Kings Mountain: Where the Revolution Turned

The city of Kings Mountain shares its name with a ridge a few miles south, just across the South Carolina line, where on October seventh, seventeen eighty, nine hundred Patriot militiamen from the Appalachian backcountry surrounded and destroyed a Loyalist force under British Major Patrick Ferguson. Ferguson was shot from his horse. One hundred fifty-seven Loyalists were killed and roughly seven hundred captured.

The Patriots lost twenty-eight men. Thomas Jefferson later called it the joyful annunciation of the turn of the tide. Lord Cornwallis, shaken by the loss, cancelled his planned invasion of North Carolina and retreated south, a decision that set the stage for Yorktown a year later.

The battle is remembered as one of the few purely American engagements of the Revolution, fought entirely by colonial militias with Ferguson the only British regular on the field and no French allies on either side.