Freedom's Gate: The Southern Insurgency in the American Revolution 1780-1781 – Battle of Camden, Battle of King’s Mountain, Francis Marion, Swamp Fox, Loyalist Militia, Charleston, General Clinton

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. This fascinating paper describes the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution, during the years of 1780-1781.

In September 1780 during the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution, the British Army began moving north in hopes of extending British occupation from South Carolina into the adjoining colony of North Carolina. On 7 September, Major Patrick Ferguson arrived at Gilbert Town, Rutherford County, North Carolina, and issued the following threat to members of enemy partisan forces that had been driven from South Carolina and into the relative security of the western mountains. If they did not, wrote Ferguson, "desist from then opposition to the British arms, and take protection under his standard, he would march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders, and lay waste to their country with fire and sword." Ferguson paroled a captured rebel and had him go spread the message among his comrades in hiding.

Flush with victory and seeming success, British leaders like Ferguson believed the hard fighting in South Carolina was over and that only mop up operations remained. Shielding British commander General Lord Cornwallis' left flank on the move into North Carolina, Ferguson's force included a Ranger Battalion of "Provincial Regulars" from New York and New Jersey and several members of Loyalist militia units raised in the South. Excepting Ferguson, a Scot serving in the British army, all of them were Americans. His ultimatum to the partisan insurgents in and over the mountains was intended to give a defeated enemy the opportunity to throw down their arms, declare their allegiance to the King, or suffer the unbearable consequences. Since investing the city of Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1780, the British had captured or destroyed two American armies, established a series of military outposts or base camps throughout South Carolina, defeated or chased into hiding leading militia leaders and their units, and persuaded hundreds of partisan warriors to accept parole and quit the war. Who would have disputed Ferguson's assessment of events?