King's Mountain and the rifle that wasn't there

Last week, Jeff Fleming wrote a very good column in keeping with this sesquicentennial year about the Overmountain Men and their role in the Battle of King's Mountain. The column showed that our region played an important part in the American Revolution. If you haven't read it, you should. But there is even more to the story than space permitted Jeff to tell, and I hope to add to it today. First, the chain of events that led to King's Mountain didn't begin at Sycamore Shoals. The story really begins in May of 1780, when Lord Cornwallis placed Major Patrick Ferguson in command of Loyalist militia and charged him with protecting the left flank of the army under Cornwallis' command, as the British set out to secure their hold on South Carolina and advance into North Carolina. Ferguson is known, not only for his role at King's Mountain, but also for inventing the Ferguson Rifle, perhaps the first working breechloading rifle. Firearms, then frequently called "firelocks," were muzzle loading at the time. Most of the forces on both sides in the American Revolution carried smooth-bore muskets. The American Patriots, however, also made use of rifles with spiraled grooves cut into the barrels that imparted spin and velocity to the balls as they left the muzzles. Rifles had longer range than muskets and in the hands of the right shooters were much more accurate, but they were even slower to load than muskets. Rifle balls had to be nested in a greased patch (the "wadding") and forcefully rammed down the muzzle with a ramrod. Musket balls had to be rammed down, too, but the process didn't take as long. All muzzle-loading weapons had the disadvantage that the rifleman or musketeer generally had to be standing to reload the piece. Ferguson wanted to create a breechloader that could be reloaded with its user lying prone, and which could be reloaded faster than by ramming the rifle ball down the barrel from the muzzle. He was successful. The biggest drawback of the rifle he invented was that it took longer to manufacture than a standard musket. It also was hard to repair if the action malfunctioned. Still, a fair number of military historians believe that the bugs could have been worked out if the British Army had persisted. It did not, and it would be decades before other working breechloaders were developed. Patriot partisans, many from what is now East Tennessee, were already active in the Carolinas. One of their commanders was Colonel Isaac Shelby. On Aug. 17, 1780, 200 of them attacked a Loyalist force at Musgrove Mill on the Enoree River in South Carolina. That caused Ferguson to come after the Patriots with his 900 men. Shelby led his men back over the ridge and sent out the call for reinforcements. And reinforcements came from all over the mountains. William Campbell brought militia from Virginia and sent word to Benjamin Cleveland to bring the Wilkes County, N.C., militia. The McDowell brothers, Charles and Joseph, brought 160 from the east side of the ridge. They all gathered at Sycamore Shoals. Then they marched to Roan Mountain and down the eastern ridge. You can travel much the same route today by taking Highway 19E to Roan Mountain, driving into North Carolina through Newland, and then taking N.C. Route 181 down Jonas Ridge. Of course, the trip takes much less time by car than on foot! Anyway, at a place called Quaker Meadows near Morgan Town (modern Morganton), they were joined by still more volunteers. I grew up less than 10 miles from there. By the time I came along, the area was mostly residential subdivisions, but at the time it was a gathering place for all kinds of meetings, even sessions of circuit court. There's a tradition that Andrew Jackson tried cases there. The Patriot militia, by now totaling nearly 1,800 men, drove south. Ferguson received word of their advance and retreated. On Oct. 7, after riding through a raining night, some 900 Patriot militia caught Ferguson and his 1,200 men at King's Mountain. It was Patriot rifles against Loyalist bayonets. Ferguson was killed, and the Loyalists surrendered. For years, I thought Ferguson's men were armed with his famous rifle and that the defeat caused the British Army to give up on the gun. But that doesn't appear to have been the case. The Loyalist militia were armed with standard muskets. It was not a big battle. But as Jeff relates, it was a tremendous shot in the arm to Patriot morale. But the Ferguson rifle was not there. Bob Arrington is a Kingsport attorney. You can email him at r_arrington@chartertn.net.