hot and stabbed in the desperate struggle.

Ferguson had about eleven hundred men in the action. Of these about
four hundred were killed, wounded, or missing, and some seven hundred
made prisoners. Of the patriots, twenty-eight were killed and about
sixty wounded.

{104} Under bold and resolute leaders, the backwoods riflemen had
swept over the mountains like a Highland clan. Their work done, they
wished to return home. They knew too well the dangers of an Indian
attack on those they had left in their distant log cabins.

After burying their dead, and loading their horses with the captured
guns and supplies, the victors shouldered their rifles, and, carrying
their wounded on litters made of the captured tents, vanished from
the mountains as suddenly as they had appeared.

Such was the defeat of the red dragoons at King's Mountain. It proved
to be one of the decisive battles of the Revolution, and was the turn
of the tide of British success in the South. The courage of the
Southern patriots rose at a bound, and the Tories of the Carolinas
never recovered from the blow.

{105}

CHAPTER VIII
FROM TEAMSTER TO MAJOR GENERAL

On July 3, 1775, under the great elm on Cambridge Common, Washington
took command of the patriot army. During the siege of Boston, which
followed, his headquarters were in that fine old mansion, the Craigie
house, where, from time to time, met men whose names became great in
the history of the Revolution.

[Illustration: Washington taking Command of the American Army, at
Cambridge]

Hither came to consult with the commander in chief three men who died
hated and scorned by their countrymen. The first was Horatio Gates, a
vainglorious man, given to intrigue and treachery. Next came tall and
slovenly Charles Lee of Virginia, a restless adventurer, who, by his
cowardice in the battle of Monmouth, stirred even Washington to
anger. Then there was a young man for whom Washington had a peculiar
liking on account of his great personal bravery, who afterward became
the despised Benedict Arnold.

But here were also gathered men of another stamp,--men whom the
nation delights to honor. From the granite hills of New Hampshire,
came rough and ready John Stark, who afterwards whipped the British
at Bennington. From little Rhode Island, came Nathanael Greene, a
young Quaker, who began life as a blacksmith, {106} but who became
the ablest general of the Revolution except Washington.

Into this group