A soldier. A quite good soldier, from what I hear tell.
However, he made one little mistake.
See, after stomping his way all over North Carolina, he sent a message up to the mountain folk. Something to the effect of "stop your grousing, toe the line, or I'll take my army up there and burn your houses down around your ears."
Yeah. Well. Two hundred and thirty years ago today, Major Patrick Ferguson was one of the first, but he will be far from the last, to learn this particular lesson...
Don't threaten the rednecks.
There's spit-all of nothin' to gain if you win, and the good Lord help you if you lose.
(and for what it's worth, a guy in Appalachia still can up his chances of a date if he happens to mention "oh yeah, great-...-great-grandpappy-so-and-so was at King's Mountain..." :) )
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It makes for a good story, right?
I liked it. Good old fashioned American underdog tale, with a nice dash of redneck pride. Nice and fun.
Until.
Until I stopped to think about the magnitude of what those guys did - because at that moment, they were smack dab in the middle of existential war for survival with the Cherokee*. Think for a minute about what that means.
Alaskans, this will be easier for you.
Imagine for the moment that, say... we were on murderous terms with all the natives up here. Murderous terms as in "just going to visit your friend down in Chugiak one day, and you find their house on fire with bits of meat scattered all over yard that used to be your neighbor" kind of bad terms. And having that not be unusual. When your baby girl ends her prayers at night with "and if I die before I wake?" Yeah. That's not just an expression. It's a distinct and gruesome possibility.
So. Really drink that in for a moment.
Now.
Imagine that in the middle of that - and in all fairness, giving every bit as
And about the same time, you find out about the guy who gave it. He's been tearing hell over Washington State.
And he's a crack soldier who is so into his work he designed his own frickin' weapons system and equipped his men with it. And not only does it work, but between that technological innovation, and the training he's given his men, any advantage you'd like to think you have, being all tough and woodsy and Alaskan and all?
Yeah. Not so much. He has that to. And the best tech of the best army on the planet. **
So. You're in the middle of that dark, dark brutal time at home when you never know when the next time you walk in on a Manson murder is going to be, and then you get this ultimatum from the army down south.
Give in, or you'll be spending winter in an ashpile. If you live at all.
That was the choice those men faced all that time ago. So what did they do?
Why, they had to have a draft.
... they drafted men to stay home.
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* You know that part in the Declaration of Independence that goes He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions? Yeah, so.. not just one more blot of ink on the page. Those "ages,sexes, and conditions" were every bit as real as you or me. As were their killers, who met no happier fate. T'aint many happy endings on the dark and bloody.
** edit. Further reading says Ferguson's unit had turned in those rifles of his prior to King's Mountain. God I love the Internet. You can still be wrong in public, but you can sure get corrected quick. :)
12 comments:
That battlefield (It's now a National Park) is just west of where I live, about 30 miles away. One thing that isn't noted in this version of the Wikipedia article (but was in earlier editions) is that, in response to Ferguson's taunt that Loyalists would be "pissed upon by a set of mongrels," the Overmountain Men urinated on Ferguson's dead body. He's buried (along with one of his mistresses) in a grave with cairn just east of the visitor's center, along a nature trail.
Ferguson invented an innovative breech-loading rifle, which fired much faster than the muzzle-loading muskets of the time, but the rifles never saw much service in the Revolution. Louis L'Amour utilized Ferguson and his rifle in the novel The Ferguson Rifle.
King's Mountain was one of the two crucial battles in the southern campaign of the Revolution. The other was Cowpens, where the peerless Daniel Morgan won a victory over Banastre Tarleton (who became the villain Col. Tavington in Mel Gibson's movie The Patriot). A study of Cowpens reveals it to be a perfect example of a double envelopement, such as Hannibal achieved in the Battle of Cannae against the Romans. Daniel Morgan was one of the great forgotten geniuses of the Revolution; Washington didn't win the war by himself.
As a redneck from a long line of Green Mountain Boys, Tennessee volunteers and Missouri hillbillies, I understand the response given to Ferguson & his men. The quickest reaction in the Western Hemisphere is the redneck's performance of sump'n you jus' tole him not to do.
He'll do it and stand there grinning at you - and you cain't stop him none.
I love that painting. Where did it come from?
But what a wonderful rifle Ferguson invented . . .
King's Mountain might have been a very different battle had the Brits adopted Ferguson's invention!
My ancestors didn't have to walk very far to take part in the battle. Their homestead was only a couple of miles away on Henrys Knob.
Oh, and they were Patriots. Just wanted to make that clear. ;)
@Bob:
> the Overmountain Men urinated on Ferguson's dead body.
There's something viscerally satisfying about the idea of urinating on a downed opponent.
One time a guy picked a fight with me, and I beat him to the ground, and briefly considered - let's call it "getting all Overmountain" on him - but decided that it wouldn't be the gentlemanly pr Christian thing to do...even if he had thrown both the first insult and the first punch.
Found it:
http://www.oldgloryprints.com/Kings%20Mountain.htm
$250. Ouch. Can't justify it.
Somewhere along the line I read that the Ferguson Rifle fouls something awful after just a few shots. No idea whether that's true, or something from a hysterical novel.
WV: bling. No, the Overmountain Men were NOT modern buckskinners.
painting by Don Troiani
http://www.historicalartprints.com/hap/cmd?CMD=DETAIL&parent=17&prodid=193
Wow! Hi everybody!
Bob and Robert - very cool neighborhood! And thank you both for the extra stories. :)
Rev - I think your neighbors knew my neighbors.
Wayne - was first neat image on a Google Image Search for "King's Mountain" - I see the guys have found sources for the print- thank you gentlemen!
SFlorman and DW - it was a pretty slick design, wasn't it? DW - I saw a reference to the fouling problem while tracking down the mistake I made above (about whether they were actually in service at the time K.M.) The verdict was that one reproduction did indeed foul quickly, but the design was off from the original (thread pitch maybe? Or material of the screw part? Can't recall) Anyhow, someone else went back and made another replica according to the actual design, and that one ran great for around 40-60+ rounds or so.
Travis - I admire your restraint. :)
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