For the
wolves came down to King's Mountain from all the surrounding
hills, following the scent of blood, and made their lair where
the Werewolf had fallen. The scene of the mountaineers' victory,
which marked the turn of the tide for the Revolution, became for
years the chief resort of wolf hunters from both the Carolinas.
The importance of the overmountain men's victory lay in what it
achieved for the cause of Independence. King's Mountain was the
prelude to Cornwallis's defeat. It heartened the Southern
Patriots, until then cast down by Gates's disaster. To the
British the death of Ferguson was an irreparable loss because of
its depressing effect on the Back Country Tories. Ding's
Mountain, indeed, broke the Tory spirit. Seven days after the
battle General Nathanael Greene succeeded to the command of the
Southern Patriot army which Gates had led to defeat. Greene's
genius met the rising tide of the Patriots' courage and hope and
took it at the flood. His strategy, in dividing his army and
thereby compelling the division of Cornwallis's force, led to
Daniel Morgan's victory at the Cowpens, in the Back Country of
South Carolina, on January 17, 1781--another frontiersmen's
triumph. Though the British won the next engagement between
Greene and Cornwallis--the battle of Guilford Court House in the
North Carolina Back Country, on the 15th of March--Greene
madethem pay so dearly for their victory that Tarleton called it
"the pledge of ultimate defeat"; and, three days later,
Cornwallis was retreating towards Wilmington.
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