Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2024 - 62

ADOBESTOCK
Stillness Elicits Reverence
Walking Kings Mountain
The site of the October 7, 1780 battle carries faint echoes of a fateful day
in the quest for American independence.
BY ALAN PELL CRAWFORD
I
t is quiet on the trail on this late
afternoon. The only sounds are
the rustle of the leaves in the
trees, a few bird calls now and
then and the cheerful chatter of
a group of elementary school children.
Their teachers, a few yards ahead of us,
are leading the boys and girls up a gently
sloping asphalt walkway at Kings Mountain
National Military Park, which is just
off Interstate 85 south of the North Carolina/South
Carolina border.
There's a visitor center with an informative
video, a good stock of books
and souvenirs and a pleasant and helpful
staff. The visitor center also features
an exhibit showing how this was once an
old-growth forest with trees far thicker
than anything you will see as you make
the climb today.
You can find more imposing mountains
but Kings Mountain-rising little
more than 1,000 feet above sea level and
prominent only compared to the rolling
hills of the surrounding countryside-has
its own special grandeur, owing to its importance
in the founding of this nation.
It might be quiet on the mountain today,
but it was noisy enough on the after62
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noon of October 7, 1780. That's when
a makeshift army of 1,000 or so supporters
of independence attacked 1,200
loyalists who had staked out a position at
the top of the mountain, in an unlikely
but consequential battle that would, in
significant ways, change the course of
the American Revolution.
The 900 supporters of independence
were, for the most part, " Overmountain
Men, " who had marched from their
small farms on the far side of the Blue
Ridge, joined by maybe 100 Virginians
and Carolinians from east of the Appalachians;
the loyalists, of course, were
Americans, too.
The only Brit in the battle was Major
Patrick Ferguson, a Scotsman. This
capable officer, after joining the army at
15, had risen through the ranks and distinguished
himself for, among other accomplishments,
inventing an impressively
accurate rifle that, unfortunately for
the redcoats, proved too expensive to be
of much use in the war. Well-born and
well-educated-the philosopher David
Hume was a family friend-Ferguson
was one of the most promising young
men in the British army.
After the Revolutionary War had
stalled in the North-the last major
battle there was at Monmouth in June of
1778-the British high command had
decided to take the war to the southern
colonies where they believed great numbers
of loyalists would fight the war for
them. After raising his own troops, Ferguson
had moved them to the western
edges of the colonies to put down pockets
of resistance. These troublesome
colonists must " desist from their opposition
to the British arms, " he announced.
Should they refuse, he vowed to " march
his army over the mountains, hang their
leaders, and lay their country waste with
fire and sword. "
The tough settlers on the far side
of the Appalachians, who did not take
kindly to such talk, included Isaac Shelby
of Kentucky, later its first governor.
Shelby and other local leaders raised
their own troops, marched them over the
Blue Ridge and decided to force the issue.
Ferguson, however, was not worried.
" I arrived today at King's Mountain, "
he told Lord Cornwallis, " and have taken
a post where I do not think I can be
[defeated even by an enemy larger] than
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Blue Ridge Country Sept/Oct 2024

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