6. Colonel Charles McDowell and others, hearing that Ferguson was enrolling the Tories, met at Watauga and took counsel against him. No general was present, and McDowell was so old they feared he would be unable to endure the probable hard marching necessary to overtake their wily foe. Colonel Campbell, of Virginia, as a courtesy to one belonging outside of the State, was put in command by the North Carolina officers, and they set out with about eleven hundred men to look for the enemy. 7. Colonels Shelby, Sevier, Cleveland, and Major Joseph McDowell, of North Carolina, together with Colonel Williams, of South Carolina, selected nine hundred picked men from their mounted force, and through the stormy thirty hours of their march kept their saddles, until, on the morning of the 7th of October, they found the foe with eleven hundred and twenty-five men on the summit of King's Mountain. It was a strong position, but the heroic mountaineers at once surrounded it and began the attack. 8. Ferguson fought like a lion at bay, but the deadly rifles of the assailants were plied upon his ranks as the Royalists were pushed back step by step. Time and again the British commander headed the Regulars, and by desperate charges down the mountain side drove back a portion of the advancing Whig lines. At last Ferguson was slain, after being many times wounded, and soon the British fire slackened, and then to the nine hundred militiamen of the hills the remnant of the Royalists laid down their guns. Six hundred men became prisoners of war. 9. This was a bloody but a glorious victory. The number of British dead was unusually great. Their proportion of wounded was perhaps smaller than was ever seen in a modern battle. The Whigs lost three field officers, one captain and fifty-three privates. 10. It was a most opportune success, and apprised Lord Cornwallis of what dangers might await his further advance. He became so disheartened upon learning of the disaster that he at once fell back to Winnsboro, in South Carolina. North Carolina was again free from invaders, and the tories of every section felt their hopes sink as they realized the swiftness and completeness of this overthrow. Every patriot heart, however, once more beat with hope and joy. 11. The victory of King's Mountain was the turning point of the war in the South, and foreshadowed the final success of the American armies in the following year. The arrival of General Nathaniel Greene, who now took command of the Southern army, in place of General Gates, secured every advantage of the situation. He was from Rhode Island, and had been a blacksmith, but was a man of rare military genius, and as such had been singled out by General Washington to occupy an important place.