CHAPTER V 

 KING'S MOUNTAIN, 1780 



DURING the Revolutionary War the men of 

 the West for the most part took no share in 

 the actual campaigning against the British and 

 Hessians. Their duty was to conquer and hold 

 the wooded wilderness that stretched westward to 

 the Mississippi; and to lay therein the foundations 

 of many future commonwealths. Yet at a crisis 

 in the great struggle for liberty, at one of the dark- 

 est hours for the patriot cause, it was given to a 

 band of Western men to come to the relief of their 

 brethren of the seaboard and to strike a telling and 

 decisive blow for all America. When the three 

 Southern provinces lay crushed and helpless at the 

 feet of Cornwallis, the Holston backwoodsmen sud- 

 denly gathered to assail the triumphant conqueror. 

 Crossing the mountains that divided them from the 

 beaten and despairing people of the tidewater region, 

 they killed the ablest lieutenant of the British com- 

 mander, and at a single stroke undid all that he 

 had done. 



By the end of 1779 the British had reconquered 

 Georgia. In May, 1780, they captured Charleston, 

 speedily reduced all South Carolina to submission, 

 (296) 



