t the Sycamore Shoals. On the appointed day the
backwoodsmen gathered sixteen hundred strong, each man carrying a long
rifle, and mounted on a tough, shaggy horse. They were a wild and fierce
people, accustomed to the chase and to warfare with the Indians. Their
hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun were girded in by bead-worked
belts, and the trappings of their horses were stained red and yellow.
At the gathering there was a black-frocked Presbyterian preacher, and
before they started he addressed the tall riflemen in words of burning
zeal, urging them to stand stoutly in the battle, and to smite with the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Then the army started, the backwoods
colonels riding in front. Two or three days later, word was brought to
Ferguson that the Back-water men had come over the mountains; that the
Indian-fighters of the frontier, leaving unguarded their homes on the
Western Waters, had crossed by wooded and precipitous defiles to the
help of the beaten men of the plains. Ferguson at once fell back,
sending out messengers for help. When he came to King's Mountain,
a wooded, hog-back hill on the border line between North and South
Carolina, he camped on its top, deeming that there he was safe, for he
supposed that before the backwoodsmen could come near enough to attack
him help would reach him. But the backwoods leaders felt as keenly as
he the need of haste, and choosing out nine hundred picked men, the best
warriors of their force, and the best mounted and armed, they made a
long forced march to assail Ferguson before help could come to him. All
night long they rode the dim forest trails and splashed across the fords
of the rushing rivers. All the next day, October 16, they rode, until in
mid-afternoon, just as a heavy shower cleared away, they came in sight
of King's Mountain. The little armies were about equal in numbers.
Ferguson's regulars were armed with the bayonet, and so were some of his
Tory militia, whereas the Americans had not a bayonet among them; but
they were picked men, confident in their skill as riflemen, and they
were so sure of victory that their aim was not only to defeat the
British but to capture their whole force. The backwoods colonels,
counseling together as they rode at the head of the column, decided to
surround the mountain and assail it on all sides. Accordingly the bands
of frontiersmen split one from the other, and soon circled the craggy
hill where Ferguson's forces were