Location: US 29 at NC 226 in Grover at NC/SC boundary
County: Cleveland
Original Date Cast: 1940
Born in 1744, Maj. Patrick Ferguson was the second son of James Ferguson of Pittfour of Aberdeenshire, Lord Commissioner of Justiciary for Scotland, and the Honorable Anne Murray, daughter of the 4th Lord Elibank. Through his parents, he was introduced to many leading figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. At fifteen years old, he was commissioned a Coronet in the Royal North British Dragoons, the Scots Greys. He studied fortifications and gunnery at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich for two years, then served in Germany with his regiment in the closing years of the Seven Years War. It was during this period that he developed tuberculosis in his knee.
In September 1768, at twenty-four years old, Ferguson purchased a Captain’s commission in the 70th Regiment of Foot and served in the West Indies. When he returned to London in 1773, he began working on a breech-loading rifle, which was patented in December 1776. In addition to incorporating a screw breech to increase reloading speed greatly, the rifle also mounted a long bayonet. Most rifles in the period could not mount bayonets. He also spent this time studying the light infantry tactics General William Howe was reintroducing to the British Army.
Ferguson sailed to North America with a one-hundred-man experimental rifle corps in March 1777. His men were armed with his newly developed breechloading rifle. Ferguson and his men fought in the British Philadelphia Campaign. The experimental rifle corps was successful but short-lived. During the Battle of Brandywine on September 10, 1777, Ferguson was shot in his right elbow, which permanently disabled his arm. Without its commander, the corps was broken up, and the men with their rifles were distributed to different regiments in the army.
There are claims that during the battle, Ferguson took aim at a high-ranking officer who was accompanied by another officer in a hussar uniform. Supposedly, Ferguson did not fire because the officers had no idea they were so close to the battle lines and in mortal danger. The officer in hussar dress was most likely Count Casimir Pulaski, which would suggest the high-ranking officer with him may have been General George Washington. While the story may be apocryphal, it was recognized that Ferguson was well respected for his humane and honorable demeanor.
Once recovered from his wounds, Ferguson was appointed to the staff of Sir Henry Clinton. When the British Army departed New York City in December 1779, Ferguson was promoted to the Provincial rank of Lieutenant Colonel and given command of a corps specially raised for the coming campaign to take South Carolina. The American Volunteers were composed of one hundred and seventy-five volunteers from eight battalions of Provincial troops, Americans who enlisted in the British Army. Like Ferguson’s experimental rifle corps of 1777, the American Volunteers were a unique, temporary formation. Half of the men were armed with bayonet-mounting muskets, while the other half were armed with British Army rifles. (These were not Ferguson’s breechloading rifles which mounted bayonets.) The idea was that the musket and bayonet-armed men in the front rank would protect the men armed with rifles in the rear rank, since the rifles did not have bayonets.
On April 18, 1780, during the Siege of Charleston, SC. Ferguson was promoted to Major in the 71st Regiment of Foot. The promotion was made retroactive to October 26, 1779. With this promotion, Ferguson relinquished his Provincial Lt. Colonel rank, because his regular army Major’s commission was technically a higher rank. Interestingly, he was frequently still referred to as “Col. Ferguson” until well after his death, though he signed his letters, “Major Ferguson, 71st Regt.
Following the fall of Charleston, on May 22, Major Ferguson was appointed Inspector of Militia. In this capacity, he oversaw the organization and training of the Loyalist militia in the South. In stark contrast to Patriot militia, service in the Loyalist militia was completely voluntary; they could not be forced into regular army service, though they were paid the same wages as regular soldiers. Further, they were ordered to protect innocent people and the property of everyone, regardless of their allegiances.
