Part 20 (2/2)

2. Where were the Tories a.s.sembling? Who was sent to attack them?

3. Describe the attack. What was the result?

4. In what respect was this an important victory?

5. Mention some of Major Davie's exploits.

6. How did these engagements affect Cornwallis?

7. Who was put in command of the Southern forces? What kind of man was General Gates?

8. What was his first military movement?

9. What occurred on August 15th, 1780?

10. How did the engagement result?

11. What was said of Colonel d.i.c.kson and his regiment?

12. What was the termination of this affair? How did General Gates act?

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

SECOND INVASION OF THE STATE--BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN.

A. D. 1780.

The disaster at Camden left North Carolina without defence against invasion by the British under Lord Cornwallis. But the spirit of Governor Nash and his people was high, and they did not for a moment relax their efforts for the support of the war. In a short time five thousand Continental and militia troops were in motion for the neighborhood of Charlotte.

2. Generals Jethro Sumner and William L. Davidson were put in command of two camps, where the raw levies were drilled and equipped for the field. Colonel Davie was still continually in the enemy's front, to watch and report every movement. Since the rout and dispersion of General Sumter's command by Tarleton, on August 19th, Davie's Battalion was the only mounted force left in the South.

3. In September, Lord Cornwallis at last moved forward from his camp at Camden. He sent Colonel Patrick Ferguson toward the scene of the late Tory defeat at Ramsour's Mill. This Colonel Ferguson was one of the ablest officers in the British army. He was cool, daring and well skilled in everything relating to the conduct of military affairs. He could command men in camp and in battle, and excelled all others in arousing the spirit of the Tories. He induced hundreds of men to take sides with the King when another would have failed.

4. As Lord Cornwallis marched upon North Carolina, Colonel Davie hung upon his front and fell back only as compelled by the advance of the British. He made but one dash against his pursuers before reaching Charlotte; but on arriving there he and Major Joseph Graham halted under the courthouse, in the middle of the village, and surprised Cornwallis and the whole British army by a resistance so b.l.o.o.d.y and stubborn as to prove the right of that place to the name of ”Hornet's Nest,” which Cornwallis bestowed upon it.

[NOTE--Davie's whole force did not number more than two hundred men, and yet so cool and bravely did they meet the British a.s.sault that the enemy was several times driven back. Major Graham was, at that time, just twenty-one years old, and he exhibited such courage and conduct as have never been excelled.

In one attack upon him he received nine wounds and was left for dead on the field, but made his escape.]

5. The English commander was so hara.s.sed by the daring attacks of the militia upon his men at McIntyre's Farm and elsewhere in that neighborhood that he concluded to remain at Charlotte until he could hear from Colonel Ferguson. That officer had halted at a place called Gilberttown, where his one hundred and fifty British Regulars were soon reinforced by large numbers of native Royalists, who came to the English flag to take service in its behalf.

6. Colonel Charles McDowell and others, hearing that Ferguson was enrolling the Tories, met at Watauga and took counsel against him. No general was present, and McDowell was so old they feared he would be unable to endure the probable hard marching necessary to overtake their wily foe. Colonel Campbell, of Virginia, as a courtesy to one belonging outside of the State, was put in command by the North Carolina officers, and they set out with about eleven hundred men to look for the enemy.

7. Colonels Shelby, Sevier, Cleveland, and Major Joseph McDowell, of North Carolina, together with Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, selected nine hundred picked men from their mounted force, and through the stormy thirty hours of their march kept their saddles, until, on the morning of the 7th of October, they found the foe with eleven hundred and twenty-five men on the summit of King's Mountain. It was a strong position, but the heroic mountaineers at once surrounded it and began the attack.

8. Ferguson fought like a lion at bay, but the deadly rifles of the a.s.sailants were plied upon his ranks as the Royalists were pushed back step by step. Time and again the British commander headed the Regulars, and by desperate charges down the mountain side drove back a portion of the advancing Whig lines. At last Ferguson was slain, after being many times wounded, and soon the British fire slackened, and then to the nine hundred militiamen of the hills the remnant of the Royalists laid down their guns.

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