Freeper Bert Follows the Overmountain Men's Trail to King's Mountain

travelingwhenwecan blog ^ | This past year | Bert

[contrarian]

This is great.. The over the mountain victory trail runs within a mile or two of my house (I live in the Kings Creek community yes that King). I see mention of Quaker meadows, Lake James and multiple significant names in history including the community next door named after Major Ferguson.I drove by Kings Moutain last week on my way home from Charlotte. I didn’t realize I had so many distinguished FREEPER neighbors in “these here parts!”

[Godebert]

"Also have 2 ancestors that fought with the Swamp Fox."

Ditto. Descendant of the SC Greggs and Witherspoons.

[Pharmboy]

Great stuff...and there were several laughs in that paragraph. A 4 y/o smoking for three years? Really? But since we've all been speaking so much of Ferguson, have a look:

[upchuck]

South Carolina Ping
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[snippy_about_it]

Great read, nicely written travel blog, thanks for sharing.

[bert]

Credit where credit is due...... My wife wrote almost all of it.

The graphic below was prepared by the Historian/Ranger at Cowpens NP. He placed a pin on the map locating every engagement of the Revolutionary War. His point was to illustrate that South Carolina and the south was where much of the war was fought.

[Pharmboy]

Well then, appropriate praise for Mrs. Bert. Who took the pics?

[bert]

We both took photos

[Sherman Logan]

They marched the prisoners back towards Quaker Meadows and eventually further into NC.

Which is a story in itself.

The victors held more or less sham trials and convicted 36 of the losers, executing 9 of them.

Also, all but about 130 of the prisoners escaped during the march, and the remaining ones, as well and their captors, almost starved.

[csmusaret]

Did Ferguson also say he would never leave? Because he is still there; buried under a cairn of rocks.

[RegulatorCountry]

The quote varies. Family lore has it more or less the way I wrote it. Some published accounts have him saying “I am on King’s Mountain, I am king of this mountain, and God Almighty cannot drive me from it.”

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-revolution/4272

[AppyPappy]

Good job, rooms

[RegulatorCountry]

If you're relying upon information based in any way upon communications from Horatio Gates, know that he was held in very low esteem by his own men after Camden, having being deemed responsible for that embarrassment. Gates was engaging in a little vainglory, trying to appear to have been in charge at Kings Mountain, talking about “his” men, when he had nothing to do with it other than trying to jump in front of the parade after it had begun. There wasn't a Continental in sight, they were all volunteers and unpaid.

The number of Patriot men was grossly overestimated by him as were the number of Tory prisoners. Gates sought to ingratiate himself with his superiors, who hoped to exchange prisoners of war with the British. Gates told of nearly double the number of men on horseback racing toward Charlotte to cut Ferguson off and he exaggerated the number of prisoners after the fact.

He had Cleveland relieved of command for supposed mistreatment of prisoners, when the only documented instance occurred prior to his taking charge of them. Gates was very political and not at all right concerned about throwing others in the ditch to further his own ends.

This continued right up to a few months before the Battle Of Guilford Courthouse, when he himself was relieved of command in favor of Nathanael Greene. Long overdue, in the estimation of those actually doing the fighting. I've seen enough derision of Gates in the pension applications of my own people who fought, to believe that he fabricated a fair amount.

So, recheck those numbers and the assumptions derived from them. I'd give the Brethern at Bethabara the nod for accuracy, as they had no axe to grind and were well known for being sticklers for accurate record-keeping for better or worse.