Historians consider the Battle of Kings Mountain to be the “turning point in the South” in America’s War for Independence. The victory of Patriots over Loyalist troops destroyed the left wing of Cornwallis’ army. The battle also effectively ended, at least temporarily, the British advance into North Carolina. Lord Cornwallis was forced to retreat from Charlotte into South Carolina to wait for reinforcements. The victory of the Overmountain Men allowed General Nathaniel Greene the opportunity to reorganize the American Army.
When British General Henry Clinton learned of his men’s defeat at Kings Mountain, he is reported to have called it “the first link of a chain of evils” that he feared might lead to the collapse of the British plans to quash the Patriot rebellion. He was right. American forces went on to defeat the British at Cowpens. A little more than a year after Kings Mountain, Washington accepted Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown, Virginia.
The battle, fought October 7th, 1780, proved to be the turning point in the British Southern campaign. The American Continental army suffered successive defeats at Charleston, Waxhaws, and Camden, South Carolina, in the summer of 1780. By the fall, only the voluntary militia units remained in the field to oppose the armies of Cornwallis.
To recruit and equip militia loyal to the British cause, Cornwallis sent Major Patrick Ferguson into the western Carolinas. He was to raise a loyal militia army and suppress the remaining Patriot militia. Intending to cow the Patriots, in September he sent a proclamation to the mountain settlements, telling them to lay down their arms, or he would march his army west, and “lay waste the countryside with fire and sword.”
The result was the march of the famous Overmountain men from the Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga River across the mountains in search of Ferguson. Overcoming hunger, weather, wrangling, and intrigue, the Patriots attacked and destroyed Ferguson’s Loyalists at Kings Mountain.
The Patriot army, nominally under the command of William Campbell from Virginia, contained strong leaders who managed to combine their efforts. John Sevier would go on to serve as Tennessee’s first governor. Isaac Shelby would be Kentucky’s first governor. Benjamin Cleveland would serve as a civic leader and judge in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Joseph Winston, Joseph McDowell, Andrew Hampton, William Chronicle, and Joseph Hambright all led troops from North Carolina. William Hill, Edward Lacey, and James Williams led contingents from South Carolina. William Candler led a small group from Georgia.
Charles McDowell from North Carolina helped organize the army. But he stepped aside before the battle to preserve a united Patriot army.
