Overmountain Men Re-enactors bring King’s Mountain to life

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

“The Battle of King’s Mountain (October 7, 1780) was an American victory over a loyalist detachment in South Carolina during the British campaign in the South,” begins the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on the topic.

“To stem the British advance into North Carolina, a force of about 2,000 colonial frontiersmen had been gathered from neighbouring states to replace the Continental forces that had been lost in South Carolina at the battles of Charleston (May 1780) and Camden (August 1780). The frontiersmen felt particularly bitter against the 1,100 soldiers, under Major Patrick Ferguson, who were mostly New Yorkers and South Carolinians loyal to the British.”

Quite a clinical, and decidedly different, take on the battle than that of Theodore Roosevelt, who wrote in The Winning of the West, “This brilliant victory marked the turning point of the American Revolution.”

And that dichotomy among historians is exactly the issue that spurs on the Overmountain Victory Trail Association re-enactor group. “Our desire is to keep the story alive on what these men and women did back in 1780,” says current OVTA president Alan Bowen. “The story was lost—or was being lost; schools don’t teach it.”

Adds re-enactor Tom Holmes: “The Revolutionary War was won in the South. By some estimates more people died in SC than all the other colonies combined. Most of that is just left out of the history books. But it’s a remarkable story.”

Overmountain Victory Trail March Sept 25, 2011

Many thanks to Appalachian History contributor and OVTA re-enactor David Biddix for providing the video interviews; more can be found at Longleaf Media’s YouTube channel.

More articles on American Revolution:

‘Liberty Mountain’, new play about Battle of King’s Mountain, set to premier(Opens in a new browser tab)

The Battle of King’s Mountain—233rd anniversary is today(Opens in a new browser tab)

They retreated off, leaving us entire masters of the field(Opens in a new browser tab)