d and butchered. The final
order was for each man to look carefully at the priming of his rifle,
and then to go into battle and fight till he died.

The Battle.

The foes were now face to face. On the one side were the American
backwoodsmen, under their own leaders, armed in their own manner, and
fighting after their own fashion, for the freedom and the future of
America; on the opposite side were other Americans--the loyalists, led
by British officers, armed and trained in the British fashion, and
fighting on behalf of the empire of Britain and the majesty of the
monarchy. The Americans numbered, all told, about nine hundred and fifty
men. [Footnote: Nine hundred and ten horsemen (possibly nine hundred, or
perhaps nine hundred and thirty-three) started out; and the footmen who
kept up were certainly less than fifty in number. There is really no
question as to the American numbers; yet a variety of reasons have
conspired to cause them to be generally greatly overstated, even by
American historians. Even Phelan gives them fifteen hundred men,
following the ordinary accounts. At the time, many outsiders supposed
that all the militia who were at the Cowpens fought in the battle; but
this is not asserted by any one who knew the facts. General J. Watts
DePeyster, in the _Mag. of Am. Hist._ for 1880,--"The Affair at King's
Mountain,"--gives the extreme tory view. He puts the number of the
Americans at from thirteen hundred to nineteen hundred. His account,
however, is only based on Shelby's later narratives, told thirty years
after the event, and these are all that need be considered. When Shelby
grew old, he greatly exaggerated the numbers on both sides in all the
fights in which he had taken part. In his account of King's Mountain, he
speaks of Williams and the four hundred Flint Hill men joining the
attacking body _after_, not _before_, the nine hundred and ten picked
men started. But his earlier accounts, including the official report
which he signed, explicitly contradict this. The question is thus purely
as to the time of the junction; as to whether it was after or before
this that the body of nine hundred actual fighters was picked out.
Shelby's later report contains the grossest self-contradictions. Thus it
enumerates the companies which fought the battle in detail, the result
running up several hundred more than the total he gives. The early and
official accounts are in every way more worthy of credence; but the