After arriving at Gilbert Town on October 4, leaders of the over the mountain army learned that Ferguson had moved eastward. They pushed on in pursuit and on October 6 rendezvoused with four hundred more men in South Carolina, at Cowpens–so named for a number of cattle enclosures owned by a wealthy Tory and later to be the scene of another significant battle in the war. At Cowpens, they also learned that Ferguson was at King’s Mountain, or thereabouts. Fearing he would escape and in the interests of speed they divided the force, which by then numbered about seventeen hundred men. A select group of about nine hundred, all mounted, pushed on to attack Ferguson before he could join Cornwallis at Charlotte.

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The attacking party rode all night in rain that sometimes became a downpour, pausing several times to recover lost or wandering groups. They halted in the early afternoon of October 7, about a mile from Ferguson’s hilltop stronghold. The rain had ceased, and the sun was breaking through clouds. The men dismounted, left their horses in charge of pickets, and, advancing on foot, formed a ‘horseshoe of iron’ around King’s Mountain and Patrick Ferguson’s despised Loyalists–the foe they had come so far to engage.

The attackers were loosely organized backwoodsmen not much given to discipline, tactics, or strategy–especially of the European variety. However, owing in part to Ferguson’s overconfidence in his troops, as well as the rain that had prevented dust from betraying its approach, the over the mountain army had the advantage of surprise, and their leaders had formed a general plan of assault. Campbell’s and Shelby’s men (Virginians, Tennesseans, and North Carolinians) would attack first, on both sides of the southwestern end of the ridge, while the rest of the force encircled the northeastern slopes, taking position for later attack. According to legend, Old Round About signaled the advance with a stentorian roar, ‘Shout like hell and fight like devils!’

That was easier said than done, as Campbell’s backwoodsmen soon learned. They dodged up the slope from tree to rock to tree like the Indians from whom they had learned tactics, but Ferguson’s well-trained force on the hilltop let loose a volley, remembered by one Patriot attacker as ‘one long sulfurous blaze.’ Other such volleys quickly followed. The timber and rocks gave the attackers cover, and much of the plunging fire passed harmlessly over their heads, but the Tories then launched a bayonet charge down the hillside. Cold steel is a feared weapon, especially for untrained men, and Campbell’s attackers quickly fell back. But from the base of the hill they broke the Tory attack with precise individual fire from their long hunting rifles.

At about this time, Isaac Shelby’s and John Sevier’s men, arranged opposite William Campbell’s on the facing southern slope, started toward the crest. They met the same type of opposition–volleys and a bayonet charge–and also retreated. They, too, halted at the foot of the hill to break the Loyalist attack with their marksmanship. Then Campbell’s men, egged on by their burly leader, attacked again, with the same result. Then it was Sevier’s turn for a second, unsuccessful try, then Shelby’s.

Ferguson’s whistle blasts were ringing over the hillsides. Meanwhile, however, Patriot forces sheltered behind trees and rocks were pouring in an ‘irregular and destructive fire’ that took a deadly toll in the Scotsmen’s ranks. At about this time, ‘the fight…seemed to become furious,’ a sixteen-year-old under Colonel Benjamin Cleveland’s command remembered. He was right; Patriots in position at the northern end of King’s Mountain were attacking up its steep slopes.

An early death came to Major William Chronicle, aged only twenty-five, when he was killed instantly by a Loyalist volley as he led the ‘South Fork Boys’ of Lincoln County, North Carolina. From a monument now at the site of his death a visitor is afforded an intimidating glimpse of the desperate conditions of the battle. Above the monument, King’s Mountain rises steeply, its rough terrain and tangled timber appearing all but impenetrable–particularly against volley-firing defenders and bayonet charges.

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