The Battle of Kings Mountain, 1780: With Fire and Sword (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Battle of Kings Mountain, 1780\nFor F arther Reading leaves turning hillsides into Persian carpets of color; of chilly moon-washed nights and hot drow sy noondays; of ripeness and harvest. Corn, the succulent maize adopted by pioneers from their Indian neighbors, is gathered in bin and shock. Tobacco cures to a golden pungence. Pumpkins splash the fields with color, and orchard bees suck the sweet juices of apples that have fallen to the ground. Seeds sowed in the spring past, roots planted in long-ago decades, bring forth their yield. In just such an October in 17 80, another, quite different but no less inevitable harvest was gathered in an unlikely corner of the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. The place was called Kings Mountain, although it wasn't royal (named for an early settler rather than the distant resident of Windsor Castle) and, indeed, at the negligible height of only a few hun dred feet above the surrounding countryside, not even much of a mountain. But there, on an early October afternoon 5 years after the beginning of the Revolution, King George and his ministers' misunderstanding of the nature and needs of their faraway rebellious colonies, and the British com mand's misconceptions of the American character ripened into a confrontation that marked a turning point in the war. If events in?uenced by the patriot victory at Kings Mountain reached far beyond that brief time and place, so, too, did events initiating the struggle at Kings Mountain reach far back in time and place....