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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.

CHAPTER XX.
BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN.

THE following paper was drawn up by General Graham, who was familiar with the country around the Mountain, knew some of the officers engaged in the battle, and previous to writing this description visited the battle-ground with a son of one of the officers. From his known habits of observation and correctness, and his familiarity with military detail, there is no doubt that this is the most graphic account that has ever been given of that celebrated and important action. He drew a beautiful plot of the battle-ground and the position of the forces at different times during the day of the action.

"After the defeat of General Gates and the army under his command, on the 16th day of August, 1780, and the defeat of General Sumpter, two days after, near Rocky Mount, by Colonel Tarleton, the South was almost entirely abandoned to the enemy. Most of the troops, both officers and men, who had escaped from Gates's defeat, passed through Charlotte, N. C., where most of the militia of Mecklenburg county were assembled in consequence of the alarm; the regular troops chiefly passed on to Hillsborough, where General Gates finally established his head-quarters.

"Wm. L. Davidson, who had served as lieutenant-colonel of the regulars in the Northern Army, was appointed brigadier-general of the militia in the Salisbury district, in the place of General Rutherford, who was taken prisoner at Gates's defeat. He formed a brigade, and encamped on McAlpin's Creek, about eight miles below Charlotte, and in the course of two or three weeks was reinforced by General Sumner, a continental officer, but having no regulars to command, took command of the militia from the counties of Guilford, Caswell, Orange, and others.

"After Gates's defeat, the attention of Lord Cornwallis was chiefly occupied with burying the dead, taking care of the wounded, and forwarding, under a suitable guard, the great number of prisoners he had taken, to the city of Charleston, and regulating the civil government he was establishing in South Carolina, and examining the state of the posts occupied by his troops on the Congaree, Ninety-Six, and Augusta. By the 1st of September he