Cornwallis captured the village of Charlotte, N.C., in late September 1780, and waited there for Ferguson to rejoin him. Pulling back with the patriots hard behind, Ferguson decided to turn and fight on Kings Mountain, which rose to 1,700 feet near the North-South Carolina border, 35 miles west of Charlotte. On a plateau bounded by rocky slopes, he deployed just over 1,000 troops. He was the only British soldier among them—all the rest were either Tory militia or regularized Americans. They waited for reinforcements that would never come.

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More than 1,500 lean, angry patriots from the Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee converged on Kings Mountain. As they spread around Ferguson’s position, Virginia’s Colonel William Campbell told them not to wait for orders to attack: “Let each man be his own officer. If in the woods, shelter yourselves and give them Indian play!” His men clambered up the rocky steep, slipping through the brush to sight the Tories. A neighborhood youth had told them about the officer wearing a black-and-white duster, and they knew who it was.

Campbell spotted Ferguson’s men through the autumn woods. “There they are!” he shouted. “Shout like hell and fight like devils!” The backwoodsmen under his command sent a high, primordial war cry keening over the mountainside—a sound that would return to history as the Rebel yell.

Strangely, as if the two sides were lined up across an open field, Ferguson ordered a bayonet charge. As his Tories rushed and then fell back, well-aimed rifle fire picked them off. The patriots closed in from all sides.

Ferguson galloped here, then there, blowing his silver whistle to inspire his troops. A few white flags appeared; furious, he cut them down. Then he realized he was being overrun and, according to the patriots, tried to ride through their lines to escape. A mountain sharpshooter named Robert Young recalled that he saw that conspicuous black-and-white shirt and said to himself, “I’ll try and see what Sweet-Lips can do.” Taking aim with his pet rifle, he fired; a volley of shots knocked the brave but grievously errant Scot from his horse.

With Ferguson down, his second in command tried and failed to rally the Tories. Despite a flurry of white flags, the patriot officers were slow to stop the slaughter. Ferguson was hit by eight or more balls, at least one through the head. His force lost 157 killed, 163 badly wounded and 698 prisoners. Only 28 patriots were killed, and 64 wounded. It was the biggest clash between brother Americans before First Bull Run in Virginia in 1861, and it boosted morale up and down the young republic.

The victorious patriots buried the bodies of the fallen in two shallow pits. Tarleton later asserted that “the mountaineers used every insult and indignity towards the dead body of Ferguson,” and one of his officers said, “While they buried all the other bodies, they stripped Ferguson’s of its clothes and left it naked on the field of battle.” Another account says it was wrapped in a raw beef hide and buried. Patriot soldiers reported that Ferguson’s favorite camp follower, a young woman nicknamed “Virginia Sal,” was killed while tending the wounded and lay beside him in death. According to Draper, “The wolves of the surrounding country were soon attracted to the spot…for several weeks they revelled upon the carcasses of the slain….Long after the war, it is said, that Kings Mountain was the favorite resort of the wolf-hunter.”

It took more than six weeks for news of Ferguson’s defeat at Kings Mountain to reach George Washington at his headquarters in New Jersey. Washington’s papers do not disclose whether he ever learned of the twist of fate by which the fiery Scotsman held his fire and let the American in the high cocked hat canter away, eventually to save the young nation.

Washington journalist Ernest B. “Pat” Furgurson, a former correspondent and columnist for the Baltimore Sun, is the author of Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War.

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