Existing comment:
Tighten the Noose
"Fire as quick as you can, and stand your ground as long as you can. When you can do no better, get behind trees, or retreat; but I beg you not to run quite off. It we are repulsed, let us make a point of returning, and renewing the fight...."
-- Benjamin Cleveland, North Carolina patriot leader
Colonel Cleveland's militia - Wilkes County, North Carolina
Colonel Winston's militia - Surrey County, North Carolina
The hard morning rain had stopped, leaving the fallen leaves on the forest floor here sodden. But wet leaves, as any squirrel hunter knows, soak up sound, even the footsteps of hundreds of patriots moving fast. The North Carolinians who fought here had the farthest to go to tighten a noose around the Tories. Leaving their horses a half mile away to your right, they had to slog over swampy ground to reach this slope. Arriving ten minutes late, they saw loyalist pickets ahead. Then the din of war-whoops and rifle shots broke out.
North Carolina sent more patriots to fight here than any other state. Although the over-mountain men from Virginia and Tennessee somehow gained greater fame
for the Kings Mountain victory, the piedmont patriots out-numbered them two to one. |