The mountaineers approached the summit in divisions so as to make the attack from opposite sides simultaneously. The center reached the enemy first, and a furious and bloody fight was commenced. The royalists drove the attacking division down the mountain side, but were compelled to retreat by an onslaught from the end and opposite side. The battle became general all around, Ferguson’s forces being huddled in the center. The mountain men aimed coolly, and shot fatally, giving away before a fierce charge at one point, and charging with equal fierceness from another. The British commander, at length, gave up the idea of further resistance, but, determined not to surrender, made a desperate attempt to break through the lines. He fell in the charge with a mortal shot. A white flag asked for terms of capitulation; 225 royalists and 30 patriots lay dead upon the field; 700 prisoners were taken in custody; 1,500 stand of arms captured, and a great many horses and other booty which had been taken from the settlers, restored to the rightful owners. More than all, the frontier was freed from the ravages of a merciless foe. The captured arms and booty was shouldered upon the prisoners and taken to a point in Rutherford county, where a court martial was held. Thirty of the tories were sentenced to death for desertion and other crimes they had committed, but only nine were executed. One of these was Colonel Mills, a distinguished leader. The remaining prisoners and captured arms were turned over to General Gates, commander of the Continental army in the South. John Sevier, one of the leading spirits in the King’s mountain affair, and commander of the transmontane militia, was a brilliant, daring, dashing character; the idol and leader of bold frontiersmen, who nicknamed him “Nollichucky Jack.” The whole of Tennessee then belonged to North Carolina, but the settlers on the Holston were so far removed from the seat of government that, practically, they were without government. Sevier and his friends conceived the idea of organizing a new state, which, being in the nature of a measure for self-protection, was unquestioned west of the mountains as a just and proper proceeding, but by the home government denounced as an insurrection. The new state was named Franklin, in honor of the Philadelphia philosopher and patriot. For four years there was civil contention, which, in one instance, resulted in contact of arms and bloodshed. After this the parent state adopted a radical policy for the restraint of her premature liberty-seeking child. “Nollichucky Jack,” the governor of the insurrectionary state, was arrested for “high treason against the state of North Carolina,” and taken to Morganton for trial.