In the fifth year of the American Revolution, in 1780, British Major Patrick Ferguson threatened to march his army over the mountains, hang local leaders, and lay the country waste with fire and sword unless the people joined the British, but the threat drove many in this area to side with the revolutionaries instead. Virginia militia under Colonel Campbell mustered at Abingdon on September 24, and on September 25 Shelby, Sevier, and Campbell gathered a patriot force at Sycamore Shoals. The force spent its first night at Shelving Rock, crossed the Roan Mountains through two inches of snow at 4,682-foot Yellow Mountain Gap on September 27, split near Cathey's Plantation so loyalists could not slip by, and reunited at Quaker Meadows. After resting at Bedford's Hill and camping by Marlin's Knob while patriots under William Hill and Edward Lacey camped nearby at Flint Hill, the pursuing force reached Gilbert Town and found that Ferguson had fled. Campbell at first turned west by mistake, then reversed direction when Georgians and North Carolinians brought word that Ferguson was headed east, and the patriots raced to Cowpens to meet reinforcements. On October 7, nine hundred mounted and armed men left Cowpens, found Ferguson's one thousand-strong loyalist army atop Kings Mountain, and in fierce fighting killed Ferguson and one hundred twenty loyalists while nearly all the rest were wounded or captured; the patriots lost twenty-eight killed and sixty-two wounded. On the return at Biggerstaff's Old Fields on October 14, thirty loyalists were tried and nine were hanged.
