What is the reason of the Battle of Kings Mountain?

Answer 1

After 1778 the British shifted to a southern strategy. They believed the southern states to be full of Loyalists to the crown ("Tories") who wanted only for a British army to appear in their area to rise up and assist the King's forces. The British had captured Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and subdued both Georgia and South Carolina for the King. The surrender of Charleston was one of the great disasters for the Patriot cause of the entire war, as more than 5000 men became prisoners, including most of the regular Continental troops in the south. The Patriots had sent another force, including just about every remaining Continental soldier from the southern states, under command of the "Hero of Saratoga", Horatio Gates, to try to reverse the situation. Congress appointed Gates to this command over the recommendations of Washington, who wanted Nathaniel Greene to command in the south. Gates made a number of poor decisions, which culminated when his army, moving south, blundered into a British force moving north, at Camden South Carolina. What is to this day still one of the worst battlefield defeats the US Army has ever suffered ensued. The day was soon quite evidently going against the Patriots, and Gates then got on his horse and rode off. Gates did not stop until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina, covering 160 miles in three days on horseback. It took what was left of his army that escaped from the Battle of Camden six weeks to catch up to their fleeing general. After that, Congress finally did send Nathaniel Greene to take over in the south. There was now scarcely any organized Patriot force anywhere in the south, except for scattered bands of partisans, to prevent the British from going anywhere they wanted to go. The British commander, Cornwallis, now set his sights on North Carolina, and began to move north. His army moved in three groups - the main body in the center, and flanking groups to his left and right, one under Tarleton, and the other to the left, or west, under Patrick Ferguson. As they crossed over into North Carolina, Ferguson issued several Proclamations to the people of North Carolina. In early September he directed some of this bombast to the "Overmountain Men" in their settlements in what is now East Tennessee, but was then still a part of North Carolina. Ferguson sent a warning "that if they did not desist from opposition, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword." This was enough for the back country men to decide to go meet Ferguson half way. They began sending messengers back and forth, and summoning the men to rendezvous, and then set out over the mountains looking for Ferguson. Ferguson learned of this advance and delivered himself of another Proclamation, this one known to history as "The Pissing Proclamation":

"Gentlemen: Unless you wish to be eat up by an inundation of barbarians, who have begun by murdering an unarmed son before the aged father, and afterwards lopped off his arms, and who by their shocking cruelties and irregularities, give the best proof of their cowardice and want of discipline; I say, if you wish to be pinioned, robbed, and murdered, and see your wives and daughters, in four days, abused by the dregs of mankind - in short, if you wish or deserve to live, and bear the name of men, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp.

The Back Water men have crossed the mountains; McDowell, Hampton, Shelby and Cleveland are at their head, so that you know what you have to depend upon. If you choose to be pissed upon forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women turn their backs upon you, and look out for real men to protect them."

Having got that off his chest, Ferguson started his left wing forces for the shelter of the British main body at Charlotte. Ferguson was near present day Rutherfordton when he started this move to the east, and so had almost 100 miles to go to reach safety. The Overmountain Men, gathering strength as additional bands joined in almost every day, now numbered around 4,000, to Ferguson's 800 or so, and they came upon Ferguson's trail at Gilbert Town (Rutherfordton) almost two days after Ferguson went scurrying eastward. The Patriots then picked the 900 men among them with the best horses, and rode all night through a rain storm to catch up to Ferguson, who had stopped and made camp atop King's Mountain. The Patriots surrounded the base of the isolated mountain, and only a party of about 35 men Ferguson had sent out that morning to forage for food (rob the local farmers) escaped. The rest of Ferguson's force was killed or captured. Ferguson was the only British soldier on the field that day. The rest of his men were Tories from New York and New Jersey, and some local Tories who had joined up.