But Ferguson, for all he had the gifts of a soldier statesman, had gone too far. He had carried his persuasion of arms to the very foothills of the western mountains, and had sent his threats forward into the western country that lay beyond the passes of the mountains, where hardy frontiersmen of whom he knew almost nothing had so far kept their homes against the redmen without thought of turning to the east. His threats had angered and aroused them. They had put their riflemen from the back country of Carolina and Virginia into the saddle hundreds strong, had pushed league upon league through the passes of the mountains, from the far-off waters of the Holston, and had surrounded and utterly overwhelmed him at King’s Mountain (October 7, 1780). There he lost a thousand men and his own life. “A numerous army appeared on the frontier,” reported Lord Rawdon, “drawn from Nolachucky and other settlements beyond the mountains, whose very names had been unknown to us.” The hold of the British upon the inland settlements was of a sudden loosened, and Cornwallis had reason to know at once what a difference that made to him. [Illustration: ENGLISH COLONIES, 1763-1775. BORMAY & CO., N. Y.] [Illustration: DANIEL MORGAN] [Illustration: COUNT ROCHAMBEAU] [Illustration: NATHANAEL GREENE] [Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE LAST ARTICLE OF CAPITULATION AT YORKTOWN] [Illustration: PAROLE OF CORNWALLIS] Early in December came General Greene to take the place of Gates, and new difficulties faced the English commander. Greene kept no single force afield, to be met and checkmated, but sent one part of his little army towards the coast to cut Cornwallis’s communications, and another southward against the inland posts and settlements where scattered garrisons lay between the commander-in-chief and his base at Charleston in the south. With the first detachment went Francis Marion, a man as formidable in strategy and sudden action as Ferguson, and the men who had attached themselves to him as if to a modern Robin Hood. With the second went Daniel Morgan, a man made after the fashion of the redoubtable frontiersmen who had brought Ferguson his day of doom at King’s Mountain. Tarleton was sent after Morgan with eleven hundred men, found him at the Cowpens (January 17, 1781), just within the border upon which King’s Mountain lay, and came back a fugitive, with only two hundred and seventy men. Greene drew his forces together again, and at Guilford Court House Cornwallis beat him, outnumbered though he was (March 15th). But to beat Greene, it seemed, was of no more avail than to beat General Washington. The country was no safer, the communications of the army were as seriously threatened, the defeated army was as steady and as well in hand after the battle as before; and the English withdrew to Wilmington, on the coast. [Illustration: ORDER PERMITTING THE ILLUMINATION OF PHILADELPHIA] [Illustration: NELSON HOUSE, CORNWALLIS’S HEADQUARTERS, YORKTOWN]