[Illustration: _Only a few of the original Ferguson rifles are extant. The one shown is exhibited at Kings Mountain National Military Park, South Carolina. Here we see the profile of the piece with an 18-inch ruler to indicate scale._] That threat came from Maj. Patrick Ferguson, of Cornwallis’ command, who, after Camden, had been ordered to operate in the South Carolina Piedmont to suppress the Whig opposition remaining there and to arouse the back country Tories, organizing their strength in support of the British cause. Encountering little organized Whig resistance, and having rapidly perfected the Tory strength in the Piedmont, Ferguson in September 1780 undertook a foray against Gilbert Town, a Whig outpost in North Carolina, near the present town of Rutherfordton. Fearful of such an invasion, the border leaders, Isaac Shelby, of Sullivan County, and John Sevier, of Washington County, North Carolina (both now in Tennessee), had hurried to the Watauga settlements and called for volunteers to defeat Ferguson. They also forwarded urgent appeals for aid to Wilkes, Surry, Burke, and Rutherford Counties in North Carolina, and to Washington County in Virginia. From Gilbert Town, early in September, Ferguson dispatched his famed invidious threat over the mountains to the backwoodsmen, warning them “that if they did not desist from their opposition to the British arms and take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay their country waste with fire and sword.” Actually this was but an empty gesture from Ferguson who was then preparing one final foray across the border in South Carolina before making a junction with Cornwallis at Charlotte. Yet, to the freedom-loving frontier leaders the threat became a challenge which strengthened their determination to destroy the invader. Thus spurred, they assembled quickly, each in hunting garb, with knapsack, blanket, and long hunting rifle, most of them mounted, but some afoot. They were united by a strong resolve to destroy Ferguson and his Tory force, even though they had many a brother, cousin, or even a father among the back country men in his command. In fact, the partisan and internecine warfare, which raged during the Revolution through the southern highlands and along the Piedmont with members of the same family arrayed against each other as Whig and Tory, reached a climax in the Kings Mountain expedition and engagement.