The standard military firearm of the Revolutionary period was the flintrock musket weighing about 11 pounds. Its caliber was 11 gauge, that is, it would take a lead ball of 11 to the pound. At 100 yards a good marksman might make 40 percent of hits on a target the size of a man standing. The musket ball, fitting loosely in the barrel, could be loaded quickly. The fact that the military musket always was equipped with a bayonet made it the dependable weapon for all close fighting. As was so convincingly shown on the occasions of the futile bayonet charges of Ferguson’s regulars on Kings Mountain, however, the bayonet was not effective if enemy lines did not stand to take the punishment of hand-to-hand fighting. Each Whig on Kings Mountain had been told to act as his own captain, to yield as he found it necessary, and to take every advantage that was presented. In short, the patriots followed the Indian mode of attack, using the splendid cover that the timber about the mountain afforded, and selecting a definite human target for every ball fired. Splendid leadership and command were exercised by the Whig officers to make for concerted action every time a crisis arose. This coordination, plus the Kentucky rifle and the “individual power of woodcraft, marksmanship, and sportsmanship” of each participant in the American forces, overcame all the military training and discipline which had been injected into his Tory troops by Ferguson. Testing the Ferguson Rifle Modern Marksman Attains High Precision With Arm of 1776[3] _By Dr. Alfred F. Hopkins, formerly Field Curator, Museum Division, Washington._ History records that on June 1, 1776, at Woolwich, England, Maj. Patrick Ferguson, of the British Army, demonstrated his newly devised breechloading flintrock rifle to the astonishment of all beholders. Quite recently at the Washington laboratory of the Museum Division of the National Park Service beholders likewise were astonished at the shooting qualities of the Ferguson gun. While it is understood that tests of this historic arm have been made in England within late years, it is believed that in this country the sinister crack of a Ferguson had not been heard since 1780 at the Battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina.