Kings Mountain: The Backcountry Turns on the Loyalists
Frontier militia annihilate a Loyalist force and kill its British commander
Quick facts
- Location
- Kings Mountain, South Carolina
- Date
- 7 October 1780
- British/Loyalist commander
- Major Patrick Ferguson, killed in the battle
- Casualties
- Roughly 1,108 Loyalist; 90 patriot
What happened
After the disaster at Camden, British Major Patrick Ferguson led a force of American Loyalists into the South Carolina and North Carolina backcountry to recruit support and threaten frontier settlements. Roughly 900 patriot militiamen, many of them so-called Overmountain Men from the Appalachian frontier, pursued and cornered Ferguson's roughly 1,000 Loyalists atop Kings Mountain on 7 October 1780. Fighting Indian-style from cover, the patriots overwhelmed the position within about an hour; Ferguson was killed, and the battle proved one of the most lopsided of the war, with over 1,000 combined Loyalist casualties and prisoners against only about 90 patriot losses.
Why it matters
Thomas Jefferson called Kings Mountain "the turn of the tide of success" in the South, since it broke the British strategy of relying on Loyalist militia to hold the Carolina backcountry and forced Cornwallis to delay his planned invasion of North Carolina. The battle also showed that the war in the South was as much a civil war between patriot and Loyalist neighbors as a fight against British regulars.
How we know
American Battlefield Trust's account of the battle cites the recorded casualty and prisoner totals and Jefferson's own words describing its significance.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Battle of Kings Mountain · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- American Battlefield Trust. Kings Mountain: Battle Facts and Summary · Primary source (author-declared)battlefields.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineThe American Revolution30 events · How a tax dispute among British colonists became a war for independence and a new republicView all →