Before They Were Heroes at King's Mountain

The Battle of King's Mountain was the turning point of the American Revolution. After more than five years of fighting, the British invaded the southern colonies expecting to amass an army of loyalists as they marched through. After Major Patrick Ferguson threatened to destroy the homes of the overmountain settlers in today's east Tennessee and southwest Virginia, these backwoods militiamen marched over the mountains and defeated Ferguson's detachment at King's Mountain, destroying a third of Lord Cornwallis's army. These men had fought Shawnees, Cherokees, Scots Tories, and British Regulars during the prior six and honed the skills that made them feared as "the yelling boys." The story of their engagements from 1774 to 1780 is an exciting episode in the story of these men as heroes of the American Revolution.