g. The total loss of the Americans was twenty-eight killed
and sixty wounded, Colonel Williams, a man of great valor and
discretion, being among the killed.

The battle ended, a thirst for vengeance arose. Among the Tory
prisoners were known house--burners and murderers. Among the victors
were men who had seen their cruel work, had beheld women and children,
homeless and hopeless, robbed and wronged, nestling about fires kindled
in the ground, where they mourned their slain fathers and husbands.
Under such circumstances it is not strange that they seized and hanged
nine or ten of the captives, desisting only when Campbell gave orders
that this work should cease, and threatened with severe punishment all
who engaged in it.

The victory of the men of the backwoods at King's Mountain was like the
former one of Washington at Trenton. It inspired with hope the
despairing people and changed the whole aspect of the war. It filled the
Tories of North Carolina with such wholesome dread that they no longer
dared to join the foe or molest their patriot neighbors. The patriots of
both the Carolinas were stirred to new zeal. The broken and dispirited
fragments of Gates's army took courage again and once more came together
and organized, soon afterward coming under the skilled command of
General Greene.

Tarleton had reached the forks of the Catawba when news of Ferguson's
signal defeat reached him and caused him to return in all haste to join
Cornwallis. The latter, utterly surprised to find an enemy falling on
his flank from the far wilderness beyond the mountains, whence he had
not dreamed of a foe, halted in alarm. He dared not leave an enemy like
this in his rear, and found himself obliged to retreat, giving up his
grand plan of sweeping the two Carolinas and Virginia into his
victorious net. Such was the work done by the valiant men of the
Watauga. They saved the South from loss until Morgan and Greene could
come to finish the work they had so well begun.

_GENERAL GREENE'S FAMOUS RETREAT._

The rain was pouring pitilessly from the skies. The wind blew chill from
the north. The country was soaked with the falling flood, dark
rain-clouds swept across the heavens, and a dreary mist shut out all the
distant view. In the midst of this cheerless scene a solitary horseman
stood on a lonely roadside, with his military cape drawn closely up, and
his horse's head drooping as if the poor beast was utterly weary of the
situa