The younger son of an aristocratic Scottish family with a strong military tradition, Patrick Ferguson joined the British army in 1759 as a cornet. After serving on the European continent during the French and Indian War (1754-63), he may have been stationed in the West Indies for a time, though details of his life are vague. Whatever his military experience, he had been promoted to captain by 1768 and spent sometime in the early 1760s recuperating from a serious illness. By 1776 he had developed a breech-loading rifle, which he demonstrated to British military officials, who then ordered 100 of the guns and put Ferguson in charge of a small corps of men armed with the weapons. Some scholars have stressed the weapon's potential for revolutionizing warfare--a potential not fulfilled, so the argument goes, because of the small-mindedness of British generals. However, similar weapons had been around for almost a century, and Ferguson's rifles were fragile instruments that became more inaccurate in battle every time they were fired.

Ferguson's unit arrived in New York in May 1777 and participated in some of the fighting around the city as a light infantry company. His company was part of General William Howe's expedition against Philadelphia and fought in the Battle of Brandywine (September 11, 1777). During that engagement, Ferguson claimed he had a Continental army officer in his rifle's sights but decided not to shoot the individual since it would be unsporting and ungentlemanly. Supposedly, that officer turned out to be George Washington. Ferguson himself had his arm shattered at Brandywine, an injury that took a long time to heal, and his special rifle unit was disbanded after the battle. Some scholars claim that Howe did not recognize the weapon's utility and was piqued that he had not been consulted in the formation of Ferguson's company. Yet by the time of the Battle of Brandywine, Ferguson had only 28 men under his command, with the rest either dead, injured, or ill.

The rifles were placed in storage, and Ferguson became a member of General Henry Clinton's staff, coordinating intelligence. A highly capable officer who had become a favorite of Clinton's, he was promoted to major in 1779 and given a battlefield rank of lieutenant colonel in North America. He raised a new unit of Loyalists called "Ferguson's Scottish Corps"--sometimes referred to as the "American Volunteers"--and joined Clinton's southern invasion of 1780. Once in South Carolina, Clinton assigned Ferguson the task of recruiting Loyalists to the British cause. By the end of May 1780, Ferguson had command of an additional 800 Loyalist militia and began to operate independently in the South Carolina backcountry. As he sought to suppress resistance along the frontier, he maneuvered himself into an isolated and exposed position encamped on the top of a barren mountain near the border between South and North Carolina. Revolutionary militia attacked this position at the Battle of King's Mountain on October 7, 1780--an engagement that was a disaster for the British. Ferguson was killed, and his force was wiped out: The British had 119 killed, 123 wounded, and 664 captured.

Bibliography:

Hank Messick, King's Mountain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge "Mountain Men" in the American Revolution (Boston: Little Brown, 1976)

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