Wednesday · November 11, 2026

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Patriot militia surround a Loyalist ridge; Ferguson falls with seven balls in him

The only British officer on the field is dead within the hour, and his men have nowhere left to run.

Six weeks after Charleston fell and Gates's army broke at Camden, the Patriot cause in the South looked finished. On October 7, 1780, backwoods militia under Isaac Shelby, John Sevier, William Campbell, and other commanders surrounded Major Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist force on a wooded ridge at Kings Mountain, located in present-day Cherokee County, South Carolina, near the North Carolina border. Ferguson tried to cut through the Patriot line on horseback and was shot seven times. His men surrendered shortly after, and Lord Cornwallis, exposed without Ferguson's flank guard, was forced to abandon his push into North Carolina and retreat…

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More from October 7

American bombs fall on Afghanistan; Bush says "time is running out"

Air strikes hit Taliban defenses and al-Qaeda camps as U.S. special forces move in to back the Northern Alliance.

Ninety-eight American prisoners are shot on a Wake Island beach

The civilian contractors had survived twenty-two months of occupation; their captors gave no warning before the killing.

A Navy memo floats a plan: push Japan into firing the first shot

Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum sends his superiors eight ways to pressure Tokyo, and admits Washington isn't ready to declare war without one.

Stripped of command days earlier, Benedict Arnold rides into the fighting anyway and helps throw the British back.

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Read the full October 7 edition →Everything that happened on October 7 →

More from Revolution & Founding

Militia flee in the dark; Cornwallis shatters Gates's army near Camden

De Kalb falls with eleven wounds while Gates rides sixty miles to safety by nightfall.

Constitution shatters Guerriere off Nova Scotia; Dacres strikes his colors

A cannonball bounces off her hull and a sailor gives the ship a nickname that outlasts the war.

St. Leger's camp breaks and runs; Fort Stanwix's siege is over

A rumor of 3,000 advancing Americans does what three weeks of cannon fire could not.

Smoke rises over Washington as British troops torch the Capitol and the President's Mansion

Madison flees to Maryland while Dolley Madison's staff carries out the silver as British soldiers sit down to the dinner meant for his guests.

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