point is settled beyond dispute by Hill's narrative. Hill was one of the
four hundred men with Williams, and he expressly states that after the
junction at the Cowpens the force, from both commands, that started out
numbered nine hundred and thirty-three. The question is thus definitely
settled. Most of the later accounts simply follow the statements Shelby
made in his old age.] The British forces were composed in bulk of the
Carolina loyalists--troops similar to the Americans who joined the
mountaineers at Quaker Meadows and the Cowpens [Footnote: There were
many instances of brothers and cousins in the opposing ranks at King's
Mountain; a proof of the similarity in the character of the forces.];
the difference being that besides these low-land militia, there were
arrayed on one side the men from the Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky,
and on the other the loyalist regulars. Ferguson had, all told, between
nine hundred and a thousand troops, a hundred and twenty or thirty of
them being the regulars or "American Volunteers," the remainder tory
militia. [Footnote: The American official account says that they
captured the British provision returns, according to which their force
amounted to eleven hundred and twenty-five men. It further reports, of
the regulars nineteen killed, thirty-five wounded and left on the ground
as unable to march, and seventy-eight captured; of the tories two
hundred and six killed, one hundred and twenty-eight wounded and left on
the ground unable to march, and six hundred and forty-eight captured.
The number of tories killed must be greatly exaggerated. Allaire, in his
diary, says Ferguson had only eight hundred men, but almost in the same
sentence enumerates nine hundred and six, giving of the regulars
nineteen killed, thirty-three wounded, and sixty-four captured (one
hundred and sixteen in all, instead of one hundred and thirty-two, as in
the American account), and of the tories one hundred killed, ninety
wounded, and "about" six hundred captured. This does not take account of
those who escaped. From Ramsey and De Peyster down most writers assert
that every single individual on the defeated side were killed or taken;
but in Colonel Chesney's admirable "Military Biography" there is given
the autobiography or memoir of a South Carolina loyalist who was in the
battle. His account of the battle is meagre and unimportant, but he
expressly states that at the close he and a number of others escaped
t