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King's Mountain

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A mountainous ridge in Gaston county, North Carolina and York county, South Carolina, U.S.A. It is an outlier of the Blue Ridge running parallel with it, i.e. N.E. and S.W., but in contrast with the other mountains of the Blue Ridge, King's Mountain has a crest marked with sharp and irregular notches. Its highest point and great escarpment are in North Carolina. About 12 m. S. of the line between the two states, where the ridge is about 60 ft. above the surrounding country and very narrow at the top, the battle of King's Mountain was fought on the 7th of October 1780 between a force of about loo Provincial Rangers and about r000 Loyalist militia under Major Patrick Ferguson (1744-1780), and an American force of about 900 backwoodsmen under Colonels William Campl;ell (1745-1781), Benjamin Cleveland (1738-1806) ,Isaac Shelby, John Sevier and James Williams (1740-1780), in which the Americans were victorious. The British loss is stated as 119 killed (including the commander), 123 wounded, and 664 prisoners; the American loss was 28 killed (including Colonel Williams) and 62 wounded. The victory largely contributed to the success of General Nathanael Greene's campaign against Lord Cornwallis. There has been some dispute as to the exact site of the engagement, but the weight of evidence is in favour of the position mentioned above, on the South Carolina side of the line. A monument erected in 1815 was replaced in 1880 by a much larger one, and a monument for which Congress appropriated $30,000 in 1906, was completed in 1909.

See L. C. Draper, King's Mountain and its Heroes (Cincinnati, 1881); and Edward McCrady, South Carolina in the Revolution 1 7751 7 80 (New York, 1901).