Lord Cornwallis dispatched Major Ferguson to the South Carolina backcountry, where large numbers of Loyalists were fleeing to British-held posts. One of Ferguson’s first acts was to issue orders to protect the property of all Patriots who surrendered at Charleston and took an oath to remain peaceful. The Loyalist militia was organized into companies commanded by elected officers. Companies composed of unmarried men would serve with the army for no longer than six months, while companies of married men stayed in their own districts and served only when there was an emergency.
Ferguson built a sizeable force and worked to pacify the backcountry. He shadowed Lord Cornwallis’s troops along the frontier, chasing Georgia Patriots who were plundering everyone they encountered. When Cornwallis moved into North Carolina in the Fall of 1780, Ferguson did as well. On September 9, 1780, Major Ferguson issued two declarations which have been misrepresented since 1823.
When Ferguson captured a number of Patriots near Gilbertown, NC (near modern Rutherfordton), he learned they feared they would be tortured and murdered. The prisoners related that they had been lied to about how they would be treated, and that if most men knew the truth, they would lay down their arms. Major Ferguson’s first proclamation was directed at the Patriot leaders, particularly the Overmountain Men from Tennessee and Virginia. Prisoners were released with copies of a document that promised he would protect their homes and families if they laid down their arms. He promised that those Patriots who continued to murder and abuse innocent people would be severely punished. Major Ferguson never threatened to lay waste to the land and people.
The second proclamation was aimed at Loyalists:
“They [the Loyalists] are strictly enjoined to offer no injury to the persons or property of those men who have been of the rebel side who remain at home and shew a disposition for peace and submission, but to afford every protection in their power to them and to women and children of every denomination … those who by plunder and outrage disgrace the name of loyalists will be punished even to death as scoundrels who wish to continue to their country the miserys of war, to distress the women and children and other innocent people, to destroy all the property on both sides, and to retard the progress of His Majesty’s arms.”
He and Lord Cornwallis knew that if they treated all Americans as fellow countrymen, they would undermine Patriot propaganda. Many local Patriots laid down their arms and learned Ferguson was sincere. However, measures were taken by Patriot leaders to stop the spread of Major Ferguson’s message.
The Patriots led by men like Colonels William Campbell, John Sevier, and Benjamin Cleveland likely never heard Major Ferguson’s declaration. Nearly two thousand made their way to the North and South Carolina border to bring battle to the Loyalists.
On October 1, Ferguson issued another declaration in response to the brutal murder of a local father and son at the hands of some of Col. Cleveland’s men:
“Gentlemen : Unless you wish to be eat up by an inundation of barbarians, who have begun by murdering an unarmed son before the aged father, and afterwards lopped off his arms, and who by their shocking cruelties and irregularities, give the best proof of their cowardice and want of discipline…”
He went on to implore locals to come to his camp for protection before more innocent people suffered at the hands of the Overmountain Men.
On October 7, 1780, Major Ferguson and his men were defeated on King’s Mountain. Ferguson was shot multiple times; his body was desecrated and left unburied. More than three hundred Loyalists were killed and wounded, and close to seven hundred taken prisoner. In the weeks after the battle of King’s Mountain, many Loyalists were tried and hung, tortured, and murdered by their captors. Some managed to escape. The blow crushed Loyalists in the western part of North Carolina and led to increased violence across the Piedmont. The defeat also contributed to Lord Cornwallis’s abandonment of his first invasion of North Carolina.
References:
William S. Powell, ed., Encyclopedia of North Carolina (2006), 649-650—essay by Noel Yancey
Ian Saberton, The Papers of Lord Cornwallis, Volumes I, II, and III. (2010)
William Caldwell, “Isaac Shelby, Patrick Ferguson, and Fire & Sword: The Power of a Good Story.” All Things Liberty. (May 28, 2024) Isaac Shelby, Patrick Ferguson, and Fire & Sword: The Power of a Good Story - Journal of the American Revolution
Thomas J. McGuire, The Philadelphia Campaign, Volume I. (2006).
De Witt Bailey, British Military Flintlock Rifles:1740-1840. (2002).