1778. Faced by a discouraging atively peaceful existence was soon to be dis- campaign in the North, and assuming that the turbed by a threat of direct aggression. reputed Loyalist sympathies of the South would That threat came from Maj. , be more conducive to a victory there, the British of Cornwallis' command, who, after Camden, war ministry now undertook to conquer the had been ordered to operate in the South Caro- South. lina Piedmont to suppress the Whig opposition upon which Ferguson camped and gradually to Whig detachments moved into position around close in from all sides. the ridge After dismounting and passing through Ham- As the two Whig commands neared Fergu- U It J f bright's Gap, some three-quarters of a mile west son's lines, the Tories charged and drove them of Kings Mountain, the frontier detachments down tile slope at the point of the bayonet. JRICK FERGUSON, tile best shot in the moved rapidly into their preassigned positions Though they had no bayonets, the Whigs rallied .British army, invented a rifle ill 1776thaI around the ridge. Seeking cover in the wooded at the foot, and the unerring marksmanship of . loaded at the iJTeecn.