oops, besides
cannon, arms, and munitions of war, but the defeat affected the spirits
of his army and destroyed his hold over his Indian allies, who began
to desert in large numbers. Bennington, in fact, was one of the most
important fights of the Revolution, contributing as it did so largely to
the final surrender of Burgoyne's whole army at Saratoga, and the utter
ruin of the British invasion from the North. It is also interesting as
an extremely gallant bit of fighting. As has been said, there was no
strategy displayed, and there were no military operations of the higher
kind. There stood the enemy strongly intrenched on a hill, and Stark,
calling his undisciplined levies about him, went at them. He himself was
a man of the highest courage and a reckless fighter. It was Stark who
held the railfence at Bunker Hill, and who led the van when Sullivan's
division poured into Trenton from the river road. He was admirably
adapted for the precise work which was necessary at Bennington, and he
and his men fought well their hand-to-hand fight on that hot August day,
and carried the intrenchments filled with regular troops and defended by
artillery. It was a daring feat of arms, as well as a battle which had
an important effect upon the course of history and upon the fate of the
British empire in America.

KING'S MOUNTAIN

Our fortress is the good greenwood,
Our tent the cypress tree;
We know the forest round us
As seamen know the sea.
We know its walls of thorny vines,
Its glades of reedy grass,
Its safe and silent islands
Within the dark morass.
--Bryant.

The close of the year 1780 was, in the Southern States, the darkest time
of the Revolutionary struggle. Cornwallis had just destroyed the army of
Gates at Camden, and his two formidable lieutenants, Tarlton the light
horseman, and Ferguson the skilled rifleman, had destroyed or scattered
all the smaller bands that had been fighting for the patriot cause. The
red dragoons rode hither and thither, and all through Georgia and
South Carolina none dared lift their heads to oppose them, while North
Carolina lay at the feet of Cornwallis, as he started through it with
his army to march into Virginia. There was no organized force against
him, and the cause of the patriots seemed hopeless. It was at this hour
that the wild backwoodsmen of the western border gathered to strike a
blow for liberty.

When C