r tried leaders. They were
admirably fitted by their daily pursuits for the privations they were
called upon to endure. They had no tents, baggage, bread or salt, but
subsisted on potatoes, pumpkins and roasted corn, and such venison as
their own rifles could procure. Their army consisted of four hundred
men, under Colonel William Campbell, from Washington county, Virginia,
two hundred and forty were under Colonel Isaac Shelby, from Sullivan
county, North Carolina, and two hundred and forty men, from Washington
county, same state, under John Sevier, which assembled at Watauga,
September 25, where they were joined by Colonel Charles McDowell, with
one hundred and sixty men, from the counties of Burke and Rutherford,
who had fled before the enemy to the western waters. While McDowell,
Shelby and Sevier were in consultation, two paroled prisoners arrived
from Furguson with the message that if they did not "take protection
under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang
their leaders, and lay waste their country with fire and sword." On
their march to meet the army of Furguson they were for twenty-four hours
in the saddle. They took that officer by surprise, killed him and one
hundred and eighty of his men, after an engagement of one hour and five
minutes, the greater part of which time a heavy and incessant fire was
kept up on both sides, with a loss to themselves of only twenty killed
and a few wounded. The remaining force of the enemy surrendered at
discretion, giving up their camp equipage and fifteen hundred stand of
arms. On the morning after the battle several of the Royalist (Tory)
prisoners were found guilty of murder and other high crimes, and hanged.
This was the closing scene of the battle of King's Mountain, an event
which completely crushed the spirit of the Royalists, and weakened
beyond recovery the power of the British in the Carolinas. The
intelligence of Furguson's defeat destroyed all Cornwallis's hopes of
aid from those who still remained loyal to Britain's interests. The men
oppressed by British laws and Tryon's cruelty were not yet avenged, for
they were with Morgan at the Cowpens and with Greene at Guildford Court
House, and until the close of the war.

In the settling of South Carolina, every ship that sailed from Ireland
for the port of Charleston, was crowded with men, women and children,
which was especially true after the peace of 1763. About the same date,
within one year,