328 The Winning of the West 



bly cared very little who they were ; and keeping, as 

 he supposed, a safe distance away from them, he 

 halted at King's Mountain in South Carolina on 

 the evening of October 6th, pitching his camp on a 

 steep, narrow hill just south of the North Carolina 

 boundary. The King's Mountain range itself is 

 about sixteen miles in length, extending in a south- 

 westerly course from one State into the other. The 

 stony, half isolated ridge on which Ferguson camped 

 was some six or seven hundred yards long and half 

 as broad from base to base, or two-thirds that dis- 

 tance on top. The steep sides were clad with a 

 growth of open woods, including both saplings and 

 big timber. Ferguson packed his baggage wagons 

 along the northeastern part of the mountain. The 

 next day he did not move; he was as near to the 

 army of Cornwallis at Charlotte as to the mountain- 

 eers, and he thought it safe to remain where he was. 

 He deemed the position one of great strength, as in- 

 deed it would have been, if assailed in the ordinary 

 European fashion; and he was confident that even 

 if the rebels attacked him, he could readily beat them 

 back. But as General Lee, "Light-Horse Harry," 

 afterward remarked, the hill was much easier as- 



to allude to the general justice and impartiality of its ac- 

 counts of these Revolutionary campaigns they are very 

 much more trustworthy than Bancroft's, for instance. 

 Lecky scarcely gives the right color to the struggle in the 

 South ; but when Bancroft treats of it, it is not too much to 

 say that he puts the contest between the whigs and the Brit- 

 ish and tories in a decidedly false light. Lecky fails to do 

 justice to Washington's military ability, however; and over- 

 rates the French assistance. 



