King's Mountain, Part Ii

...And though the rifles were slower to load, the Overmountain Men made use of trees, concealing themselves from counterfire in places that the British couldn’t see. With countless snipers popping out to shoot, all the loyalists there atop the hill knew that something had to be done quickly, so many had already been killed. Ferguson ordered a bayonet charge, old steel glinting as his men pushed down, the patriots scattered, running away, it seemed the British would hold the ground… But as soon as the men returned to the line, the Americans moved back in again, two more charges had the same damn result, flashing bayonets could not break these men. As they kept shooting, chipping away, the loyalists knew that things were dire, too many of their brethren lay dead, cut down by the frontiersman’s fire. These patriots were men who shot for food, missing for them meant their families might starve, the killed so many that white flags went up, leaving Ferguson rather alarmed. He rode through, hacking the flags with his sword, calling on his men for courage and grit, but just then the patriots spotted his horse, charged up and shot Ferguson off of it. An American then grabbed the Major, and dragged him behind the patriot lines, it was here that Ferguson did something seen by all as remarkably malign. When asked to surrender by a soldier, he pulled his pistol and shot the man dead. The patriots all fired on the man, until his chest had become mostly lead. The remaining loyalists struck their flag, and they came forth to try to surrender, but the patriots remembers Waxhaws, there was real danger of massacre. They remember that the British there had cut down men who had thrown up their hands, but William Campbell, and John Sevier, would not allow such dishonor to stand. They accepted the British surrender, near three hundred loyalists had been killed, to only twenty-eight patriot dead, with great relief the southern states were filled. Major Ferguson’s words proved prophetic, though probably not in his desired way, no force could move him from King’s Mountain, he lies under its slopes to this day.