Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net NATIONAL PARK SERVICE POPULAR STUDY SERIES _History No. 12_ Rifles and Riflemen at the Battle of Kings Mountain [Illustration: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR] UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, J. A. KRUG, Secretary NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, NEWTON B. DRURY, Director _Reprinted 1947_ CONTENTS _Page_ Kings Mountain, A Hunting Rifle Victory 1 The American Rifle at the Battle of Kings Mountain 8 Testing the Ferguson Rifle—Modern Marksman Attains High Precision With Arm of 1776 19 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C.—Price 15 cents [Illustration: _Maj. Patrick Ferguson, British commander at the Battle of Kings Mountain, and inventor of the breechloading rifle bearing his name; from a marble bust._] Kings Mountain A Hunting Rifle Victory[1] _By Roger W. Young, Historian Branch of History_ Kings Mountain, the fierce attack of American frontiersmen on October 7, 1780, against Cornwallis’ scouting force under Ferguson, was an unexpected onslaught carried out in the foothills of South Carolina. This sudden uprising of the stalwart Alleghany mountaineers, for the protection of their homes and people from the threat of Tory invasion under British leadership, was relatively isolated in conception and execution from the main course of the Revolutionary War in the South. Clearly uncontemplated in the grand British design to subjugate the South in a final effort to end the Revolution, this accidental encounter in the Southern Piedmont delayed incidentally, but did not alter materially, the movement of Britain’s Southern Campaign. Kings Mountain is notable chiefly perhaps as supplying the first definite forewarning of the impending British military disasters of 1781. It was decisive to the extent that it contributed the earliest distinct element of defeat to the final major British campaign of the Revolution.