“Kings Mountain: America’s Most Forgotten Battle that Changed the Course of the Revolution.” By Phillip Thomas Tucker. The Battle of Kings Mountain was the most remarkable, unexpected, and unorthodox patriot victory fought during the course of the American Revolution.
The victors of Kings Mountain were South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina backcountry volunteers—a ghost army that suddenly materialized practically out of thin air from both sides of the Appalachian Mountains on its own volition and without authorization from the Continental Congress or Continental officers.
To defend their farms and families and the land they loved, on October 7, 1780, this ad hoc force of country folk volunteers from remote settlements across the frontier suddenly descended upon a well-trained and well-equipped force of more than 1,000 Royal Provincial and Loyalist troops who defiantly made their last stand on the summit of Kings Mountain, after having been caught by surprise.
During one of the hardest fought and bloodiest battles of the American Revolution, this one-sided patriot victory at Kings Mountain was a major turning point of the war in the South and the American Revolution itself. The entire pro-British force—the vital left wing of Lord Charles Cornwallis’s army—was killed, wounded, or captured.
This included British Maj. Patrick Ferguson, who commanded the enemy troops and was killed in the battle. Ironically, no battle of the American Revolution more forcefully demonstrated the lethal effectiveness of Southern militia and the future surreal horrors of America’s bloody war of secession, fought just 80 years later.
In fact, this decisive battle in northwestern South Carolina was also fought between fellow Americans, including not only neighbors but also relatives, even fathers and sons, nearly three quarters of a century before the battles of First Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Gettysburg took place.
When it appeared at the time that the war in the Carolinas had been lost to the British, the patriots of Kings Mountain rose splendidly to the challenge to win a shocking success that best personified the essence and spirit of the Revolution, which the victors kept alive during one of the darkest periods of the struggle.
Most importantly, the dramatic patriot victory at Kings Mountain helped set the stage and pave the way for the surrender of Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown just a year later.
Hardback, 408 pages, #1063, $33 minus 10% for TBR subscribers.
