The Battle of Kings Mountain

Patrick Ferguson made his stand on Kings Mountain, a steep, rocky ridge in South Carolina. The high ground was his. The timber was not. The slopes were thick with trees and boulders, and the men coming up them had grown up hunting in woods like these.

They surrounded the ridge on October 7, 1780. Ferguson rode his line blowing a silver whistle to signal his men, and three times he sent them down the slope with the bayonet. Each time the riflemen gave way into the trees, then came back.

Ferguson, a Scot, was the only regular British soldier on the field. Everyone else on both sides was American, including about a hundred Northern Provincials in red coats. After 65 minutes he was dead, shot from his horse, and his command had lost 157 killed, 163 wounded and 668 captured. The Patriots lost 28 killed. Cornwallis pulled out of Charlotte, and Thomas Jefferson later called the battle the turn of the tide of success.

The painting is all autumn: red and orange leaves, mossy boulders and drifting smoke. An officer in blue and buff on a black horse raises his saber, riflemen in buckskin push forward, and a line of red coats fires from the higher ground at the right.