e McDowells, Charles
and Joseph, with the bold borderers of Burke; Colonels Lacy and
Hill, with well-trained soldiers of South Carolina; and
Brigadier-General James Williams, leading the intrepid Rowan
volunteers.

Before breaking camp at Quaker Meadows, the leading officers in
conference chose Colonel William Campbell as temporary officer of
the day, until they could secure a general officer from
headquarters as commander-in-chief. The object of the
mountaineers and big-game hunters was, in their own terms, to
pursue Ferguson, to run him down, and to capture him. In
pursuance of this plan, the leaders on arriving at the ford of
Green River chose out a force of six hundred men, with the best
mounts and equipment; and at daybreak on October 6th this force
of picked mounted riflemen, followed by some fifty "foot-cavalry"
eager to join in the pursuit, pushed rapidly on to the Cowpens.
Here a second selection took place; and Colonel Campbell, was
again elected commander of the detachment, now numbering some
nine hundred and ten horsemen and eighty odd footmen, which
dashed rapidly on in pursuit of Ferguson.

The British commander had been apprised of the coming of the
over-mountain men. Scorning to make a forced march and attempt to
effect a junction with Cornwallis at Charlotte, Ferguson chose to
make a stand and dispose once for all of the barbarian horde whom
he denounced as mongrels and the dregs of mankind. After
despatching to Cornwallis a message asking for aid, Ferguson took
up his camp on King's Mountain, just south of the North Carolina
border line, in the present York County, South Carolina. Here,
after his pickets had been captured in silence, he was surprised
by his opponents. At three o'clock in the afternoon of October
7th the mountain hunters treed their game upon the heights.

The battle which ensued presents an extraordinary contrast in the
character of the combatants and the nature of the strategy and
tactics. Each party ran true to form--Ferguson repeating
Braddock's suicidal policy of opposing bayonet charges to the
deadly fusillade of riflemen, who in Indian fashion were
carefully posted behind trees and every shelter afforded by the
natural inequalities of the ground. In the army of the Carolina
and Virginia frontiersmen, composed of independent detachments
recruited from many sources and solicitous for their own
individual credit, each command was directed in the battle by its
own leader. Camp