Ferguson had come to hate the guerrillas with whom he had been so fiercely and unconventionally fighting. He also believed he was leading a historic campaign that ultimately would make his military reputation and perhaps his private fortune. He must have allowed such dreams and his vanity to get the better of him, because he arrogantly sent the reputed over the mountain gathering a fiery written warning that if they did not cease opposition to King George III, he would ‘hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword.’

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Throwing down the gauntlet like that did not sit well with the independent mountain men who were gathering to resist him. Among the leaders of the gathering Patriot army were such men as Issac Shelby (later the first governor of Kentucky) and John Sevier (’Nolichucky Jack,’ later the first governor of Tennessee). By September 25, 1780, about one thousand fighting men from Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia–all itching to give Patrick Ferguson a lesson in manners and warfare–had assembled at Sycamore Springs on the Watauga River. Most were mounted; all were armed, and not just with rifles, pistols, and knives. In an era of simple beliefs, they were confident that a blessing from on high accompanied them.

‘Oh, God of battle,’ prayed the Reverend Samuel Doak, specifically recruited for such a farewell by John Sevier, ‘arise in Thy might. Avenge the slaughter of Thy people…. Help us as good soldiers to wield the sword of the Lord and Gideon!’

Armed with their weapons and faith, the over the mountain army–leaving a reluctant contingent to guard houses and farms–marched eastward by companies on September 26. In five days, sometimes through early snow, they covered ninety miles over the Blue Ridge Mountains to Quaker Meadows on the Catawba River in North Carolina. There, 350 additional fighting men joined them. Then the column pushed on toward Gilbert Town, eating mostly parched corn and raw turnips, encountering once a violent rainstorm.

An officers’ council chose Colonel Charles McDowell, who had brought in 160 North Carolinians, overall leader. Later, McDowell departed for Horatio Gates’ headquarters in search of a regular soldier to take command, and the council voted temporary leadership to Colonel William Campbell of Virginia (’Old Round About,’ who weighed more than three hundred pounds).

Ferguson–well informed of the column’s approach but wrongly believing he was greatly outnumbered–had moved east toward Charlotte, North Carolina, and Cornwallis’ main force. On October 5, he was only fifty miles from both, at Tate’s plantation. From there, he appealed to Cornwallis for ‘three or four hundred good soldiers, part dragoons’ to help finish off the’set of mongrels’ moving to attack him. For some reason, Cornwallis did not receive this request in time, and from Tate’s the Scotsman led his Tory army northeastward to what he apparently considered an impregnable position on top of King’s Mountain.

The ‘mountain’ really was not much more than a thickly forested hill named for a family living near its foot and rising steeply about sixty feet from rolling terrain. Part of a sixteen-mile-long range of larger and smaller hills rising in North Carolina and running southwest into York County, South Carolina, King’s Mountain had a spring to water Ferguson’s men and horses and plenty of timber for barricades. The hill, about six hundred yards in length at its base, was shaped not unlike a caveman’s club, with the thicker, or wider, end at the northeast. Its crest, averaging not much more than thirty feet in width, was relatively flat and clear of trees and underbrush.

Confident that attackers would not be able to fight their way up the steep, wooded slopes of the mountain under fire, and perhaps too reliant on his bayonet-trained troops, Ferguson disdained to cut down trees for barricades. Instead, he placed wagons and baggage as a weak barrier along the northeast crest, where he established headquarters, and deployed his men along both sides and ends of the hilltop to await attack.

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