Hoping to be joined by Cruger’s regiments, as well as by his own furloughed men, and the neighboring tories, he gradually drew off from the mountains, doubling and turning, so as to hide his route and puzzle his pursuers.  Exaggerated reports of the increase in the number of his foes were brought to him, and, as he saw how slowly they marched, he sent repeated messages to Cornwallis, asking for reinforcements; promising speedily to “finish the business,” if three or four hundred soldiers, part dragoons, were given him, for the Americans were certainly making their “last push in this quarter.” [Footnote:  See letter quoted by Tarleton.] He was not willing to leave the many loyal inhabitants of the district to the vengeance of the whigs [Footnote:  Ferguson’s “Memoir,” p. 32.]; and his hopes of reinforcements were well founded.  Every day furloughed men rejoined him, and bands of loyalists came into camp; and he was in momentary expectation of help from Cornwallis or Cruger.  It will be remembered that the mountaineers on their last march passed several tory bands.  One of these alone, near the Cowpens, was said to have contained six hundred men; and in a day or two they would all have joined Ferguson.  If the whigs had come on in a body, as there was every reason to expect, Ferguson would have been given the one thing he needed—­time; and he would certainly have been too strong for his opponents.  His defeat was due to the sudden push of the mountain chieftains; to their long, swift ride from the ford of Green River, at the head of their picked horse-riflemen.

The British were still in the dark as to the exact neighborhood from which their foes—­the “swarm of backwoodsmen,” as Tarleton called them [Footnote:  “Tarleton’s Campaigns,” p. 169.]—­really came.  It was generally supposed that they were in part from Kentucky, and that Boon himself was among the number. [Footnote:  British historians to the present day repeat this.  Even Lecky, in his “History of England,” speaks of the backwoodsmen as in part from Kentucky.  Having pointed out this trivial fault in Lecky’s work, it would be ungracious not to allude to the general justice and impartiality of its accounts of these revolutionary campaigns—­they are very much more trustworthy than Bancroft’s, for instance.  Lecky scarcely gives the right color to the struggle in the south; but when Bancroft treats of it, it is not too much to say that he puts the contest between the whigs and the British and tories in a decidedly false light.  Lecky fails to do justice to Washington’s military ability, however; and overrates the French assistance.] However, Ferguson probably cared very little who they were; and keeping, as he supposed, a safe distance away from them, he halted at King’s Mountain in South Carolina on the evening of October 6th, pitching his camp on a steep, narrow hill just south of the North Carolina boundary.  The King’s Mountain range itself is about sixteen miles in length, extending in a southwesterly